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.

@Ginko Some employers really would like to but often those not heading to university aren’t that employable. Some of course are wonderful. However lots of the problem arises from the very decent upper middle dc going to university and not doing employer supported HNC or similar I know these are apprenticeships but it’s not always easy to match employer to suitable dc.

I do support the most suitable dc going to university and some are better supported by living at home. If you live rurally, this is very difficult if your local uni is a DDD type uni. I’m sometimes frightened by MN parents wanting parent like support at uni and considering ones 3 hours drive away. Just doesn’t seem sensible.

I also think fear of failure can be healthy in some respects. Got me galvanized. I never ever wanted to fail and know my employer was paying! Total shame that would have been.

@RampantIvy Yes. Some dc really do need a bit more time. However unrealistic objectives do mar the uni experience for some and maybe unis should say attendance (?50%) is required. I wonder what Oxbridge stats are? High presumably. Low attendance possibly does indicate square peg in round hole. How can scientists succeed with low attendance @poetryandwine ? Just curious.

@Ginko What Tony Blair wanted, he didn’t get! It’s a bit irrelevant now. Plus, who is paying? It was the Conservativex who lifted the cap on student numbers. Not Tony Blair.

Great question, @TizerorFizz I am talking about the formal lectures. They are available online.

Attendance at labs, tutorials and supervisions is much higher, but the quality is hampered by the fact that few keep up with the lectures. Until something is coming due.

No, that was my pessimism showing. Perhaps 50% keep up to a decent standard. Of those probably the majority are watching a week’s worth of lectures for each subject in one go starting perhaps 48 or 72 hrs before the first small group meeting in the subject for the week.

That really isn’t what we or presumably their parents would wish for, but it isn’t awful. Our students are very bright and since standards were adjusted this will get most of them a 2.1. It doesn’t allow time for deep learning or grappling with the more difficult problems.

Again, I am talking mainly about Y1 and Y2. Even there we have (way) more than 50% on 2.1s and Firsts so I am being pessimistic.

Lecture attendance in Y3 and Y4 is much higher.

@poetryandwine Just watching in your own time doesn’t build in much discussion with other students though. Sometimes you can ask a question to clarify something or explore more deeply. This appears to be lost.

Do you think this is something to do with the personality of students? A bit like hermits until they have to force themselves to do something? It’s an alien concept to me - non attendance. But I was healthily afraid of failure and not bright. More of a grafter!

Yes, @TizerorFizz . I do, and I think their pandemic experience also affected them quite a lot.

Everyone I know agrees with you that much is lost!

The anxiety, both formally diagnosed and self diagnosed, is through the roof. As ‘the shrink’ (possibly @ThePure ? I am not going back to check) wisely noted, all the opportunities for avoidance we offer may actually not be helping. Avoiding lectures might be part of that.

You sound like someone it would have been fun to teach

@poetryandwine

Thats very kind of you. I’m afraid even you would have struggled. I don’t have an O level in maths! All our maths teachers were Oxford grads. Not sure they were great teachers though. I’m one of these middling people who did better when work (money!!) depended on it and I had DH to explain “Quantitive methods”. A small penny dropped.

All our maths teachers were Oxford grads

When it comes to maths, I think a better teacher is someone who had to struggle a bit themselves. My experience of brilliant mathematicians is they just ‘see’ the answer and don’t understand why others do not.

I strongly disagree.

A deferred exam considered as a first sitting was always intended to give a student a second opportunity to sit an exam where unforeseen circumstances temporarily prevented the student from sitting the first exam. Granting such a deferral was never intended to give an advantage to the student who had secured the deferral.

I fully agree with you here. However once a timetable has been published, the university has made a promise and students feel thrown by changes. If the timetable had called for an early exam I would not have been sympathetic.

There is room for thoughtful opinions on this one. I thought the other case more clear cut, but the university in question obviously did not

Perhaps love did the trick

No! Someone who had maths A level and an engineering degree!
@Ginko Yes. I think that was the issue. No help at home was another issue. DM just called it “new maths” and left me to it. It was SMP but it might as well have been Japanese.

I did 4 years of face to face lectures, 2 years of distance learning, 3 years of part-time face to face lectures with home study and a year of distance learning with no option to attend face to face lectures. All equally academically demanding. Travel to lectures after a day at work or on a Saturday morning is hard work when the lectures could just as easily be delivered online.

I know some extremely bright students with excellent work ethics who struggle to physically attend lectures due to disabilities including anxiety (longer than a year, anxiety is a disability.)

It also seems very difficult to get any contact with lecturers for advice, feedback, support. Even 'personal tutors' (or whatever they are called these days) seem to be unreachable in many instances. I don't think my son has ever met his having been at uni for 4 years.

My son has said the same. Never had any kind of "personal" interaction with any of his lecturers nor his designated "personal tutor". He says none of them would know him if he passed them in a corridor. He's just another faceless student to them. The only time he sees them "in person" are when they're stood at the lecture theatre podium, they walk in, deliver the lecture and walk out again. Some of his lecturers aren't even in the country and deliver their lectures online from wherever they're living abroad.

All he has ever had with his personal tutor was a CC'd email when he started introducing himself to all the students to whom he was their personal tutor, and telling them to email with any problems. That was it. Nothing else in all 3 years. DS didn't even know if he was still there or whether he'd left. Never came across him again.

When he's tried emailing his lecturers for advice, clarifications, etc., it's hit and miss whether he gets an answer at all, or if he gets an email back, it's usually pretty curt and just usually something like "research it yourself" or "did you bother looking at the lecture notes" or some other unhelpful comment. It certainly doesn't encourage DS to engage directly with the lecturers which is presumably what they want!

The seminars/tutorials etc were delivered by random phd students, never lecturers, and usually they didn't know what they were there for, and just made it up as they went along, no pre-session planning notes, no instructions from the lecturers etc., so they just did what they thought would be helpful.

It's easy to understand why students lose the will to go to lectures when there's no reason to be there, i.e. no chance of talking to the lecturer, and it's all recorded anyway.

There's also a lot less of students knowing eachother in their subject groups. DS said that probably a third of his course mates just watched the lectures online and another third were foreign and didn't mix with UK students, so there wasn't much commaraderie between students, and lectures were just cliques of students or lots of "odd ones" spread around the lecture theatre. I don't think he got friendly with anyone on his course at all. He said when it came to exams, there was probably half the exam hall sitting the same exam who he'd never even seen before, let alone talked to.

I do think Uni is more of a lonely place these days unless you're ultra social or ultra sporty. Covid has had a massive detrimental impact, made worse by the way some Unis went over the top with restrictions that weren't required by law and were virtually shut down even between the lockdowns.

My Oxbridge kid is engaged. My RG uni one is not. She says the lecturers clearly do not want to be there. She goes to all her lectures and seminars but says that morale feels low.

She was unwell before her exams and did not know who her personal tutor was to contact. She contacted the central number who said that she does not have a tutor but just to log it centrally. It has been an extremely disappointing experience.

She is not alone. it is a shame to see such a bright and motivated child so despondent and disappointed. I have noticed a tendency here to blame the students so there is no point saying anything. I have not read the thread yet but no doubt there will be accusations from uni staff saying students expect to be spoonfed. My daughter could not be more opposite to that and has been let down.

OMG @taxguru that sounds dreadful! I'm a uni lecturer / course leader and would be appalled at this level of interaction.
Our personal tutors meet their tutees face to face in induction week, they also send emails early on with a 'how's it going?' message and offer meetings at least once a semester. Students know they can request a meeting any time as well, they don't have to wait for an invite.
If their attendance drops or their assessments aren't going great, or a module tutor notices something might be amiss, again they're contacted and offered support.
We try to get to know our students and they get taught almost exclusively by lecturers rather than PhD students (the PhD students tend to do guest lectures about their research interests).
Some students need lots of support, others don't need any (and that's fine - it's not compulsory!)
I have to admit though, there are a lot of students on my courses and I don't have everyone's names nailed down until third year, but I do know their interests and career aspirations so that I can point them to relevant career opportunities.
I'm at a post 92 university though, not Russell Group, so maybe that makes a difference.

My daughter needed a reference for an internship at the end of her second year. She had to use a kind senior teacher from her sixth form as nobody at her uni knew who she was. And that was definitely not for want of trying on her part. She was just an anonymous number there. My Oxbridge kid had several people they could have asked.

I can relate to most of this with my daughter.

Socially she has been more than fine and has had a blast with new friends. But the lack of any kind of personal contact with tutors to answer queries, discuss issues with etc has been astonishing. Luckily, she is emotionally robust and has got on with it. She has attended everything she needs to and has worked in her own time.

But very disappointing.

I find these comments interesting as my DDs didn’t have these issues. One massive cause for this is uni extension when the cap on numbers was lifted. Quality was definitely diluted on many courses. Oxbridge didn’t lift their cap so they still function as they always did. Hence their extreme popularity.

I would also query why parents snd students put so much store by one or two lecturers they see on open days. We hear that X lecturer was not great so the whole uni is rejected. They could be first class when talking to individual students! It’s also fairly obvious the student might never see that lecturer again judging by the above comments. I’ve no doubt it varies by course and uni and DDs were never taught by PhD students. I think that was down to subject. However it’s worth looking beyond a single lecture or talk on an open day.

The experience in my RG School is closer to what is being cited for the post 92 universities. In particular all permanent staff have annual cohorts of personal tutees. There are periodic scheduled meetings and as with PP the PT is a first port of call for a student with troubles.

But few are recovered from the pandemic, most students prefer online lectures (which are intended for those with disabilities, illness, child care emergencies, etc), and both student and staff morale are still suffering. I am sure we have a few students under the sincere impression that they haven’t got a PT, despite numerous emails about meetings etc

There's also a lot less of students knowing each other in their subject groups.

This is bound to happen if they don't bother turning up. DD had lab practicals so she really got to know her fellow students. She still keeps in touch with some of them two years after graduating.

My son started university in 2019. Covid hit so he had to come home. Year two much the same. He never built friendships as his older siblings did. He's going back in September for another three years and is really excited this time round.. same lecturers, tutors mostly. Three days a week in the studio. Fingers crossed he will have a better experience this time round.

He does agree with recordings because he likes to rewatch the bits he didn't absorb first time round.

That’s a use of recordings everyone I know is fine with, @justasking111 . Best wishes to your DS

He does agree with recordings because he likes to rewatch the bits he didn't absorb first time round.

DD has CFS and often fell asleep during lectures, so being able to watch recorded lectures was essential for her. She still attended them though because it meant that she could leave her accommodation and meet her friends.