Oh god - here we go again... Dd back at uni 10days and already many

[a8mint]

Dd back at uni 10days and already 2 Of her friends are having to self isolate. Luckily they have all tested negative so far

if Unis are keen on online lessons, they should provide it at the cost of an online course such as the OU (which includes some weekends where people meet up, have some teaching etc...)

OU charges the same tuition fee as every other English university.

My point was not that universities should or should not continue to offer online learning to students. My point was that it's impossible to generalise, particularly if your experience/knowledge is based on the anecdotal evidence of your DCs' current university experience.

Universities are complex organisations, which are research organisations as well as teaching institutions. We have significant numbers of international students (who subsidise Home students' fees) - some of whom may not be permitted to travel to the UK by the UK government or their own government.

Universities are like small towns - mine has around 20,000 undergrads, and several thousand postgrads, plus several thousand staff of all sorts, all ages, and states of health. We have CEV undergrads, and CEV tutors or student-facing admin staff.

My university has taken its duty of care to its staff and student' health very seriously, and continues to do so.

Just because any poster, or her DC, are happy to take whatever risks they want to take re COVID, doesn't mean that it is OK to impose that level of risk on everyone else.

This is the thing that we have learnt from this pandemic: it's not about the risks we as individuals take - it's about being mindful of the fact that the choices we make impose risks on others.

Oh and PS, universities don't offer "lessons" - we offer the opportunity to learn, & earn a degree, through facilitated & guided learning. There's a difference between teaching and learning - it's a bit like a gym, you can be a member (teaching), but if you don't put in the effort (learning), you won't get fit.

they've spent years justifying their charges as being for their physical facilities etc

Er, no - it was the Browne Report which was adopted by the David Cameron government, which proposed that government subsidy/payment of student tuition fees should cease, and tuition fees should be paid by students.

It wasn't the universities proposing this - it was government withdrawal of tuition fee funding from universities.

@IntoAir

if Unis are keen on online lessons, they should provide it at the cost of an online course such as the OU (which includes some weekends where people meet up, have some teaching etc...)

OU charges the same tuition fee as every other English university.

My point was not that universities should or should not continue to offer online learning to students. My point was that it's impossible to generalise, particularly if your experience/knowledge is based on the anecdotal evidence of your DCs' current university experience.

Universities are complex organisations, which are research organisations as well as teaching institutions. We have significant numbers of international students (who subsidise Home students' fees) - some of whom may not be permitted to travel to the UK by the UK government or their own government.

Universities are like small towns - mine has around 20,000 undergrads, and several thousand postgrads, plus several thousand staff of all sorts, all ages, and states of health. We have CEV undergrads, and CEV tutors or student-facing admin staff.

My university has taken its duty of care to its staff and student' health very seriously, and continues to do so.

Just because any poster, or her DC, are happy to take whatever risks they want to take re COVID, doesn't mean that it is OK to impose that level of risk on everyone else.

This is the thing that we have learnt from this pandemic: it's not about the risks we as individuals take - it's about being mindful of the fact that the choices we make impose risks on others.

I agree with all that. What's been lacking is honesty and transparency. Some students feel they were conned into signing up for campus owned accommodation on the promise of "blended learning" which simply never happened, despite being allowed at various stages over the past year. It didn't happen because the staff involved were never going to be on campus. If the Uni had been honest and told students that would be the case and that EVERYTHING would have been online, then students could have made an informed decision.

You're asking for the impossible. As we keep on saying in these discussions, universities were at the mercy of an incompetent government which developed COVID-secure policies for universities as an afterthought.

Students might feel they were "conned" but the deceptions were rarely deliberate, as far as I know across the sector. Universities were having to balance their responsibilities towards the health & well-being of staff and students, with inadequate government advice or planning, and the huge uncertainty of the progress of the virus and the pandemic itself.

What you are protesting about as universities' deliberate deceptions is no such thing: we are all in a global pandemic. It seems to me that that's what you're angry about - don't project that onto the university sector.

Some university websites were promising blended learning last August when students were making decisions about contacts etc.

Some of those never did any "blended learning". Their teaching staff weren't even on campus during the months that face to face teaching was allowed. There were no restrictions in October nor December preventing socially distanced face to face sessions. Unis promised face to face sessions which simply never happened. Not surprising when the staff were never on campus.

That, to me, is students being conned.

I'm not talking about the months when there were lockdowns etc - obviously face to face couldn't happen during those periods.

My son hasn't met a single one of his lecturers nor teaching staff over the entire year. They're not there. That's NOT "blended learning".

OU charges the same tuition fee as every other English university.

Not according to their website which states that full-time fees are £6336.

@LoonvanBoon

OU charges the same tuition fee as every other English university.

Not according to their website which states that full-time fees are £6336.

No maintenance loan available for distance learning (exceptions were made due to covid only) so bear that in mind if anyone or their offspring are considering it. (Unless disability stops the person doing face to face.)

Maybe that’s going to change if so many ‘on-site universities’ suddenly decided to do online learning only...

I mean why pay £9000 for a course where you have never et any lecturer, which is less than what the OU offers?

The place where I’m teaching has started to say how wonderful the online teaching was and that, moving forward, regardless of covid, they are going to keep some of the teaching online....
Unsurpringly quite a few students aren’t happy, because you know what?, they haven’t felt it went as well as the admin thinks it has.

@KeepingTrack

Maybe that’s going to change if so many ‘on-site universities’ suddenly decided to do online learning only...

I mean why pay £9000 for a course where you have never et any lecturer, which is less than what the OU offers?

The place where I’m teaching has started to say how wonderful the online teaching was and that, moving forward, regardless of covid, they are going to keep some of the teaching online....
Unsurpringly quite a few students aren’t happy, because you know what?, they haven’t felt it went as well as the admin thinks it has.

Not just tution fees. Many unis have their own accommodation and some have a healthy income from renting out shops, takeaways, cafes, hairdressers, even dental & GP surgeries. Without the same volume of students on campus, not only will Unis lose some of their accommodation income, but those businesses currently renting space will either want rent reductions or will vacate their premises. Unis with extensive real estate other than teaching/research blocks could see quite a drop in their non teaching incomes if student numbers "on site" starts to fall.

. *if you want us to keep drawing in the international students whose tuition fees subsidise those of your children... '
Umm you charge uk students every penny the allows! Dont give us the' subsidising' bollocks ! This year they were promised blended learning and many didn't have a single in person teaching experience, and very few live teaching sessions online. Mostly 3rd rate recorded lectures worsethan free YouTube offerings. I hope heads will roll when the inquiries etc start.
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@a8mint

. *if you want us to keep drawing in the international students whose tuition fees subsidise those of your children... ' Umm you charge uk students every penny the allows! Dont give us the' subsidising' bollocks ! This year they were promised blended learning and many didn't have a single in person teaching experience, and very few live teaching sessions online. Mostly 3rd rate recorded lectures worsethan free YouTube offerings. I hope heads will roll when the inquiries etc start. Bookmark

Indeed. Funny that Unis with a high proportion of foreign students don't charge any different to the unis with a much lower proportion of foreign students, isn't it?? That suggests that this "subsidising" myth is really just a myth. Foreign students may pay more, but that money must be spent on other things, and it's certainly not reducing UK student fees.

I’ve taken part in face to face lectures this term. Out of a class of approx 70 students, 6 turned up in person. About 15 more turned up online, the rest presumably watched the recording. Our feedback from students is that they like having recorded lectures so this will probably continue for the many courses at my institution. All lab work, tutorials and other group work have been face to face all term.

@TroubleInSnowland

I’ve taken part in face to face lectures this term. Out of a class of approx 70 students, 6 turned up in person. About 15 more turned up online, the rest presumably watched the recording. Our feedback from students is that they like having recorded lectures so this will probably continue for the many courses at my institution. All lab work, tutorials and other group work have been face to face all term.

As has been said by other posters across this and other threads. Different Unis have reacted in different ways. Some Unis have clearly gone above and beyond to do the best they can. Sadly, other Unis haven't. In my son's case, the teaching staff havn't been on campus and those staff were told not to return to campus early last Summer. Despite that, the Uni were still promising "blended learning" in August, which they knew they weren't going to do. Then some "live" lectures were last year's recordings with a couple of minutes of "live" intro by the lecturer. It's such a shame that there's no consistency nor standardisation between unis as to how they treated their students and the level of "face to face" teaching they provided. Some Unis have done a lot better than others, and in turn, some students have fared better than others.

@TroubleInSnowland, did you teach face to face back at the beginning of the first term this year and if so, what was attendance like then?

I suspect part of the problem is that by now, a lot of students have rather lost the will - they may all have been allowed to return to campus, but by the sound of things, in-person teaching for everything hasn't happened everywhere, even where space allows the maximum numbers involved. And whereas students have been allowed to return to where they would normally expect teaching to happen, the overall exhortation for step wherever we are on the roadmap at the moment is still to 'work from home if possible' (so to be fair, in theory, any teaching that can be done by 'beaming in' probably still should be) - a bit of a dichotomy there.

Are all of the 70 home students, who have no restrictions on movement? I am impressed that you are both willing to teach a group of that size (should they be able to and ever all decide to turn up in person) and that a suitable space has been found to teach them in.

@MarchingFrogs, I wasn't involved in the modules being taught at the beginning of term so I don't know if we had face-to-face then. Our institution is trying their hardest to accommodate students as much as possible. So the first years will not be able to have face to face lectures because there are over 100 of them so they will not fit in a lecture theatre with distancing. The group of 70 are 3rd year students and they're all back on campus. I suspect that if they all turned up, we would have been slightly over-capacity but we now have the lecture theatre set up for blended learning so all material was recorded. We had Blackboard available for online students to ask questions etc. I'm happy being in a room with the students I've had covid, I have none of the risk factors and am partially vaccinated but I know some colleagues who are still worried.

It has been a very difficult year for everyone. We have had a number of times when we have planned for things to be in person and then government guidelines have meant that we have quickly had to change. Our lecturers have made themselves much more available than usual so constant reminders that students can contact them if they have any questions. We all have our fingers crossed that students can have a normal experience next year (even with large lectures being online).

I get what you are saying though about some institutions not making this effort. And I'm sure this will impact on them when it comes to student satisfaction surverys.

a8mint

What do you think my point is?
That this pandemic continuesto be a pita, whe we had hoped all this was behind us“

Why would you have hoped that? Completely unrealistic.
It will be behind us when all students have been twice vaccinated, which will happen in good time for September. Our 18 year old has already had their first, second booked for August.

Let’s hope so @Mareofwesttown And thanks for your reasonable response.

By the way to those who are wondering about the ways in which international students subsidise home student tuition fees, I see the figures and the numbers - at my place anyway. We rely on those fees to cover the shortfalls of home tuition fees.

But you know, call my actual professional expertise “bullocks”. It’s an excellent argument and you’d get a First class grade for it.

Not.

Umm you charge uk students every penny the allows! Dont give us the' subsidising' bollocks !

We charge the maximum amount the government allows us to but it doesn't cover the actual cost of running degree programmes.
International fees do subsidise home students even at universities that aren't necessarily known for attracting huge numbers of international students. I work at a post 92 institution and we some international students studying with us. In my faculty it's the international and postgraduate students that keep us afloat.

@TroubleInSnowland

I’ve taken part in face to face lectures this term. Out of a class of approx 70 students, 6 turned up in person. About 15 more turned up online, the rest presumably watched the recording. Our feedback from students is that they like having recorded lectures so this will probably continue for the many courses at my institution. All lab work, tutorials and other group work have been face to face all term.

It depends A LOT on the subject taught though.. And as explained before, it’s not a universal position.

At the uni where I teach, students have the opposite reaction. A bit of online teaching is ok but they all missed the face to face terribly. And let’s be honest, online teaching is never as good as face to face teaching where students are actually involved in the teaching (rather than just sitting there listening)

But it brings back the same question. How is it right that the cost is the same whether it’s online of face to face teaching?

@IntoAir
Please can you explain how £9250 to churn out 6 hours of ropey prerecorded videos per week requires subsidising. I'll wait....

Student fees are not only used to pay for a lecture to be delivered. In fact, the amount of money from student fees allocated to paying staff to deliver a lecture is quite small - your DD 'paid' in the region of £14 (or less) specifically to attend each of those lectures.

Student fees are spent on:

• Staff pay, including the pay of lecturers, technicians, administrative staff who deal with essays, exams. This includes staff time to set and mark essays, dissertations and exams, design courses, attend field trips and visit students on placement.

• Auditing, monitoring and review of courses to ensure standards, exam boards and other moderation work to ensure standards are consistent across years (for example, to ensure that this years students don't end up with worse grades than those who studied in more ideal circumstances), panels to deal with special circumstances (for example, students who have experience ill health, mental health problems or bereavement during the pandemic), cheating and complaints.

• Equipment and materials as appropriate to the course. Lab equipment, chemicals, care of animals and plants, computer software licenses, computers, cameras, microphones, virtual learning environments, paper, printers and scanners.

• In-department support costs, including providing personal tutors, senior tutors, people responsible for student progression and wellbeing, employability, someone to run the department and someone to manage its finances, someone to deal with student queries, disability support, special circumstances requests, administration of admissions, marks and graduation.

• Bursaries and hardship funds. Widening participation initiatives.

• Libraries (and museums and galleries), including paying librarians, buying physical resources such as books, computers, furniture and providing access to online resources, such as journal articles, scanning and photocopying for students who cannot come to the library. The maintenance of library catalogues, reading lists, guidance and resources.

• The careers service, Student Union, counselling services, student support services, chaplaincy. Health services, nurseries, sports facilities, cultural facilities where costs are more than use fees.

• Staff to run the university, to deal with student fee payments, timetable their lectures and exams, run centralised admission services, open days, graduations, central IT services, as well as general things needed in any large business, such as HR, senior management, financial management including paying staff, engaging with local communities, transport providers, etc.

• Estate costs, including paying cleaners and grounds staff, and their equipment, security, building maintenance, gas, electricity, water, insurance.

• Miscellaneous other costs.

On average, universities receive around 5% less than they spend on every UK undergraduate student. Or to put it another way, the university is paying £462 per year for the pleasure of educating your DD.

This year universities have also had to find money to provide testing facilities (where staff have not volunteered to do this for free) and equipment, make buildings Covid-safe, provide additional hardship payments and other student support, and to cover the cost of giving students rent rebates. Every day there are new announcements of redundancies and course closures.

Everything Phphion said. Not to mention the additional cost of upgrading the IT infrastructure to enable online teaching this year.

If you think your university has failed to deliver this last year then complain but this constant attack on universities and university staff is getting tiresome.

Please can you explain how £9250 to churn out 6 hours of ropey prerecorded videos per week requires subsidising. I'll wait

Are you always this rude?

Thanks to @Phphion for offering the common-sense answer.