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Roadkill said:
Here. I'd be a lot less willing to go into work if I was in one of those cities...
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Manchester and MMU also. However I don't think this takes us right to the point where all institutions go online, particularly after Johnson and Williamson's appalling statements. These 3 going online provides cover for other places with large numbers of cases to go online, but it's going to be a ragged process of shutting buildings, specific campuses. But when the process starts up it will be unstoppable, particularly as students will have voted with their feet. Everywhere online within 3 weeks?
 
chilango said:
Anybody detecting a change in stance from Universities regarding f2f? I'm not at mine.
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My module is highly practical (clinical) and they decided it would all be online a couple of months ago. Seems slightly bonkers when it probably really should be be F2F and then loads of students are doing F2F that should (and could) be remote.
 
chilango said:
Anybody detecting a change in stance from Universities regarding f2f? I'm not at mine.
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No, no sense of that at all at mine. I've given up predicting this, I thought we'd back to an online position as default by now. But the government are invested in staying open and nothing seems to be moving. Maybe the rise in cases in the wider community will eventually do it, particularly if there's a combination of cases in universities and the towns/cities. Maybe UCU will nudge it over the line as they are trying to do at Northumbria with a vote of no confidence. Same time, my latest pure guesstimate is we'll still have a strong element of f2f for another month... or more. Fucking madness.
 
I get the feeling, though I may be misreading this, that amongst some individuals in leadership there's a degree of belligerent heel digging going on coupled with a bit of macho posturing that are both suited to the financial game of chicken they're being forced to play.
 
Friend’s daughter started at Exeter a couple of weeks ago, came home at the weekend for a sports event. Had dinner with friend’s partner and his adult offspring. Went to outdoor sport event on Sunday morning, daughter felt ill and had a temperature by evening, tested positive at local drive-through on Monday, and now the mum’s glands and temperature are up, test booked for her too.
She said the uni had mentioned there were a few cases. ITV news last night, reporting on the percentages of cases attributed to students in various cities, mentioned (I think) 87% of cases in Exeter being students. A few?
The daughter feels better and is keen to get the train back to Exeter as soon as possible, but a flat mate in halls has tested positive so she ‘might have to stay in for a while’.
Her brother is a 3rd year student elsewhere and their mum said he and his housemates are ‘pretty relaxed’ about interpreting rules!

ETA I guess as the daughter was tested close to home she will be included in this area’s statistics and not Exeter’s, although that’s where she will have been infected.
 
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20Bees said:
Friend’s daughter started at Exeter a couple of weeks ago, came home at the weekend for a sports event. Had dinner with friend’s partner and his adult offspring. Went to outdoor sport event on Sunday morning, daughter felt ill and had a temperature by evening, tested positive at local drive-through on Monday, and now the mum’s glands and temperature are up, test booked for her too.
She said the uni had mentioned there were a few cases. ITV news last night, reporting on the percentages of cases attributed to students in various cities, mentioned (I think) 87% of cases in Exeter being students. A few?
The daughter feels better and is keen to get the train back to Exeter as soon as possible, but a flat mate in halls has tested positive so she ‘might have to stay in for a while’.
Her brother is a 3rd year student elsewhere and their mum said he and his housemates are ‘pretty relaxed’ about interpreting rules!

ETA I guess as the daughter was tested close to home she will be included in this area’s statistics and not Exeter’s, although that’s where she will have been infected.
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Well, that sounds like a perfect example of how this all goes wrong, in just about every respect including the issue of where cases are recorded.
 
Newcastle University reporting 1003 students and 12 staff tested positive in last 7 days, Northumbria University reporting 619 students from their Newcastle campuses tested positive in the last 7 days.

I'm really condused about how many of those are included in Newcastle figures.
 
crossthebreeze said:
Newcastle University reporting 1003 students and 12 staff tested positive in last 7 days, Northumbria University reporting 619 students from their Newcastle campuses tested positive in the last 7 days.

I'm really condused about how many of those are included in Newcastle figures.
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It is really messy, according to Newcastle City Council
Here is today's Dashboard - Thursday 8th October.

You may have seen figures published by our Universities today that are slightly different to these figures. There is a simple explanation to these differences.

The Universities have a self-reporting system so that students and staff tell them as soon as they have a positive test and are self-isolating. This means the Universities can provide the support they need to continue their studies and isolate safely and securely.

The figures we publish are confirmed cases via Test and Trace and are from Public Health England. They are figures for Newcastle residents only, so any student whose home address is not registered in Newcastle would not feature in our data.
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killer b said:
Lots are only starting this week arent they? Mrs B's niece is off to Bristol today, very cheerful that she dodged the bullet of Glasgow (the uni she had settled on before the a-level regrades meant she could go to her first choice after all). She's also looking forward to the 'blended' teaching they're promising there. I just hope she's got two weeks of dried food to stick under the bed, although I think they don't think it'll happen to her...
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further to this, she's caught the 'rona. :facepalm:
 
The cynical way universities have suckered students in is disgraceful, though reflective of the way universities are now compelled to be profit-maximising centres. And let’s be honest: the key point of university is the craic which for the foreseeable is not an option.

The current model, relying on fleecing all students (Especially overseas) is clearly not viable.

The current crisis will undoubtedly be used to curtail courses involving critical thinking: worrying.

All the above said, in my experience most academics in my specialist field (the far right) are greatly lacking in integrity, therefore for them specifically, frankly, I have no sympathy at all.
 
Larry O'Hara said:
The cynical way universities have suckered students in is disgraceful, though reflective of the way universities are now compelled to be profit-maximising centres. And let’s be honest: the key point of university is the craic which for the foreseeable is not an option.

The current model, relying on fleecing all students (Especially overseas) is clearly not viable.

The current crisis will undoubtedly be used to curtail courses involving critical thinking: worrying.

All the above said, in my experience most academics in my specialist field (the far right) are greatly lacking in integrity, therefore for them specifically, frankly, I have no sympathy at all.
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In the absence of government underwriting universities' losses from accommodation and so on the only alternative to reopening would have been bankruptcy and closure for most. The blame for the shitty situation that students, staff and everyone else have been put in lies squarely with the politicians. Blaming the universities is precisely what they want you to do - though that's not to say some places haven't handled the situation a lot better than others and/or simply been luckier to have fewer cases.
 
Roadkill said:
In the absence of government underwriting universities' losses from accommodation and so on the only alternative to reopening would have been bankruptcy and closure for most. The blame for the shitty situation that students, staff and everyone else have been put in lies squarely with the politicians. Blaming the universities is precisely what they want you to do - though that's not to say some places haven't handled the situation a lot better than others and/or simply been luckier to have fewer cases.
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I fully appreciate politicians are to blame, for creating the model of financing. But this does not, in my view, exonerate some universities for the cynical way they basically lied to students, implying teaching etc would be not too far from ‘normal’. They have willingly executed government policy: often in opposition to the unions, as I understand it.
 
I've been teaching international students from a London university for the last few weeks (online). The majority of them are still in their home countries, which ranged from the USA to different African countries, India, and Albania. Every single student is waiting for a visa and is planning to move to the UK this weekend/next week/as soon as they get their visa. I can't quite understand the mentality. Especially the man who told me that one month of rent in London was the equivalent of an entire year in his country.
 
Larry O'Hara said:
I fully appreciate politicians are to blame, for creating the model of financing. But this does not, in my view, exonerate some universities for the cynical way they basically lied to students, implying teaching etc would be not too far from ‘normal’. They have willingly executed government policy: often in opposition to the unions, as I understand it.
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'Willingly' is the operative word there. Probably fair in some cases, but less so others. The ideal would have been for the sector as a whole simply to refuse, but marketisation makes that all but impossible, especially as it's brought in managements for whom the idea of collective action and a game of chicken with the politicians would be anathema. But we're going over ground trodden only a couple of pages back here.
 
crossthebreeze said:
Newcastle University reporting 1003 students and 12 staff tested positive in last 7 days, Northumbria University reporting 619 students from their Newcastle campuses tested positive in the last 7 days.

I'm really condused about how many of those are included in Newcastle figures.
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Two different Universities, so no overlap. :(

Daughter and a newly acquired mate got approached by a journalist from the Times fishing about the drug OD story and trying to extract a quote from them about whether it was the result of gangs falling out with each other. She was pretty bemused by this having been there for about 48 hours.

Apparently the cops made a big show of escorting the student who might have supplied the gear away in handcuffs in full view of most of the halls.

Apart from that she seems OK and is just getting on with it. I keep getting sent photos of her meals and it all looks well better than the token efforts she made at home. :mad::D
 
Fozzie Bear said:
Two different Universities, so no overlap. :(

Daughter and a newly acquired mate got approached by a journalist from the Times fishing about the drug OD story and trying to extract a quote from them about whether it was the result of gangs falling out with each other. She was pretty bemused by this having been there for about 48 hours.

Apparently the cops made a big show of escorting the student who might have supplied the gear away in handcuffs in full view of most of the halls.

Apart from that she seems OK and is just getting on with it. I keep getting sent photos of her meals and it all looks well better than the token efforts she made at home. :mad::D
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I meant whether the university figures were included in the PHE figures for the City Council/region - but the answer is no-one knows - it depends on where students tell the test their home address is (so two students from the same flat could get a test at the same centre, yet one would be recorded as Newcastle and one as wherever their parents live). Also universities may use private testing which won't be included in PHE figures.

I think police, universities, city council, journalists are all acting pretty badly regarding the drug-related deaths - very anti-harm reduction, very
insensitive.

If she ever does have to self-isolate, they seem to be a bit more on it with support and providing food than some universities though
 
chilango said:
Anybody detecting a change in stance from Universities regarding f2f? I'm not at mine.
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Nope. No idea how much actual face to face teaching is going on with undergrad courses atm, but all the official announcements so far are more of the same; cases rising, but we're expecting it to tail off soon, measures in place etc.
 
Re marketisation of unis why has scotland gone down the same route with students on campus?
 
quimcunx said:
Re marketisation of unis why has scotland gone down the same route with students on campus?
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How do you mean? The lack of fees? That's only a part of the whole marketisation (see the marketisation of state schools as another example).
 
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