Students full return to campus

[DoNotBringLulu]

This came up on my Facebook feed:

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/apr/13/university-campuses-in-england-will-not-reopen-until-mid-may

If this is true, Boris et al have some explaining to do.

@mumsneedwine

So why is it possible for year 13 to all be back in classrooms, no social distancing, but in 5 month time they can't be in classrooms. This is what I'm struggling with. They are all 18 year olds so what changes magically over the summer ?

The official line is that what changes is that the majority move home, all at the same time. Swathes of young people travelling all over the UK spreading their CV.

It's bollocks of course, but that's the difference.

With friends like that....

And UCU have been utterly diabolical. To be fair that's nothing new.

@mumsneedwine I absolutely agree that unis need to be honest as soon as possible to allow students to make the decision. I guess no one wants to be the one to go first though. And I think until/if the government open up everything on 21st June, the situation could still change, leaving unis to back peddle on decisions.

I think the overall point I'm making is saying if Y13s are in class now, why can't the 18/19/20 yr olds at uni be - other than stupid government policy, it's not that they can't (unis have put extensive safety measures in), but these students only make up a percentage of all activities at a university, the university has to consider ALL of its activities and students and make the best and fairest decisions for everyone. I don't envy the VCs having to make these decisions.

For what it's worth, UCU have been useless for a long time. They certainly don't represent how a lot of academics feel

@titchy

And UCU have been utterly diabolical. To be fair that's nothing new.

Indeed.

There is so much they (and the school teaching unions) could have done
to make education open and safe
but they opted for closing venues

For what it's worth, UCU have been useless for a long time. They certainly don't represent how a lot of academics feel

Exactly this. They're useless.

if Uni will not be the same then they need to be honest and let the students know now. So they can decide whether to stay or not, as many do not feel it's worth it for another year of on line.

Agree completely!

DDs lecturers have been great, been as accessible as possible and have tried hard to make the best of a dreadful situation, organised group work etc.

BUT DD checked with Uni in Aug before taking up place and confirming halls and was told it would be blended so we assumed that meant at least one session in university every week. 2 weeks before she started she got her timetable for 1st term. She had 4 in person teaching sessions for the entire term, everything else online. Now if Uni had said to her it’s mainly online but every 3rd week you’ll have an in person lab she may have made a different decision, certainly with regard to moving into halls.

It is a pandemic and this awful year has been no-ones fault except the virus but more transparency is needed so students can make an informed decision.

[quote mumsneedwine]@CupcakesK if Uni will not be the same then they need to be honest and let the students know now. So they can decide whether to stay or not, as many do not feel it's worth it for another year of on line.
Just did a poll of my year 13s and 3/4 will defer or not go at all if it's on line. All have firmed their offers.
Honesty towards the students would be nice.[/quote]
I've been quite strong in the focus groups and questionnaires that we've been given that I really do think my uni actively mis-sold what things were going to be like this year (obviously they couldn't predict restrictions and. subsequent lockdowns and there has been a LOT of goodwill from the student body about all of this) to try to make sure they had bums on seats (where the seats were nowhere near campus) for this year. I was perfectly fine with the proposed learning mix and happy enough to give it a good go - but they really did sure as hell overegg how much was going to be face to face and how much of campus was still going to be available - and it's actually a miserable as hell ghost town with nothing open.

I'm not prepared to pay out again for another year of that shit to be honest. We all absolutely adore our lecturers and have massive respect for them (there's one that's an exception but lets not go there) and we're sick of watching their carefully planned sessions be thwarted by shit technology and them being run into a frazzle.

It's just been so utterly utterly soul destroying - log on... play back a lecture, log back into the system that boots you out... play back another lecture... log on and wait for an online session where there's no real interaction anymore - possibly 5 minutes in a breakout room randomly allocated and sitting with the hand up button a few times. No back and forth, no taking the discussion off in directions to extend interests and none of the ability to drop into the department office to just quickly clarify something with the staff - and we have access to diagnostic assessments we NEED to be familiar with, held in the department not in the main library, that we have NO ACCESS to at all. If you've not been on a placement in the right area to have access to these there, or if you're on a telehealth placement - you're at an instant disadvantage. I bloody love my course, I'm bloody good at the academic stuff, I'm determined I want that first - but I can't do another year of my arse being welded to this chair with no campus time at all, or the miserable ghost town that was campus on the two occasions I was there this year (and one of those was to pick up a parking pass).

Ultimately the problem is that universities today are more like corporations than anything else, and the most important thing is bringing in £££.

So they outright lied to students last summer. They don't invest enough in quality IT. They overwork staff so much that they can't do enough for their students.

Meanwhile there are 10 layers of bureaucracy for every tiny decision and departments don't have the freedom to do everything they want to do for their students.

I'm glad to see so many posts saying they don't blame university staff for the most part, because please believe me most of us are totally frustrated with the situation as well.

@CupcakesK

I want everything to be f2f as much as possible too, but think I'm being realistic about the situation and challenges to this.

Last September - no COVID variants were circulating, so allowing students to return to the country was less risky as they had the same COVID we had. There was also still the provision that if they couldn't return, everything would be available online. We're talking about taking away that safety net for next year and as it is highly likely we will end up with a surge in cases at some point and the disruption caused by having to stop everything mid-semester because the government decides to is possibly worse than allowing students to return but have blended teaching and less f2f than in normal circumstances.

There are consequences to deferring a year of study e.g. some professional courses have time limitations to complete studies, visa requirements for international students, financial implications of not getting a student loan for a year. Many unis will not exclude their international students like this, and risk reputational damage worldwide, as they rely on them to subsidise the cost of home students.

I would absolutely welcome a legal challenge if either the government doesn't change its stance or individual unis are not doing all they can. However universities are massive complex operations, of which undergraduate teaching to home students is just one part. I can completely see how students view their lack of f2f teaching and the hit it's had on them and their mental health. There are just so many more factors to consider, that demanding full f2f next semester is not feasible. I will add, again, I want to see as much f2f as possible, but university next year is not going to be back to normal and students should be prepared for that.

They need to be as upfront as possible and fees reflect that. Music, drama, film, and any course with practical labs etc can’t really continue as they have been at the price being charged.

Yes, I wnt specific knowledge.

Eg some people starting my sons' £17k per person course in London will be finding accommodation in London now for September. If the course is 100% on line they willn ot need to pay for a rental contract.

So eg if there may be just one day a week at most of a session in person then tell people now so they can incur say a train fare up to London just for those days once a week rather than paying rent all year.

Don't use confusing things like blended. Say If we do not provided 4 hours a week of face to face lectures in person we will refund you XYZ etc etc.

Yes. Someone needs to tell them so they don’t pay out for accom unless needed. Overnights will be much cheaper!

Or vice versa - if my twins do their September course in Leeds not London it is about £4k each per year cheaper - same institution as the London one., if it is 100% online (s their course was this year) in Leeds and London then who would pay the London fees when they could register for leeds and save so much money?

But, you know, we don't actually know - we are planning, we are hoping for in person teaching, but we just don't know. We'll still be dealing with a nasty disease, which makes people very ill. And all the variants.

And we are planning in the face of total government incompetence.

@ListeningQuietly

Parents and students have every right to be VERY pissed off.

Many of us have been financially clobbered by COVID
and seen our children paying for courses they are not getting
and we are paying for accommodation they cannot use
out of money we do not have

Individual lecturers are not to blame
but anybody on a salary who has saved money during COVID
CANNOT
tell me not to complain and say things have been tickety boo for students.

NOBODY should be defending the current system
because it stinks.

Well said - thank you

@MeltsAway

But, you know, we don't actually know - we are planning, we are hoping for in person teaching, but we just don't know. We'll still be dealing with a nasty disease, which makes people very ill. And all the variants.

And we are planning in the face of total government incompetence.

Yes the gov is incompetent but we go round in circles with this argument. If fe colleges and schools can teach 18 year olds then unis can plan for solutions too

Do you support the UCU stance, @MeltsAway? They are additionally against blended learning. They want fully-online (and as far as I remember objected to that too at least earlier on).

The “safe” condition will never, ever be fulfilled. As you mentioned upthread, students still spread colds and flu and norovirus. There will always be a reason why it’s “unsafe” for students to be at university....

Yes the gov is incompetent but we go round in circles with this argument. If fe colleges and schools can teach 18 year olds then unis can plan for solutions too

We are planning for solutions. Online teaching this year has been the solution. Running three lab classes instead of one has been the solution. Posting library books has been the solution. Giving students laptops has been the solution. Creating covid safe study spaces has been the solution. If we end up in a wave 3 lockdown situation this Autumn we'll continue with that. And it'll be awful I agree.

But if the Government says we CANNOT do in person teaching, then no amount of 'but 18 year olds in sixth form are back in the classroom' will change that. We are a highly regulated sector. If we do something the Office for Students or the Gov explicitly says we cannot do we will be closed down.

I'm a not very mature student this year and to pay £9000 tuition fees for this year is disgusting. It's been horrendous sitting at home being given hundreds of PowerPoints and last year's video captures to watch, and then very unrealistic amounts of extra reading to do on top of it. I've been on campus 8 times since September for face to face teaching so it is ludicrous to say that it's been worth the £9000 of teaching. I'm praying that next year is better as I know some of my course mates are already thinking of quitting.

I'm not cross with DD's tutors, who have done all they could, but it looks likely she will be giving up on her Masters before finishing it. If she'd been told the whole year would be online she wouldn't have signed a contract for accommodation for a year. She hasn't had any lab time. She hasn't met her course mates. What a waste of money and a big debt to carry forward with nothing to show for it.

We are planning for solutions. Online teaching this year has been the solution. Running three lab classes instead of one has been the solution. Posting library books has been the solution. Giving students laptops has been the solution. Creating covid safe study spaces has been the solution. If we end up in a wave 3 lockdown situation this Autumn we'll continue with that. And it'll be awful I agree.

But if the Government says we CANNOT do in person teaching, then no amount of 'but 18 year olds in sixth form are back in the classroom' will change that. We are a highly regulated sector. If we do something the Office for Students or the Gov explicitly says we cannot do we will be closed down.

This is what it boils down to.

If you have had to put up with last years videos and no 'live' online sessions then complain because that isn't good enough.
That wouldn't be acceptable at my university.
Every single lecture of mine and my colleagues has either been live via Teams or recorded specifically for that group.
At the moment that's the best we can do and it doesn't necessarily mean it's poor quality.

This is just to get a better sense of what we're talking about here - so, I know some unis are basically done teaching new material by Easter and the rest is exams and assessment support, some have a couple of weeks more of a semester, and some a full term - with the date at the 17th, how much time are the students we're talking about not getting on campus that they'd hoped to?

I do realise even if the answer is only 2 weeks that might still be very important to many, by the way!

That's fantastic news though as the government have now said f2f and all students allowed back from May12th. So should be all back to normal in September. Excellent. No reasons this can not be sorted.

then very unrealistic amounts of extra reading to do on top of it

My students are often a bit shocked when I say that we predicate workloads for modules on them working a 38-40 hour week throughout the teaching year (September to June). And that 'holidays" are recesses from scheduled teaching, but if they are full-time students, then they work a full-time schedule.

@mumsneedwine

That's fantastic news though as the government have now said f2f and all students allowed back from May12th. So should be all back to normal in September. Excellent. No reasons this can not be sorted.

I'd certainly assumed that September would most likely be back to normal, or near it, barring any massive nasty surprises!