DD doesn't have a uni Term 3

[Globules]

Just that really.

She chose modules this year, her first year, that all completed in terms 1 & 2.

She has no lectures and no assignments, nothing, until October 2025.

£9250 academic fees, plus 39 week let fees.

Surely this can't be considered ok?!

My point was more that degrees are no longer 20 hours of lectures and 12 hours of labs each week (which mine and DH’s science degrees were). My degree is now 10 - 14 hours a week for Years 1 and 2 and 6 - 9 hours a week in Year 3.

My youngest has labs in the evening because his class is so large they have to be split into several groups to use the limited lab space.

As I recall, you could only claim housing benefit during the vacations. Not during term time.

Universities are also research institutions; the cost of research should be covered by those who commission it, the cost of archives should be covered by researchers who use is, the cost of admin to help you submit applications should be covered as part of your grant applications. Students should not be subsidising research funding bodies to get their research on the cheap.

And concert halls should cover their own backs.

Research BENEFITS students, as do concert halls (which concert halls pay their own way?)

I've been doing unfunded research in one of my research areas for 5 years now and have a paper out, have advised government policy, taught it to students and supervised research projects on it. I would never have been able to do that if I had no research time, so my students would be getting research projects in areas where I have no clue how to do the research. And be expected to carry it out themselves. I'd rather they did something I've actually practiced.

@ViolasandViolets research benefits students and wider society.
It's not simply being done to benefit an individual researcher.
It's part of what makes a university a university.

@worstofbothworlds You seem very keen to belittle me, not sure why you feel the need to do that when I acknowledged that I don’t have DC at uni and it’s a long time since I was there myself.

I wasn’t discussing concert halls or gyms, and I wasn’t weighing in on the debate about contact hours, or indeed the wider debate about the function of universities.

My comment was specifically about halls. If there is no student activity planned at all and universities know this in advance, how do they justify charging rent? Is it just a tiny percentage of students who are now done for the year? Or is being finished in April a widespread thing?

Universities are also research institutions; the cost of research should be covered by those who commission it, the cost of archives should be covered by researchers who use is, the cost of admin to help you submit applications should be covered as part of your grant applications. Students should not be subsidising research funding bodies to get their research on the cheap.

This is a short sighted and frankly, ignorant, view of universities. Universities do more than teach undergraduates. Universities are not school.

And actually, academics subsidise students - we work way over our paid hours. Most academics do on average a 50 hour week - when I was an HoD, I was doing 60 hour weeks, and that was with a funded research project.

I still find it difficult to take all my annual leave. UK undergrads are hugely subsidised: by unpaid staff overtime and by international students.

These are interesting points @SabrinaThwaite

Interestingly HEPI published a report on contact hours

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2019/02/04/getting-intense-about-teaching-intensity/

Its key findings were

Despite the widely held belief that contact hours are low we found that since 1963 average contact hours have not changed very much,

but also - fully chiming with your observations

while class size has increased very substantially.

and

We also found large variation in how much teaching students receive both between and within subjects

but

The pilot study confirms our finding that there is a large variation in how much teaching students receive. However, when the Office for Students published the key results of the pilot study they concluded that teaching intensity imposes a ‘significant burden’ and was ‘not found to add value’. This conclusion is supported by almost no explanation or evidence.

Whether there has been a radical change since that report in 2019 (Covid years excluded) would be interesting to see.

Although the HEPI do publish this each year - next one due fairly soon - which covers a wider experience picture

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/06/13/student-academic-experience-survey-2024/

What is a “class” defined as?

@IBloodyLoveMyBlanket

My comment was specifically about halls. If there is no student activity planned at all and universities know this in advance, how do they justify charging rent? Is it just a tiny percentage of students who are now done for the year? Or is being finished in April a widespread thing?

If the Uni isn't able to let the rooms to others while they are empty, they will still need to make the same amount from the room. In other words the cost would go up for the remainder of the year if it lay empty for several months.

A cohort
Year group

Not sure what is so ambiguous about the word "class"

No? It could easily be the number of people being taught in a room at one time.

If they mean cohort, then why not say cohort?

Indeed, but I knew what the poster meant.

You're making ridiculous statements about campuses. Sure, we could charge 1/10th of the year's rent per month from Sept to June, or we could charge 1/12 per calendar month. It would make zero difference to the students who go home, but wouldn't help the ones who have nowhere else to go, or who have a job local to the uni, or the students doing an MSc or an MA where teaching is year round.
Likewise, we could shut everything else down, but then we wouldn't be a university, and we wouldn't attract any students or do any research.

My dil’s the same. She’s in her second year and finished for the year a couple of weeks ago. I just can’t see how’s she’s getting value for money.

I just can’t see how’s she’s getting value for money.

So do you want her work to be marked, and her results for the year overall to be calculated, checked, and approved?

Academics & professional services staff aren't all on holiday in the summer term ... It's actually one of the busiest times for us.

I was referring to the linked blog.

You can deduce what is meant by ‘class size’ in the blog when it highlights statements like average class sizes in universities have doubled in the last 20 years. This has led to ever larger lecture classes and the disappearance of small group tutorials in many universities.

I just looked back at my class graduation list - 16 of us graduated (we lost quite a few along the way - probably started with around 30, with a few of those swapping to other courses in the first weeks). What you might think of as popular degrees such as chemistry or maths had about 30 students graduating.

Those kind of numbers just wouldn’t be economic these days.

Perhaps try clicking on the link to the HEPI. Higher Education Policy Institute, report.

Their word, not mine.

It's wild for the money, i always finished quite early at uni in comparison to some but it wasn't such a rip off when fees were hardly anything. Sadly I think degrees now are very much to just get the qualification rather than the actual learning part and experience.

It is ridiculous - my children are both finished with lectures for the year and are at different uni’s. I wouldn’t mind as much if I wasn’t still paying for accommodation!

Perhaps I did and that is what prompted my question.

My post of 14:59 should have made that obvious.

Back in the Late Jurassic when I went to university we had the old Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity terms. Trinity was basically for exams, finishing up in the first half of June.

Some universities do two semesters now. Some combine terms with modules, which is a hybrid arrangement.

Students are responsible for their own education and intellectual development in university. It's not like school.

The semesters are appearing shorter at my uni because there are fewer exams. These were removed for Covid and many have chosen to not bring them back. Students used to finish for Easter and then have exams spread through May. Now it’s far more likely that they have 100% coursework that is generally due in mid-late April. The amount of teaching hasn’t changed—just the assessment.