My son wants to go to open days alone/with friends

[Mathsmother]

My son in year 12 wants to go to uni open days alone and not with me or my husband. He may go with friends to a couple where they also interested in applying.

We are totally fine about it and rather admire his initiative but when I posted such on Facebook I was told that most students take parents along with them to open days and I really should go. I just wondered why? Surely it is the student’s choice not the parent’s and it is much cheaper for one train ticket (on a young person’s railcard) than two or three tix? The only downside I can see of my son travelling alone at age 17 is that he won’t be able to book a hotel room for the one far-flung uni he had on his list (Edinburgh). Thoughts and experiences welcome xx

@crumblingschools Many unis have huge debts. It’s difficult to know what will happen. When is a uni bankrupt? When should it stop recruiting? It’s an over expanded sector. I think it’s estimated fees need to be around £12,000 and science students get their courses “on the cheap”. The true cost is much higher. I’d like to see some unis revert to HE colleges with a broader range of courses available to DC who would be better off doing work based courses.

These are interesting questions, @TizerorFizz . You, @crumblingschools and others are correct that the HE sector is not on a sustainable pathway.

I also think that HE is oversubscribed but a key problem is that in this rigidly class based society a degree has come to be seen - rightly or sometimes wrongly - as a way into the middle class. A visceral reaction to any mention of contracting the sector is that the MC is trying to close a main pathway to membership.

If British society were less rigidly class orientated - if people were judged more by the content of their character than the age of their money - I think the HE problem might be easier to solve.

Anyone who needs an example of what I mean need only look on the AIBU board for a thread from, I think, yesterday, about the elevated sensibilities of people who attended private school as opposed to, you know, new money.

Perhaps this is a good place to say I’m well aware that not everyone lucky enough to be comfortable (including my family) and British (I am not) is a raging snob or worse!

@TizerorFizz I HAVE been to Open Days and said so , literally over the last couple of weeks and more to come . That is why I disagree, along with other posters who have also attended, with your picture of multigenerational pushy parents/families hogging the Open Days.

Sure, there were some family groups, but they weren't taking up space or air time to the exclusion of others. Perfectly civilised.

Sorry the reality does not support your narrative however hard you insist. Anecdote is not data.

Do any unis do that sort of thing? We've got a local FE college specialising in 'land based' courses which does a superb one which is a great family day out.

Your experience of attending a few university open days is just anecdote too 🤷🏻‍♀️

Fair enough, but unlike @TizerorFizz I am not insisting that parents have to change their behaviour based on my anecdote. She is free to leave her children to attend Open Days but she is not justified in dictating to me what I should be doing with my children.

Thus she is held to a higher standard. I am saying her statements are sweeping, unbelievable in any cases and does not support her stance.

Absolutely. Bloody. Ridiculous.
Why do kid think they are in charge? And why would you even consider it?

he’s selected his peers over his parents and has a stronger bond with them

Actually, @blueshoes I daresay most admissions tutors, and I certainly include myself, have more experience of the parent-dominated question time that @TizerorFizz mentions than we would like. I am lucky lucky that my subject itself does not give much scope for the show off type of question, but there is still ample opportunity on other topics. @PerpetualOptimist discussed upthread how parent participation skews the content of Open Day talks and she made some excellent points.

@TizerorFizz generally advocates for YP to become self reliant. One may disagree. However as MH problems soar amongst university students and even good students require more and more structure I am finding this rather appealing. I don’t see anything untoward in her posts

Throughout much of STEM, certainly, York is a recruiting university. Just to clarify

I have suggested useful ways in which parents can help. There are problems with some parents and some unis have reacted to the issues they faced. That’s fair enough. Its easy enough to help dc but not clog up countless open days.

I’m firmly in the camp of changing HE to be more work focussed. Im sure getting a good grounding via work and training is worthwhile. We know many degrees don’t give an earnings premium. Dc don’t get grad level jobs. The country needs to enable DC to do something within HE but allied to work. 18 year olds find it tough getting apprenticeships so we need to up those opportunities for many more dc. Not all dc get an earnings premium with a degree so why can we not help these dc get a better job with a qualification as they go along. I quite enjoyed the slow route!

Sorry, @TizerorFizz I know you have suggested ways parents can help!

Definitely the expectation round here

Are you going to be paying for any of this? If you are you have a right to check out with your son will be experiencing. It's his choice but the choice should be made with parental input.

@poetryandwine are you insisting that parents do not attend Open Days?

If yes, this is where I would disagree firmly. It is the tail wagging the dog for uni staff to get to dictate the level of parental input where the majority is not pernicious but supportive.

Not sure why you are raising mental health issues. Is there evidence that parental support is causing it?

I went on my own 50 years ago! My son went on his own. It was fine.

Talking a few years ago now but I went on my own or with friends, mostly by train, so did everyone I knew. Could be that inbetween step to independence? You get chatting to others, get the feel of being there by yourself more. Xx

Not at all, @blueshoes although I think we did well to limit each YP at our subject talk to one guest. (This is for utilitarian purposes only but I am unaware there’s ever been less than a full house)

No one knows what is causing the MH crisis amongst students. But they are certainly less mature than previously and require more guidance.

So there is a correlation between their maturity levels and their MH. Causation? Hard to say. A clear mismatch between longstanding university norms and current student expectations seems to be a key issue. How did those expectations arise?

@blueshoes You are seeing yourself as the customer though. Not the person facilitating dc to make a sensible choice. There’s quite a big difference. You can certainly be a facilitator without being there at every talk. Be a sounding board. Be supportive. Look at the course structure on line. Go and look at the city. There’s lots that parents can do.

My DHs parents had to pay partially for DH’s expenses at uni. It wasn’t free in the days of Grants and Awards. People then let dc do virtually all the legwork and thought dc were up to it! We wanted our DC to have us for guidance when needed but we never saw ourselves as the customers. They took out the loans and did the degrees.

There can certainly be parental pressure when parents have pushed for a course and a uni. Plenty do! I will be honest and say I was devastated when DD missed a grade and didn’t go to Oxford. I could not believe it. However, she took a change of direction in her stride and everything was fine. We supported her. I am actually now glad she didn’t go. It’s made no difference to anything. She has the career she wanted. She’s happy. What else matters?

@blueshoesYou are seeing yourself as the customer though. Not the person facilitating dc to make a sensible choice. There’s quite a big difference. You can certainly be a facilitator without being there at every talk. Be a sounding board. Be supportive. Look at the course structure on line. Go and look at the city. There’s lots that parents can do.

@TizerorFizz I am not seeing myself as a customer. That is a non-sequitur and an assumption on your part.

I see myself as a parent. I do all of the above with my ds - really don't need to be told how to 'facilitate' but thanks for spelling it out - AND want to be able to attend Open Days with my teen. I actually don't have any questions on site because we have done the research. But I want to look into the whites of the eyes of these lecturers and get a feel for the university because my old and cynical eyes can pick up more things and see through the sales pitch than ds.

I am perfectly fine with one guest per student. Dh and I don't have the time to do all of them with ds anyway and will be letting ds attend the insurance choices on his own. Just sensible and balanced stuff.

If a university becomes insolvent it would be illegal for them to continue to trade. So not only would they not recruit, they would also stop teaching students they already have, stop any research projects and lay off staff. The administrator might keep some on to wind up the university or in order to try and maintain the value of any assets to sell on. But basically the current students would be desperately trying to find other universities to pick them up.

It is very unlikely to come to that though. Much more likely would be significant contraction and closure of less viable departments - like languages. This might still impact current students as staff leave before their course is complete.

In terms of MH; universities do not have a duty of care towards students (this has been established in court). So if a child does have MH issues then it is incumbent on the parents to ensure their child’s health and that supports are in place. Those parents definitely do need to attend open days with their child.

The one open day I went to many years ago, a few of us from school all went up together, no parents involved. Appreciate it’s a different time these days and I think I’d like to go along with my children

Hopefully if a particular university is facing imminent closure it will try to form some kind of consortium with other universities to maintain teaching for as many students as possible. Staff would probably be completely boned, of course.

Our son has just finished his first year.
we did go to all the open days with him, but equally would have been happy with him going on his own.
i would suggest that maybe when he’s made his final choices that you go and visit those with him, he could show you around and say why he likes it and you could cast another pair of eyes.
To be honest though, we visited 5 and when my son, my husband and myself ranked them we had them all pretty much in the same order. We all put the same as first choice and that’s where he ended up.
If they are serious they know what they’re looking for and in my experience make informed choices.

I am never a fan of making snap judgments about human beings, and that includes admissions tutors in a situation some will find inherently stressful.

However it is useful to know whether you are being spoken to by a member of a selecting team or a recruiting team. Only the latter have any reason to exaggerate or make half promises.

You can find this by going to the Complete University Guide or doing an FOI and comparing the standard offer for previous years to the grades of incoming students. Of course some will be admitted with contextual offers, but you can still get a sense of what’s going on.

If there is no standard offer, only a ‘typical offer’, that’s often but not always a bit of sloppy talk from a strongly recruiting unit trying to figure out what they need to do to snag a particular student. Not good policy