University attendance/engagement - it sounds pretty dire

[Suffolker]

Did anyone see this article last week in the Guardian?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/28/i-see-little-point-uk-university-students-on-why-attendance-has-plummeted

It makes for pretty grim reading, and talking to a friend who works at our local university, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration of the current level of attendance and engagement by undergraduates. It sounds very different to how I remember my university days in the 1990s (although I appreciate I’m very much looking through rose-tinted glasses).

I’ve heard from another friend whose daughter is just completing her first year that lots of students are dropping out and are unhappy. Attendance at lectures is very much seen as optional and there is very little by the way of any contact time with staff. Registration codes are apparently shared by WhatsApp so the students can ‘register’ for classes but not actually attend.

It all sounds very isolating, and really makes me question whether all the expense of going (emotional as well as financial) makes it worthwhile. Interested to hear of others’ thoughts and whether it reflects your experience.

Thanks, that's interesting to hear of your daughter's experience and rather confirms the point I am making that too many prestigious universities are not actually as good at teaching as the less prestigious ones. On the TEF, my personal view (though one shared by a lot of academic staff) is that no league table is of much use, and that league table culture has had an overall negative impact on higher education by encouraging game-playing to hit artificial targets, rather than focus on the content of what those measures are supposed to be measuring. Also some problems with TEF are: firstly, it measures teaching quality indirectly rather than directly; and secondly, the scores appear by university rather than by course (the government at one point wanted to do the latter but then did a U-turn), so a bad score can mask good teaching in individual departments and vice versa. However, that said, if you are trying to pick a course based on teaching quality, the TEF is clearly less useless for that than most league tables, which very often include measures that simply have nothing to do with the quality of undergraduate teaching, such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF), or graduate salaries (which are much more closely correlated to the geographical location of universities, the social class origin of their students, and salary variations between the relevant industries than anything that actually happens at university). The TEF has at least had the merit of showing up some poor practice at the Russell Group - which is ironic as the government's intention in introducing it was rather the opposite - just as the REF, for all its faults, has shown that there is internationally excellent and world leading research being produced in many post-1992 universities. If I were advising your daughter, I would say: pick the university where the course content looks most interesting and relevant to her needs and career aspirations, and which when she visits has happy, enthusiastic students, and staff who seem like they are keen, friendly and committed to teaching, learning and improving, rather than resting on the laurels of their institution's past reputation. Best of luck to her!

Thanks: yes that tallies with my and many people's memories of that time. It's useful in showing us that there wasn't a golden age when all students attended fully. And yes you are right - the Russell Group was only invented in 1994 (what a triumph of brand marketing that even some people who went to university before that now think they went to one). But it's important for we Gen Xers not to base our understanding of university entirely on our own experiences. The early 90s was as long ago now as the late 50s were then, and higher education has changed very much indeed in the meantime. Even before Covid, the sector had changed a great deal just since the introduction of £9000 fees in 2012, which is why if you're thinking about your own children's future choices it's useful to speak to staff who've worked in higher education for a while who have a sense of what has and hasn't changed since you were a student. Two changes are that lectures generally are compulsory now, though how that is enforced can vary a lot from university to university, and that attendance is somewhat more challenging at seminars than used to be the case, despite them being theoretically compulsory. A few reasons for this are: more students have to do paid work in term-time, and more have domestic responsibilities, so many students are registered full-time but in reality part-time; more students have an expectation that university will be like school (partly because a lot more of the age cohort are going to university now than in the early 90s); and more students take a consumerist approach to education (the whole implicit understanding of what was the relationship between student and university was very different before fees). Hence rather more students than used to be the case take the mistaken view that the entirety of what they need to know to succeed on the course is contained in lectures. But I don't doubt that in the past there were always students who, like some of your mates, were less than assiduous.

Thank you for your detailed reply @Whyisthemoonmadeofgreencheese.
Her course is accredited by a professional body, and as it is healthcare related where she does her course shouldn't be relevant from an employer's point of view (NHS). DD is more interested in things like location of placements (non driver for medical reasons), the teaching and content, and probably how easy it is to get to on public transport from where we live.

Thanks. Yes, that's a good point about NHS careers, and those kinds of practical issues like public transport access are often important in students' choices. Sorry one other thing I forgot to mention is that the TEF only covers undergraduate, not postgraduate teaching. Hope your daughter's course goes well.

I think the difference is that years ago, if as a student you missed lectures (usually down to hangover or general laziness) you knew it was your fault, but now it seems to be everyone else's fault. I did a law degree and some of the lectures were dull, the Friday 9am one was pretty painful, but I can only think I missed one. Some people missed quite a few, especially the Friday morning ones but they took responsibility for that.

Attendance in schools is a huge issue too, so attendance at university is potentially only going to get worse.

I agree with @Seeline and also @igivein on P1.

Let's not forget that there are massively more students now than 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, and many student have gone 'because that's what people do after school' rather than because they have a passion for the subject or the determination to get a professional qualification. So they don't have the motivation.
It also means that lecturers and tutor have massive cohorts that - even if they spent the whole of their working week on lecturing / prep / marking / supporting students, rather than the 1/3 of the working week they are supposed to allocate, there is no way they could 'be available' for all the students who want help.
Combine that with the number of students who - despite having 3 months or a year to work on a project, don't get in touch until the night before it is due in, who then expect their tutors to be able to support them.

But you can't generalise. Universities vary, departments vary, lecturers vary, and students vary so much.

Years ago, students generally had no choice but to attend lectures in order to take down the lecture notes. Students spent the lecture copying notes from a board or screen. A student who missed lectures had to go to the trouble of copying notes from a student who attended the lecture.

Now all lecture notes are available online on an LMS. Text books and reading material for many programmes are also available online. In many universities, the lectures are recorded and available to watch and rewatch. Lecture cohorts are now so large in many universities that there is little advantage in attending unless it is a lab or a workshop/tutorial.

Students are now far busier with essays and assignments as programmes are assessed a lot more by continuous assessment than previously. Some of the hardest working and highest achieving students in many programmes have limited attendance as they are working more efficiently at home.

I teach at a university, albeit not a UK one and we have the same problems. Also it is really striking how many students have diagnosed anxiety. I get given a whole list of students who have to take exams on their own, cannot interact etc because of anxiety. A lot of them talked about their anxiety in their essays in the exam (and that was not the main topic of the essay!) I don't know if it's Covid related but it is worrying.

DS is at the same university at the moment and he does go to most lectures and tutorials but there are fewer students on his course which makes a big difference.

What always bothers me as shrink when I hear of this epidemic of anxiety in young people is that avoidance powerfully maintains anxiety and causes it to generalise and yet all these reasonable adjustments are mechanisms of avoidance. No wonder it just gets worse and worse.

Fully agree with this. And we put a lot of effort into making sure our assessment deadlines are spaced out, but once you get an extension for one, that pushes it into the next one, so then you're anxious about that so you get another extension, and then you have a semester that's just a giant ball of anxiety and stress and paperwork.

Whereas if they just did their best at the first assessment, accepted the mark wouldn't be their highest and then got on with things they'd probably have a much less stressful semester and a higher overall average.

I was at Sussex in the 1990s and barely attended. There were no registers, no one noticed.

I still got a 2:1 from borrowing my mate's notes, though (was pre google)

Yes and it does seem that so many expect university to be school, when it isn't at all.

I don't even have a support role and have had an angry call from a parent, who called me on teams from her daughter's account just after I'd finished talking to the daughter so I thought it was the student calling me back.

@ThePure that’s really interesting and confirms what I’ve intuited from almost 40 years of teaching undergrads.

It’s getting much worse.

At my place, it’s facilitated by senior professional staff and senior management, none of whom have much experience dealing with undergrads at the coalface. We academics are evaluated for our teaching but we’re doing it in increasingly compromised structures.

This really comes down to too many at uni and people not being honest about who is suitable for uni. Anxiety is a red flag. To me. There’s another thread about parents and open days. It’s parents controlling dc. These dc cannot function by themselves. Unis need to be more proactive about saying a student is not suitable.

I have a (younger) dc with anxiety. We have put in a lot of work (and expense on private therapist) to address it. I think the key thing is my DC doesn’t want to be anxious and wants to address. It hasn’t been easy. I am not sure the same can be said for a lot of people. There is a comfort from being ‘anxious’ and not having to take responsibility.

If the child has genuine mental health difficulties, then of course parents need to be involved. Sometimes they won’t be able to attend university but sometimes they will and parental support will be a big thing to enable that (and possibly living at home). We do need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I agree with this. I used to be in the WIWIKAU Facebook group and often read posts from parents of young people whose DC were entirely unsuitable for higher education. I and other posters used to gently suggest that maybe their DC weren't ready for university, and that university was nothing like school.

IMO university shouldn't be the default option for everyone.

DD took a gap year, and it was the making of her. She was more than ready for university by the time she went. Luckily she already had the right work ethic (and fear of failure). She is now more than ready for her next education step after working for nearly 2 years.

I think too many people go to university. Blair wanted 50% of young people to go. There is no reason for that. More jobs now require graduates that previously accepted experience - we need to go back to that.

I studied engineering in the 90s. Had 35 hours a week of lectures, labs, seminars and tutorials. You had to literally sign in to all of them. If your attendance fell below a certain level for a module or whole course you ran the risk of being failed.

I was a full time mature student in the 90s. My son was 7. I also worked 40 hours a week. I lived on coffee. Did my homework after he was in bed, rarely missed a lecture or contact.

My point is if I could do it, work full time hours, care for my son and come out with an Upper second, so can they. It just means hard work and tenacity.

I have been watching this thread too depressed to comment. I agree with @JocelynBurnell that some of the best students have poor lecture attendance and know the same is true for those who must combine their studies with long hours of employment of child care. Sometimes these are the same people as good time management is a big piece of academic success. Of course recorded lectures are a good way for anyone who has attended to review the lecture and are especially useful for those with SEN. So far, so good.

However we can view aggregate access statistics for all material uploaded to our VLE, including recorded lectures. These show consistently that, especially in Y1 and Y2 as the foundations are being laid, the significant majority do not access lectures or supplementary material until shortly before a key assessment. (Obviously they aren’t attending, either) In the meantime they just muddle through. This situation is not good for anyone.

A valuable and thought provoking post! Thank you.

Definitely have seen this with DD2.
I don’t think that she has been attending lectures as regularly as she should.
I think this is because the lectures are recorded and posted online.
She has been getting top grades so she doesn’t see the problem.
I sometimes wonder why she bothered to go to university in another town.

I thought the two cases were quite different with one involving a School going back on its published word as the core issue - although there is room for different opinions. It wasn’t black and white

The other case was rather incredible.