UKC

Just want a discussion to help get my head around stuff:

As someone on the other thread pointed out, there appears to be a direct correlation to student areas and covid (see chart). I also just read that about 40% of 20 to 30 year old infection is occurring in pubs. I reckon the two are linked (speaking from six years of student pub drinking experience!). I also heard about the leaked paper saying hospitality will be shutting in high risk England areas. 

Hospitality employs six times more people than universities. 

I reckon without very strict measures, uni students will be in perpetual social isolation (as someone in the other thread said - a herd immunity experiment?).

And, just heard that Liverpool Uni doing (almost) everything online.

I am a huge fan of both pubs and unis, but, so far, my conclusion is the government is copping out of the big decision - where possible all uni stuff should be done online and consider sending students back home.  I reckon this  would hit the economy significantly less than shutting pubs.

If I was a student away from home, the prospect of online learning and social isolation and no pubs = I may was well be living at mum and dads. 

In reply to mick taylor:

the problem is they've already bungled this because if you send students hope you spread Covid back to the communities they have come from. 

In reply to mick taylor:

no.1 son is in his final year.  My possibly unkind view is that it seems that the amount of "physical" lectures to be provided has been decided by direct reference to the minimum amount the university can provide and still charge the full 9 grand plus fee - meaning that he is paying full whack for a mostly online service, plus also having to pay full whack for the residential experience whilst getting a half-baked education.

Sadly there is no real good outcome - being sent home would still not remove the need to pay for the rented accommodation (final year is all via private landlords, not halls) and would likely cause bigger issues as if individuals decide that they do not or cannot pay the rent, I can see a spate of landlords chasing the other tenants under the "joint and several" liability - so not only would you be paying for a house that you are not using, but you potentially would be paying for someone else's share of that house too. 

In reply to Snyggapa:

Aye, totally agree on the no good outcome. My No 1 also in the final year and if she gets sent back.....try doing online singing/acting/dancing !!  But from a wider economic and covid stance it kinda makes more sense than shutting hospitality  

Aside: I had to take a £5k loan out coz of the jointly liable bollox - I’m still hurting !!

In reply to joem:

‘Bungled’ is about the least negative word I can use for anything the government has done.

They would need to be some form of quarantine (which will no doubt happen before Xmas anyway).

In reply to mick taylor:

Sorry I was being far too polite must be in work mode

In reply to mick taylor:

The problem is if you do that now hundreds of thousands of 20-somethings take the virus home to 50-somethings. It's a knotty mess of universities' and government's own making that looks almost impossibly difficult to unwind safely for the foreseeable future.

jk

In reply to Snyggapa:

On the point about fees I think the government and universities have messed up the messaging badly.  Whilst I very much believe that an essential part of university is the physical side, neither the government nor universities have been very good at explaining why a largely online education is still worth £9k (or more strictly worth the same as it was previously).  My colleagues have put in huge time and effort to ensure an excellent online learning experience that is in many respects better than face-to-face.  My experience is that students (and parents) view value for money if they sit in lectures passively (not) learning from a lecturer talking at them.  What is actually happening now is that lecturers are being forced to think differently about learning and how to teach effectively.  As a result the whole learning experience is being improved and therefore better value for money than it was previously.

What should have happened is universities and the government should have accepted teaching and learning should be pre-dominantly online wherever it can be and only face-to-face where needed.  There are many subjects where face-to-face is essential.  They should then have explained how the learning experience will be no worse and probably better than before.  This does of course raise a whole host of questions about the future of physical university campuses.

The big question that remains is how to ensure students who are largely off campus develop the wider skills that I passionately believe are a key part of the university education.  This is the next piece of the puzzle but I am sure it can be resolved.

It will be interesting to see if all this leads to much leaner university campuses in future.

In reply to mick taylor:

The weekly ONS random sampling update just landed.

The levelling off in the North West has disappeared from the filtered/smoothed data in Figure 4.   It's less exponential than the North East, and Yorkshire is rocketing up.

So what ever is going wrong, the control measures in the NW are not working much and this gives me little hope they will go on to work in the NE etc where they came in later.  The consequences will soon be redlining across the North.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/con...

In reply to tjdodd:

Could you elaborate on these wider skills?

In reply to mick taylor:

"Hospitality employs six times more people than universities. "

Where do these numbers come from and how do they compare in value?

My guess is that this could be true as far as direct numbers but you could be comparing a university lecturer earning £40K+ who's bringing in thousands in grants and many many thousands in student fees who themselves each support the local economy to the tune of £10k+ to someone pulling pints and serving tables.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Wiki for hospitality, this for unis:

https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/facts-and-stats/Pages/higher-education-dat...

Its actually more than six times. 
And regarding ‘value’, those people working in hospitality more likely need their money a lot more than uni staff, most of whom will keep their jobs if students sent home. Student grants and fees will still be brought in, but taxi drivers, fast food outlets etc will get shafted, again hitting those with least, the most (as is usually the case).

In reply to Ridge:

I think too much emphasis is placed on the subject knowledge and understanding.  Whilst it is important for students to get a good subject knowledge and understanding it is their overall development of intellectual ability and agility, critical thought, creativity, working in teams, ability to communicate effectively, discuss ideas, appreciate the importance of diversity etc that is the most important thing.  I am not saying these cannot be developed in other ways but I think these develop naturally in the face-to-face university environment.

I am an engineering academic and am always disappointed in the over emphasis on effectively maths and physics during engineering degrees, particularly by students.  I have spent much of my time teaching these wider skills within an engineering context with the result that I typically got some quite negative feedback from students.  They complained about the learning not being engineering and that there was not one single correct answer.  Some students got it and most once they had spent time in industry welcomed what they had learnt with me.

Most students come into degrees thinking that all the knowledge and understanding they gain will be key to their future career.  In reality an engineering graduate will probably use less than 5% of what they directly learn.  It is everything else that will be key to their future success.

This is also why the government focus on STEM subjects annoys me.  Graduates from non-STEM subjects bring a different way of thinking and are critical to our future.  A world full of STEM graduates will be a pretty sad place.

In reply to mick taylor:

There has been some discussion about this on the other channel (there's a number of academics who post there) and it seems to boil down to money.

With no governmental support available, fees set at 9k year are essential to avoid the institutions going bust. As a number of people on this thread have pointed out, if you are one of the many people whose course could mostly be delivered online, the 9k a year fee is going to be viewed by most as unjustifiable. Universities have had to get students back to campus with the promise of "the student experience" in order to justify the fees.

It has also been pointed out that many universities owe a significant portion of their income to the provision of accommodation. Not having students in halls leaves you with a large estate which runs up an enormous maintenance bill but generates no income. For many institutions this won't be financially viable.

In reply to tjdodd:

Yes, I agree with this entirely. The real concern is of course that if a mixed online/class learning was  a superior option then why isn't it the norm before. The impression given is that what is being offered is not planned, prepared, fine tuned - which I can entirely understand given the massive upheaval, the unknowns and the timescales - and also possible that in future years the outcome may be better than it was before. But as a "transition year" there will always be pain and learnings.

The impression given is that the government and universities at a high level (and I am not applying this to the coal-face, the poor sods actually being pulled from pillar to post and providing the education) are more interested in maintaining their fees and the status quo than providing the best education or the best value.

We live in strange times

In reply to Will Hunt:

Friend teaches law at Open University, they’ve had lots of applications as 1) they already specialise in online and remote learning and 2) it’s £6k a year rather than £9k. It’s easy to see why many folk think £9k a year is too much. 
Some courses where never worth the fee in thre first place; an ex colleague did Peace Studies at Bradford  uni and did one hour a week lectures in her final year !! My daughter does over 35, including a number of 1:1 sessions (herself, singing teacher and a pianist).

Im a huge fan of university education, fully appreciate the hard work, unseen work and associated costs, but some things need to change/improve and Covid may force their hands. 

In reply to mick taylor:

Not sure how you worked this out, universities are making redundancies from the core funded staff and almost half the academic staff are on fixed term contracts, so with very few research positions being advertised at the moment people like myself are struggling to find work once their contracts end.

Student grants and fees will still be brought in.

But most universities are reliant on foreign students and are still running a deficit.

I'm not sure fully understood my case about the overall value of the university system.

It's not just what the staff take home it's about what the staff bring to the cities where they work by attracting students who spend money on things like accommodation and in pubs. Although, you could consider that people in higher paid jobs generally spend more, especially on thing that are considered non-essential like hospitality and the arts.

Looking into your data.

The link you sent regarding universities states that in 2014-15 they contributed 95 billion to GDP, with just under 440k staff.

Some numbers from "inverstinuk.net" suggest that hospitality contributed 3.6% of GDP. so if GDP id 2.855 trillion that's 105 billion, from about 1.6 million staff.

So the value of the industries isn't quite so different and as I suggested, each university worker is, in a very crude and cold hearted monetary sense, more valuable.

In reply to tjdodd:

I think you've articulated that well and, speaking as someone who didn't go to university, I agree. The new graduates I interact with at work seem to largely fall into either the very smart who fit with what you've described above, or come across as being not particularly bright with no critical thinking or creativity.

In reply to Ridge:

1. Ability to down a pint in 5 seconds.

2. Traffic cone theft.

3. Making 20 quid last for 2 months of food shopping.

All essential life skills.  

In reply to mick taylor:

In our city we just did a massive round of testing to try to track down outbreaks.

We had more outbreaks in the fire brigade than any college. In fact almost all colleges in the city (9), added together, had less than the city fire department.

Otherwise it was low wage jobs, warehouses, care workers and family environments. 

In reply to gethin_allen:

Agree with most of that. I think my main point is: if unis had gone for all online from the off (or even starting from now), then most of the cash and jobs stay* within the system, whereas shutting down hospitality has a huge negative impact.

* things like halls of residence excepted 

In reply to Phil79:

Pah. I didn't need Uni for that!

In reply to Will Hunt:

I think this is it in a nutshell. 

Unis have invested heavily in attracting ever more students and have been expanding accommodation and teaching facilities to suit, so most I would think are heavily indebted (I work in engineering and have lost count of number of student accommodation blocks etc we have looked at over last 10 years).

With massive cut in oversees students, they now need to claw back everything they can from existing UK students (accommodation fees being big part of that) or risk going bust.     

Rather savage environment, and exposes the vulnerabilities of having a higher education system wholly reliant on student funding.  

In reply to tjdodd:> On the point about fees I think the government and universities have messed up the messaging badly.  Whilst I very much believe that an essential part of university is the physical side, neither the government nor universities have been very good at explaining why a largely online education is still worth £9k (or more strictly worth the same as it was previously). 

What would the OU charge for full time equivalent online/remote learning courses? I'm guessing £9k...

In reply to Phil79:

I would agree with that, my son has just started at a modest sized university and I reckon the income from accommodation alone for the first years must be somewhere around £40 million per year.

I'm quite sure they can't take that sort of hit so the students need to be there.

In reply to mick taylor:

My daughter is doing law at Leeds (1st year) and only has a few hours of lectures and seminars a week, all online. No face to face at all. There is no conceivable justification for the fee, except that for a subject like law, going to a Russell group Uni does confer an advantage in the jobs market, especially for the top law firms. 

In reply to Andy Hardy:

Interesting thread.  An earlier poster, with appropriate knowledge I think, says that OU charges £6k. 

Martin

In reply to mick taylor:

It's a no brainer, Open University, they are cheaper and have years of experience at this.

I did a degree with the OU, and was seriously considering an MA at Manchester for the social interaction and being involved with a bricks and mortar university, but within a few weeks of the pandemic it was obvious that bricks and mortar universities would be toast for at least 12 - 18 months, untill they either fully accept they have to adapt to a covid world or there is a vaccine.

About 6 k per year currently, and highly respected.

OU is the way ahead.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

I'm almost certain she has other things at her disposal - time she can contact academics, a VLE, access to other online materials etc, opportunities to interact with peers/.

When I went to Uni I only had a few hours of in person lectures a week. The lecturers are still having to produce the materials, deliver, meet with students (virtually) and assess work etc. From their point of view they're working harder. I don't see how there is 'no conceivable justification for the fee' to be honest.

Of course it's not ideal and no one wants it to be this way, but Universities are not making wads of cash out of the current situation despite what many seem to think. Running a Uni is not cheaper in the current situation.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

The government pays £6500 p.a. for secondary education on average, which many would consider is not enough. Why do you think being trained by a load of lawyers is going to be cheaper than that?

I think the situation for students in many places at the moment is completely miserable. Life is highly restricted and there is less fun to be had being taught on line without the huge social aspect of student life, but don't confuse that with value for money, And also don't think that in all situations that COVID has diminished the quality of teaching. In some areas it has provided a new impetus for change for the better, often at personal cost to the staff who have gone way beyond their remit.

The OU does charge £6K, but as many students do not need specific facilities you could argue this is more expensive not less so. 

In reply to NorthernGrit:

You still can’t justify £9250 a year for a course running year after year with a few hundred students getting about 300 hours a week each. Be nice if the online stuff actually worked - the only seminar she’s had so far the technology didn’t work and when she logged on to the first live lecture she got a message saying the session was full. How is that a thing? I think I’m more pissed off about it than she is. Still, she seems to have survived coronavirus so it’s not all negative. 

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

That is outrageous!

In reply to SouthernSteve:

As I said on previous threads, I acknowledge that staff are working hard to make the online learning a decent experience, but the reality is it’s all pretty shit. I think the whole model is exploitative. Lancaster cashing-in on the kids in lockdown by flogging them food at £17 per day I think it was while they were stuck in isolation is illuminating. 

In reply to SouthernSteve:

It’s odd isn’t it? Luckily one of her flat mates is studying law so she sat and watched it with him. 

In reply to mick taylor:

Yes, Liverpool are doing everything on line with a review in a couple of weeks. The only exceptions are for clinical practice and the like. 

In reply to NorthernGrit:

I think what the current situation is highlighting again is the wider issue of fees in universities.  I completely agree that lecturers are now probably working harder than previously to produce the best possible learning experience.  In that sense the fees are pretty much as justifiable now as they were before (only pretty much as I think students are losing some of the experience as I noted above).  So the bigger question is were the fees justifiable before?  My personal view is that student fees are actually nothing more than a tax on income above a certain income threshold.  They should never have been treated as debt and governments need to get over their aversion to treating it as tax.

I previously never bought into the whole idea of MOOCs (online courses) replacing university education (I was involved in proposing and developing a MOOC at a previous university I was at but this was primarily as a marketing tool).  However, I think we are now seeing a massive disruption in approaches to learning and teaching at universities.  I only teach a little now and have not had to engage with the online teaching yet (I am starting to panic as I will be teaching in a few weeks).  But I have been amazed at how quickly and how well colleagues have adapted to online teaching.  They have been amazing and the students have praised the experience. 

As an example I have colleagues who teach drama which must be one of the hardest subjects to teach online.  In all the panic of adapting teaching at the end of last academic year they moved from teaching face-to-face drama to radio plays which could be done online.  It was a completely new experience for the students and really enhanced their education.  The student feedback was outstanding.

In reply to tjdodd:

A mate of mine is a psychology professor at Warwick uni and I said that I imagined recorded lectures were probably actually better than real life ones, as the students could pause, take notes etc. He said that depending on your teaching style it could be worse; he likes to be light-hearted, make jokes etc and interact, even in large lectures and you just can’t do that recording a lecture alone. 

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

I agree that recorded lectures will be worse.  When I used to lecture regularly I always treated it as a performance.  It was about getting students excited and enthused to learn about the subject and part of that was interaction and lots of enthusiasm.  I also never used Powerpoint as this is the death of getting students actively involved.

Recorded lectures are not online teaching/learning - they are a passive way of pretending to teach.  Proper online teaching/learning will be much more imaginative and interactive.  Where I am the lecturers are ensuring a really good active learning experience.  This is helped by there being a history of distance learning so many of the lecturers are up to speed on how to do it well already.  I suspect the Russell Group universities will be struggling the most as they have never done distance learning before.  

In reply to tjdodd:

I teach HE courses in a college setting and am rapidly adapting to delivering most of my lectures and tutorials online. Already I can see that frequent interaction is possible and is appreciated by the students. They can talk among themselves if I want them to, they can reply to questions verbally and in writing through a chat window, they can share stuff, write on a whiteboard and so on. That's just what I have discovered within the last week of doing it. It is not just passive learning.

I also am a long time consumer of MOOCs, most of them from US institutions such as MIT. I love them when done well but for that they must be a huge effort to produce. One I did had, I think, 1400 questions overall, each of them with detailed feedback. I actually quite like the model where an actual lecture is recorded and put across in small chunks interspersed with test yourself questions, substantial homeworks plus coding or whatever else to do. If the lecture is good, that comes across clearly on video. A strong sense of community also often develops among the learners, whether on the MOOC forums or elsewhere such as in Slack.

In reply to tjdodd:

MOOCs were the wrong kind of online I think - emphasis on availability of material not on the personal aspects of the teaching.  It’s the small group tutorials, workshops and seminars that make the difference.

Setting covid aside, could an online university run that polishes the lecture material year on year and provides the small group teaching all online, for far less cost?  Don’t forget the mandated first year accommodation costs of many institutions, up to another £8.5k or so.  For much of the content in many courses, the answer is a provisional strong “yes”.  For labs, intensive residential periods are a model in non-covid times.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

It was only when I recorded my last lecture to an empty room back in March that I understood how incredibly interactive lecturing is.  You pick up all sorts of queues from the audience.  

In reply to wintertree:

... And cues!

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

which can be queues.

One to get in: Good

One to get out: Not good

One to get out 5 mins in: Really not good.