University issues

[LadyWhistledownAteMyHamster]

My son finished yr 2 at uni on a demanding STEM course this June, and then discovered he had failed two ‘must pass’ modules. He was allowed to resit them over summer, and had the most miserable summer ever, cramming in his room every day over the heatwave. He found out yesterday he still failed both, with zero improvement in his grades. His uni have now said he can’t progress to yr 3 without them, so must resit them again this year, on a non attendance basis.

my son is struggling to understand what this means- there’s no maintenance loan (no tuition fees either), but he’s locked in to a years accommodation. There’s no academic support which means he’s going to have to self study, which I worry about because that approach has not worked over the summer and so is likely to not work this time unless he really changes something.

He says he’s not sure where it went wrong but doesn’t seem willing to ask questions / ask advice to find out.

I’ve had conversations with him to see if he wants to continue or try to find an alternative course somewhere else that he might be more comfortable in but he says he wants to carry on with this one. Whilst I want to be supportive of his choices I don’t feel confident that he’s grasped the implications or that it’s necessarily the right course for him.

I don’t know know how we will pay for his accommodation- I’ve suggested he seeks a tenancy takeover but he’s not willing to give up his room and says he intends to stay there this year- I’m not even sure that he can do that, does he still count as a student? (It’s private rented house for students).

I feel totally out of my depth, worried sick about him and the finances. I feel like he’s shut down emotionally- he doesn’t seem bothered / upset / anything at all, and it doesn’t seem like a surprise to him either.

I don’t even know why I’m posting other than to see if others have been there or if there is any advice / hand holding.

I worry about his state of mind and whether there is anything I should have done differently.

Ok my solution would be:
He goes to his accommodation and gets a job to pay for it. He is going to be no worse of financially as no tuition and no loan.
He then studies to pass these two must pass modules.
He needs to speak to his lecturers to get help and advice.
Good luck

As the only non-student in a student house, he’ll be responsible for paying 75% of the council tax. If they’re all students, the house is exempt. So they’d all have to lie on the form, which may be a barrier.

Obviously if he wants to do that and pay his rent, he’ll have to get a job - which means he won’t do much better at the self-study. He needs to confront this, sounds like he’s sticking his head in the sand. If it’s too much to speak to his tutor, he MUST talk to student support at the SU.

That sounds tough. You must both be feeling crappy about it. There should be support and guidance on offer from the uni (academic and mental health) but he would need to actively engage with it. It won’t fall out of the sky.

I wonder if he was really revising/working while locked in his stuffy room, or getting distracted by other things? Both of mine say they can’t work effectively in their bedrooms and that they need to be in a library or similar study space (they use the local uni libraries when they’re at home). I’m not criticising; I could barely write my own name most of this summer. The heat made it so difficult to concentrate.

If you contact Mumsnet (report your own post) and ask them to move this to Higher Education, you’ll hopefully get some input from other parents who’ve been through something similar.

My dc didn’t sit her finals due to covid and was offered a resit next year on a non attendance basis.

she negotiated access to the library and some of the online resources - recorded lectures etc.

officially she wasn’t a student.

she lived at home with me (and counted towards council tax).

He won’t need to pay tuition fees but what is he going to live on?

You can't lie on the form. I worked in Council Tax - they verify the forms with the uni these days. Those who lie get a backdated bill. If he lies the whole 75% will be in his sole name as the others are exempt.

So sorry to hear this OP. I’m an academic in a RG university. If your son really did bust a gut studying all summer, didn’t improve his grades, doesn’t know why and these are core subjects then I don’t think this is the subject for him. If he’s been distracted/coasted/knows he doesn’t understand some of the topics but would if he worked that’s a different problem to solve.

Thank you. Yes it’s awful. I’m not convinced he was revising as hard as he said, I feel like he shut down over the summer and I have been genuinely worried about his mental health. He can’t / won’t discuss and seems totally devoid of any form of emotion. It’s hard to discuss, conversations just end up feeling like I’m firing questions at him in an attempt to find out anything, which can’t be nice for him and makes me feel wretched. Thank you for your suggestion re reporting it, I have done that.

This is what is worrying me. He is adamant that he wants to stay there but doesn’t recognise the consequences of it, and we just can’t afford to pay for the accommodation, let alone additional
council tax fees. It’s just an absolute mess.

Went through similar with my son, also on a STEM degree.

We found support and advice from the uni was very poor. Unis are so cash-strapped (in Scotland) that he didn't even get a reply to his email to his course leader.

What did help - and what I would urge him to do TODAY - was contact his student union. The union will have an Academic Officer, or a support officer or similar title and it is this person's job to advise people in your son's position. They will have seen it all before and should be able lay out the implications of various paths on finance, accommodation and so on. More importantly, they are there to support the student and fight their corner, not represent the university.

It’s so hard to get young men to engage with mental health support, or even to think about whether it’s necessary.

Can you maybe write him an email? He might find that less overwhelming than face to face conversations. Something like a) I’m worried that you seem like you’re shutting down a bit, here’s the GP’s number/number for student mental health support, I would really like you to make an appointment; and b) please understand that there is absolutely no way we can pay your rent. We would if we could, but we just don’t have the money. So if you keep this room, you will need to pay £xxx (amount plus council tax) every month, which means you need to be earning around £xxxx. If you’re going to go back you need to be looking for those jobs now. We love you and support you, let’s make a plan.

What a dreadful situation. I agree with the poster who recommended the student union. When I was working in my student union we had a legal advisor who was actually a professor of Law who was very helpful in any situation with the university.
I would say as well that not many students can self study at all. When I was working on my dissertation for my masters I had to work in two libraries in the University of London, UCL and LSE . I saw at first hand the final year students " working". They texted and watched you tube videos when they werent actually chatting to each other. I was the only one working.
I was tempted to make a speech to one room full as I left one day about the difference between being in a library and working in a library. I didnt as I knew how I would have reacted. So I do suspect your son may not have worked much at all this summer.

Hi, OP -

Another academic here. This is really tough.

Young men do find it hard to open up. Because you love DS so much the fact that he’s shutting you out is difficult, but ultimately the goal is for him to get help somewhere in making good decisions.

Does he have a Personal Tutor or Academic Adviser? If he says no, it might be a good idea to confirm this with an online search. It’s true that some universities are moving away from this model, which I think a loss for students. Also, however, mistakenly thinking your School provides no academic in this role is a hallmark of a disengaged student.

If you tell us the uni, I can search.

This person, if they exist, is formally unavailable to DS during his ‘year out’. However unless they are on Leave (and DS’ year group has been temporarily reassigned without him) they are usually willing to email occasionally if students in DS’ position have questions or need moral support. At least everyone I know does this. That connection can be meaningful. Only DS can initiate it.

I agree that the SU is a great idea.

I also think that it’s very difficult for undergraduates to revise intensively all alone. It’s hard enough for anyone to self study, let alone a YP already feeling discouraged. In a brutal heat wave.

If DS knows he didn’t revise properly, that’s good news. He can come to the material making his first proper effort. If he really has given the material two good faith efforts, he probably should talk with someone open minded about his best options. He doesn’t want anyone to take an overly negative view if something he can fix went wrong ( and that includes the possibility of a health problem), but he doesn’t want to bang his head on a brick wall either.

Can he attend lectures for these course modules, or access them online? I think that would be worth paying for, if possible. Exams can change from year to year but will follow the new presentation.

Could he consider subletting his accommodation? Usually there are some last minute needs.

Best wishes to him.

You wouldn’t pay though. He’d need a full time job and work for that module on top of that job. I knew a few people when I was a student who did this. He would need to pay his rent and the council tax.

Good advice.

Can he switch his degree or modules at all? Has he engaged with the uni to look at all his options? Can you give any more details about what type of degree it is?

I'm also an RG academic. He needs to speak to the module convenor to understand why he failed. He will have had feedback on the papers too, has he checked this? If he says there is no feedback then he hasn't bothered checking because feedback is the one area that pulls us up the NSS so we have to give good feedback for every assignment, even exams.

I would also question whether he was busting a gut or just zoning out all summer.

Jesus, do you people think RG academics do things differently? God it pisses me off as a non branded academic at a wonderfuluni. In any case, if the issue is being an RG student, then what shitty student advisors and personal tutee systems you all have if someone can be rusticated with no advising. I'd suggest he switch to a decent uni with proper academic tutorial system.

I have also been at non-rg institutions. We did things the same way. I don't think this is about the uni, it's about him needing to step up and ask for the support that is very likely available.

I would be looking at any options to switching to a less demanding course at the same uni or in the same uni town (if there are other unis there).

You said he's in private student accommodation - do you mean private halls (eg Unite) or a shared house? If it's a shared house he's not locked into a year's accommodation and can give 2 months' notice at any time. Obviously this might be inconvenient for his housemates, but it's absolutely an option if you/he can't afford the rent.

Thank you this is really helpful. I've asked him to reach out to the union. Unfortunately we are finding that because the uni doesn't restart until the end of September, he's not having much joy speaking to anyone, so is sending lots of emails instead. We're going to keep trying.

Thank you, I really appreciate your response. He does have an academic advisor and yesterday evening we wrote an email together with lots of questions about the implications of this. His uni doesn't go back until the end of September though so I imagine tutors etc are not logging on as frequently as usual and therefore i suspect it will take a while to get a response. It's quite reassuring to hear that there may be some informal support there, fingers crossed.

I've asked him to contact the union, which he has done, but again i think with it being out of term time, it might take a little time for a response.

I agree about the revision, it is hard, particularly as I don't think he really understood the topics he was revising. I just feel awful that he's shut himself away and not reached out for help or advise from anyone (not just his family but also the support that could have been available at uni when he was really struggling). He's always had a tendency to bottle things up like this and that's something for us to work on at home although at this stage i'm not sure how to tackle it properly. One thing at a time i guess.

We'll ask about accessing course lecture materials, at the moment I think it's a no, which i feel is a bit brutal - if someone has already struggled it's hard to pick up from that without resources to help recover from it.

We're going to unpick the accommodation issue - I think he can give 2 months notice but I'm not sure where that would leave his other flatmates so we need to investigate that, I don't want to leave others in the lurch either if we can avoid that. I've now got a list of tasks, in part thanks to this thread, broken down into academic actions, accommodation actions, financial & uni admin actions, and health and wellbeing actions.

Above all, I know this isn't the end of the world, and we'll do our best to help him get through it. It just doesn't feel good right now.

it's a shared house, and this is such a helpful post - we're going to look into the notice period and implications for the rest of his housemates. I don't want to mess them about either in all this. thank you.

His uni doesn't go back until the end of September though so I imagine tutors etc are not logging on as frequently as usual and therefore i suspect it will take a while to get a response. It's quite reassuring to hear that there may be some informal support there, fingers crossed.

Teaching might not start until the end of September but most staff will be working to prepare for the new term. I would chase this quite quickly if he doesn't get a response in a day or two.
I would also prioritise getting support from the SU - again they should be working.

Agree. I'm at work (slightly procrastinating on writing a book) as are all my colleagues. Best to get an email in now and chase it before the deluge of emails from the new starters and returning cohorts.