Uni threat to terminate student's studies

[Allshallbewell2021]

My ds has just succeeded in his appeal against a termination of studies based on non attendance. He had no idea that lectures were mandatory. His attendance is lower than the bar they expect but the dept dealing with him have not been explicit about either of these figures.
His work is up to date.
He did not know lectures were mandatory -lecturers said they were 'important'.
He has had a large number of challenges which have effected his attendance.
I can't the brutality of the process. The stasi like language.
The lack of seeing young people (particularly the Covid uni cohort) as uniquely unlucky in uni terms.
The lack of support for someone struggling
The treatment of a student in a way which seems like they've committed real crimes not just misunderstood the rules.
When did the unis become such vicious places? I was so naive. I am horrified by their attitude. It seems like how you'd treat someone guilty of a serious crime.

I still feel it's hardly a criminal act. Also the young do make mistakes & can hardly learn with a zero tolerance approach.

Stop catastrophising. He hasn't been treated as a criminal FFS. And they haven't taken a zero tolerance approach - he will have had numerous contacts about his attendance and the repercussions will have been explained to him. He's managed to get his act together to approach the SU and appeal - that is a far far far more stressful and complex thing to do than reading and email and rocking up to a lecture.

Exactly. I bet he's been offered interventions / support he hasn't told you about.

I have NEVER heard of anyone not having to attend their lectures. Has DS read the course handbook? If there is an attendance policy then it will be clearly stated.

Departments do take absence seriously as they are judged on results and obviously other students could have had the places of those they deem not dedicated to their course.

They are, however, usually pretty good with students who are struggling.
Has DS been to his uni GP? Spoken to a uni counsellor? Informed his tutor of his issues?

Uni students are classed/treated as adults, rightly so ,really, as they are 18 and over and are expected to speak up if there are problems, as you would in work.

I don't think it's militant or unkind to have basic expectations for a course, at all. It does sound like you're in protective mode, understandably considering you're worried about him, but looking at it from their side it doesn't seem like they've done anything wrong, from what you've told us anyway.

Has he been doing them online? I did a 6 year medical based degree and never attended a lecture in person as I lived off-site. I always watched the recordings, even before COVID.

I was at university from 84-88 and received old fashioned letters in my old fashioned pigeonhole if 2 lectures in a row for any specific subject were missed.
As others have said, the process of getting kicked out of university is a very long and careful one.
Your son @Allshallbewell2021 has done a lot more than miss a couple of lectures and if he were mine, I'd be kicking his arse into tomorrow (metaphorically) He's old enough to take some responsibility for his own decisions.

What subject is he studying?

They’re taken at every single lecture I’ve ever taught. Used to be old fashioned paper registers and now there is an attendance code which has to be inputted in the first 15 mins of the lecture.

This ^^
Lectures were never optional in my RG uni in the early 2000s we had to sign a register.
When did the unis become such vicious places?
They've always been harsh in anything relating to academic standards, misconduct, or behavioural issues because some young people are quite simply lazy and unis don't waste resources pandering to them in general.

He's not your baby boy anymore. He's a grown man and he needs to engage with everything at university, including the bits he isn't so keen on.He will have been assigned a personal tutor when he startedand he will have been contacted regarding any issues the university has had with his performance.Your son must have ignored these initial approaches for it to have escalated. My exhusband attempted suicide when our sons were at 2 different universities. Both offered superb help to them. When I was doing a degree in the 80s not everyone attended lectures , but everyone nominated a friend to share the notes. Different people attended each week. He is telling you his own special version of what happened.

Maybe it depends on the subjects being studied. In the mid 80s I shared a house with a philosophy student and he only had three hours of lectures a week and the rest was self-managed learning through books etc. I did medical sciences with lectures from 8am until 6pm five days a week including lab work. The amount of work 'out of hours' was brutal to be honest and I certainly missed out on a lot of the social side that seems to form a large part of uni now. But... assuming that you go to Uni to get the best result you can to give you the best start in life, why would you voluntarily miss a lecture? What did he think the other students were doing with their time?

The fact that he's paying to be taught is, for me, an even stronger reason to turn up.

He's been shown the opposite of a zero tolerance approach! They've tolerated his failure to attend. Is he expecting to be able to turn up to work only some of the time with no real consequences?

Lectures were optional when I was at uni. I mean, you were supposed to attend, but it was common to miss the odd one, and I know for a fact that someone on my (very small) course did not attend a single lecture in the last 2 years and still came out with a 1st. In fact, it was only on graduation day that I knew he had not left after the first year.

But that was in the time of no tuition fees. If I was accruing debt to the tune of £9000 a year I think I would be looking to get my money's worth. I certainly would as a parent supporting my children through uni.

Most learning or knowledge did not come from lectures -which is why they were optional and virtually irrelevant when I went. There were probably fewer than three lectures a term, and even fewer as time went on. It was the seminars and tutorials and your own studying which is where the learning happened.

It seems like how you'd treat someone guilty of a serious crime.
He took a uni place away from someone who wanted it. They didn't get that opportunity because he took it and squandered it. He has also wasted his student loan. How do you not see how serious this is?

I was at university 2003-2007 very prestigious RG. Lectures were optional, labs, seminars and tutorials mandatory. However this was clearly laid out in the departmental handbook. One lecturer in a very very over subscribed module made it very clear, there will be registration, if you don't attend without justifiable apologies (ie infrequent illness) your place will be given to someone from the lengthy waiting list.
I also don't believe you go straight from not knowing they are mandatory, blithely pottering along, to termination of study, he will have had other correspondence.

It seems like how you'd treat someone guilty of a serious crime.

It's a well-known fact that courts and prisons are overflowing with students who didn't attend lectures.

Not all universities take this approach. You are right to think that your son’s university could have approached this better, but completely wrong to make sweeping generalisations about universities. Many of us work in universities that are incredibly student-centred, that went above and beyond in the pandemic, and continue to do so. I’m very sympathetic to your son’s situation and sorry to hear of his experience, but offended by the way in which you have cast aspersions on many institutions that do not function in the way you describe.

So hang on:

• he was sent reminder emails
• he did not engage with his personal tutor
• he did not tell anyone he was struggling
• when he did tell them and gave them evidence for why he wasn’t attending they allowed him to carry on despite failing the attendance criteria.

So they tried to get him to engage. He didn’t engage. They reached out. He ignored them. And then they WERE sympathetic.
I don’t know what more you can expect.
He will be in the work place in a couple of years. He cannot ignore emails at that point..

I don’t think Universities and academics can win.

I went to uni both pre and post fees. There's also a shitty attitude expressed by some students that because they're paying fees they can do exactly what they want and won't be told what to do.

Now I'm not going to start my rant about uni funding but the attitude of some students absolutely stinks.

To get to the stage of terminating a student's studies the university will have jumped through so many hoops, dotted is, crossed ts, there will likely have been pastoral care involvement. Students are spoon fed so much, I don't believe this would have been sprung on your DS without many, many steps prior.

One of the ways universities try to support students who are struggling is by following up on students where attendance/engagement is low, which may indicate cause for concern. There will have been a couple (at least) of other steps taken to.contact him prior to threats of exclusion.

And no it’s not a criminal act which is why he’s not being given a criminal sentence- being terminated from University is not akin to a crime. (Just like losing a job for underperforming isn’t).

I graduated 3 years ago and lectures were definitely optional..

He's an adult and you seem way over involved in this. Time to step back. They won't deal directly with you because it's down to him now to navigate adult life.

He's been allowed to continue, which is great, hope he's learned something about not sticking your head in the sand when there's an issue.

I work in HE and in particular departmental student support. We log registers for seminars (10-30 students) and tutorials (8-10 students) and note absences for the 100s of groups this makes. Then send a softly softly email indicating we've noticed they've missed 3 sessions and include a list of support mechanisms they can explore if needed, another email for 5 absences and letting their supervisor know, then if there's still a lack of engagement with 7+ absences and a meeting with the programme director. At every single stage we encourage them to tell us if there are issues because there are things we can do to help but it makes things 10x harder if we find out later on in the academic year. I would love it if a student let me know at the beginning that they were struggling because we can nip things in the bud but I don't accept that he's just been sprung with a termination of studies.