Son not allowed to continue to second year at uni

[PocketSand]

DS2 has just completed his first year in an engineering degree. His results are all over the place from 1st in maths to 2:2 to required resits. He exceeded the A level grade requirements for MEng. He is autistic and has ADHD. He was un medicated prior to and during most of his first year due to shortages followed by referral to cardiology.

His DSA support didn't start til the spring term and one support worker provided 1 hour support when 30 hours was approved. He constantly tells the one he has seen that everything is fine and they believe him.

He always says everything is fine and doesn't ask for help. He has never been to the library and relies totally on lecture notes. He doesn't know what independent study is. I have always been his advocate but now he is expected to advocate for himself. No one at the uni knows these issues - he has not even contacted his personal tutor let alone disability services and just thinks he needs to work harder.

He found out today that he has failed his third submission of a lab report he initially submitted in February. He did not have DSA agreed support at that time so he didn’t have his own laptop. He borrowed another student’s at the time but when he had to resubmit no longer had access to his results and so he tried to cobble together a report using specimen (and maybe someone else’s results - not clear). He had previously received an email saying he couldn’t proceed unless he passed resubmission. I assume that’s where we are at now.

His feedback is harsh - shouldn’t study for a degree if not prepared to use feedback to improve his work. Trouble is he often doesn’t understand the feedback and he is unwilling to ask for clarification as he fears tutor’s anger. He says he doesn’t know who marked the work so doesn’t know who to talk to and seems generally clueless about most administrative issues.

I feel completely in the dark and don’t know where to go from here. Obviously I don’t want to just give up and accept his journey ends here as it seems very unfair but don’t know what I can do to try and enable him to fix this or if it can be fixed.

Can anyone who knows the system provide advice on next steps please?

@TheLivelyViper good to know.

@Sweetpeasaremadeforbees I was well aware that DSA support would not come close to replicating the support I had provided previously but it was time to see if DS2 was able to independently use the general skills he has been taught over the last decade and survive with just DSA support. It is clear he needs more support to access support and needs to relearn study skills he thought he didn’t need. I think it is partly a maths issue as DS2 didn’t need to study independently and could succeed just by doing multiple past papers to revise.

Gap years never mind a couple of years are not a good idea as maths skills are lost if not practised.

With 1st in Maths he passed 1st year, but only just. Not a good enough mark for MEng route. Tutors assured me wrongly that as long as he could do the maths he would be ok. We discussed changing course but he refused as he didn't see the problem. It would have been better in the long run if he had failed that year.

Could this help.

Reading lists aren’t quite the same in engineering to humanities. They are more textbooks for dipping in and out off.

@FastForward2 where is he at now? My main concern for DS2 is his future. I really don’t care about anything else.

DS1 is academically capable but practically housebound due to overwhelming social anxiety related to autism and I am his full time carer. His only accessible outlet is a secure dog field (we have a dog) where zero social contact is guaranteed (for the well-being of the dog).

All else paled into insignificance a long time ago. My lost potential career, earning capacity, pension accrual etc were grieved 15 years ago.

Now I realise my own mortality and want to give my sons the skills to survive when I’m dead. I don’t think this is the major concern for most parents of NT DC of 60 unless they have a life limiting illnesss. But it keeps me awake at night.

I’m willing to contact my GP if this is unusual and I am overwhelmed /depressed but just assumed this is par for the course.

@JamesWebbSpaceTelescope thanks for the link. DS thinks my experience in doing a degree in humanities is irrelevant so this might help.

I am sorry that he’s reacting as I suspected.

I share your fears with one of mine. I’m a couple of years younger than you and I don’t know how they’re going to manage when I am not here.

If I was you, I would

find out what the picture of his first year looks like. Primarily, has he failed or not.

once you know that, then I’d look at scaffolding that will be required for next year.

this would be a good time to go to the library - it will be quieter. He should be able to book support with the subject librarian and if he can’t manage to go to campus, most stuff is online nowadays and they should offer zoom or teams.

The librarian can show him how to access his reading lists and if he has a module handbook or similar (it might be called something else) that sets out the teaching week by week. That will usually tell him (you!) what work needs to be done for the following weeks labs (? - I don’t know I’m a social scientist!) and seminars. And then you can help him with that.

the reading lists are key. There will be core texts that he will be given chapters or pages to read and he really does need to do that core reading as a minimum.

@Tippertapperfeet it’s actually DS1 rather than DS2 I was referring to. Psychologically DS2 is unperturbed, carrying on as normal. He got an out of office til Monday reply to his email so immediately put it out of his mind.

He was not forthcoming at the sessions about what support he needed and the tutor just accepted his word for it that all was fine.

This is part of the problem. You cannot expect an academic tutor to assume your DA is tantamount to lying about his needs!

As a tutor I start from a position of “accepting my student’s word.” Why wouldn’t I? Mutual trust is fundamental to a teaching relationship.

Your DS’s issues are not to do with the quality of the academic teaching. He needs counselling and guidance about his approach to his studies. This is nothing to do with ex-poly or RG. It’s to do with him being guided, gently but firmly, to change some of his fixed ideas - which are self-sabotaging.

It’s clear you know this @PocketSand and it must be very frustrating. I’m not sure that his university can fix this - they can support him, but his attitudes need to change first. It strikes me that this change could be instigated outside of the university framework.

@PocketSand My son is long-term unemployed.

I really think from your last email that you perhaps need to work on your son's social anxiety before worrying about the degree, if you are looking at life skills he will need. Battling away on this course could make his anxiety worse rather then better, and there are alternatives.

An engineering degree is unlike other subjects, because the engineering councils dictate the course content, and at the moment academic ability seems to be secondary to management skills. From talking to son's lecturers, it seems the councils want people who have excellent management skills, so at uni it is assumed they will be able to manage nearly full-time lecture timetable, plus self-study, carry out and write up complex regular lab assigments on time, including assignments working in teams. I think the engineering councils aim to produce industry leaders and project managers rather than deep thinking analysts. (I do think, btw, this is wrong, because they are losing the talents and technical skills of people like your son along the way, and I believe as a country we need more deep-thinking analysts who might have realised, for example, that projects like HS2 were a bad idea.)

Had I known all this sooner we could have chosen a more achievable subject, capitalising on skills he has rather than trying to compensate for those he does not have.

This is why my original advice stands, don't let him go back to uni, in particular to an engineering degree. I am slightly cross they let people resit, as they did in 2nd year for my son, because it's not helping them in the long run. Remember universities are businesses and want your 9k tuition fee money, so they make a bit more money if he stays an extra year. I believe they take in way too many engineering students just to get their fees. In the past departments were smaller and students could more easily access tutors, face to face, not online, and funding did not come from tuition fees.

There are alternative routes to battling through this really hard degree:

Try a degree with less demanding workload and get a higher grade, you will be more likley to get a job, and one you will enjoy, as it will be in an area you have proven ability.

Have a look at 'data science' degrees and job opportunities, its the latest thing and I think may be of interest.

Try a free bootcamp in cyber, software.or similar.

Phone Lotus, or any employer, and ask if they have degree apprenticeships, or if a good maths or science graduate can get a job there.

Try taking a year out of education altogether to travel, enjoy a hobby, join clubs or volunteer, or do some maths coaching, to help get over the social anxiety. Employers really value work (and other) experience, often more than paper qualifications. Go back to uni when you have had a rest. With some maturity and experience there is a chance the life and management skills will improve, and he will cope better at uni as a mature student.

Of course I do not know your son, given a second chance he may actually be capable of managing his time brilliantly and understanding what is needed, but you you might not find out until too late, and ultimately this is the dilemma.

@PocketSand your son is at home so in a different situation from us, and is
a different person, so please dont assume his outcome will be the same as my son, but be aware of the enormity of the task you will both be taking on, and that there is absolutely no guarantee of a job at the end, but hope the job market will eventually improve. Keep supporting him, that is all you can do. Try taking him out to help you with shopping where there are other people around, and gradually used to doing more things where he has to interact with people. He needs help with this as well as the degree.

@FastForward2 there are 2 sons with very different needs. The uni ones isn’t the one with anxiety.

@ParmaVioletTea I’m not taking about academic teaching g. He has never had a 1:1 session with an academic tutor. He has had one meeting with one of his lecteurs to discuss progress for which I coached him and he disclosed his disabilities and late implementation of support. The lecturer was very understanding and is the same person dealing with the issue of the failed lab report.

i I would expect DSA staff to be more proactive in finding out what support the students need rather than passively waiting for the students they support to take the lead. He had a 1:1 academic mentor at 6th and she would explicitly teach study methods, set him tasks to structure activity outside the classroom et In the first year he didn’t know what he should be doing and got a D in physics. In the second year he got A star. Part of the problem is that all the practical stuff is delivered to the whole class at the start and then never repeated. This doesn’t work for DS2.

Normally DSA can recommend to the university they give him an academic tutor but it's not something they can 'buy' for you per se. During the DSA Needs Assessment, at the end they ask you if you want to consent to it being sent to the univeristy (normally in advance of you starting) so they know what support they are recommending your uni disability service implement (academic mentor 1-1, mental health services etc) and then the student doesn't have to chase all of it themselves. If he said no to this, then it would have been on him to alert uni on the fact thr should give him academic mentor and other things (obviously were past that point, but that's how it works).

If he goes back next year, before eh starts you can do a needs assesment (not actually called that just a meeting) - with a uni disability advisor they can go through everything the uni can offer including telling all lecture staff (as they change about him in advance) - it's essentially with someone from the disability staff, likely called a Disability Advisor (I'm sure you could join this as well, virtually or in-person). Then then can create after it a Leanring Support Plan (share it with all staff, who come in contact with him, including personal tutor and lecutre staff as they change). They will send him the copy of the LSP before they approve it asking if the wants anything changed etc ( so check for those emails). They will also explain all staff to him and their roles, ask library staff to do an induction, allow him extra time and other exam arrangements of his own room etc, being able to record lectures, later submission without needing to get medical evidence directly (unlike other students who if they had a sudden medical issue would have to get it immediately to DLOs), also sometimes they can take books out of the library for longer and much more. DLOs - Disability Liason Officers tend to work in departments (so there's a few for engineering, some for biology etc, they tend to be lecturing staff and they are responsible for when you need to do the extenuating circumstances paperwork if you're disability flares up etc).

DSA does a needs assessment once a student has applied. This is to find what needs and support a student needs. Once that's done then the report will be sent to the student with a choice of providers - often this will be the uni and then a private company for the support but it dependant on cost. If your son didn't highlight issues it wouldn't have been taken into account as they wouldn't know . Once the reports back the support is put in very quickly

Bit strange that when it was known support would be needed, needs were hidden.
If you cannot study independently, you will not be successful at uni. Time for a rethink

This I’m afraid.

you seem to think the university staff should have pushed past the “I’m fine” and that’s simply not how it works.

your son is now an adult and that does change things. He didn’t even let you be nominated as a support so they had no idea there was an issue at all.

you can’t blame the uni for this.

It isn’t the same as school.

@TheLivelyViper thanks for the detailed advice. DS2 definately didn't contact Disability Support at the uni and just tried to get by with support following his DSA assessment so there is much that can be done differently next year.

@Tippertapperfeet as I have already pointed out to Parma, I was not referring to uni staff but to the DSA 1:1 tutors.

Yes I'm aware, so you need go do that and check with DSA as well to give consent to them to share with uni - especially if he said no. He may have given everything you've said on rejecting help. Or find the report and send it uni disability services yourself. Also check to see if the DSA Needs Report mentioned anything on 1-1 academic mentoring if not ask the Disabiltiy Advisor for it anyways, giving everything that's happened, I'm sure they'll provide it.

I know you haven't mentioned the speicifc uni but search up X uni Disability Sevices most unis have a page with links for how to registers, detailing all the support and processes, key emails of staff, and forms to do etc. Just a page signposting you to everything which will likely be helpful to make sure everything is done differently this time round. He needs to have a meeting with one of the universities' Disabilities Advisors first to make a new LSP - if there's a website page with all the details, I'd look on there first to email them and ask as normally this is done before they join Y1 or at the very start and typically you don't have other ones, the students just communicate with their designated disability advisor and support chanegs as needed. You should join his meeting/assesment with his Disability Advisor I don't think he'd go into depth on his issues. If the support is right he'll likely thrice.

But if he told them he was fine, and he’s legally an adult and they didn’t know any different, what do you expect them to do?

You seem to be expecting a level of scaffolding and assistance that is more appropriate for school and I’m very sorry but that is never going to happen.

DSA can buy support. Not all DSA support, including not all specialist study skills sessions, are provided by the HEI. Some is provided by outside providers funded via DSA.

A disability specialist, which is who should be delivering the study skills sessions, should be aware OK doesn’t always mean OK. These would be completely separate people to academic university staff.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an academic tutor or lecturer or a DSA tutor.

He is an adult. He was awarded a certain amount of support hours.

He told them he was fine he didn’t need it.

They will engage a certain number of times (we reach out x3) but if he says no there’s nothing that can be done.

A studies support tutor from DSA won’t necessarily be subject specific so they won’t be able to go over the stuff that’s done once at the start of a lecture. If your son needs help with this he needs to reach out to his lecturer and ask them to go over it again for him. Or ask in a seminar session or in a one to one session with his personal tutor.

Yes I agree with this, he needs to go to office hours, and have sessions with his personal tutor (should be subject specific) - he needs to slowly learn to be honest with them about where he's struggling. Talk to his lectures, his Disability Advisor regularly, his DLO. For most of these he needs to reach out first and then they will offer more support.

I have explained multiple times he has NEVER told the DSA tutors he doesn’t need support. But when asked how things are going he says fine. They have access to his paperwork and he has told them that he has not got the grades he expected etc so they know that everything is not fine. contrary to refusing support he has had to chase them.

He gave permission to share with disability support at the uni after his DSA assessment. No one from the uni disability department or the engineering dept has ever reached out to him. The one time I coached him to send an email to his advisor he didn’t even receive a reply.

We all know he needs to do things differently and he has accepted this. But he still needs support to learn how to do things differently.