And they don’t even cover the full cost of the research.
University Students
- Thread starter Big Jeff
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And they don’t even cover the full cost of the research.
I wonder if the University of Life will be dispensing its wisdom online in the interim, securing the futures of our next generation of proper blokes with common sense solutions for everything
Some Random Guy
Striker
This shit storm would put me right off working in a hospital tbh.
Can't believe she's starting uni.
DaveH
Striker
I think that was one of the big problems, based on household wage or even parents wage. There was the assumption they could and would contribute and there were also loop holes. I knew a few of the posher students where daddy had a high paid job so mummy didn't have to work. They applied to University from their second holiday home with mummy as a single non working parent. Registered as zero income and they got full grant. Loads of people were doing this.
I got stung in my second year. I worked in a pub over the summer for what was close to minimum wage (I don't think there was a legal minimum wage at the time). This was judged to be income (even though I stated I would have to cut back my hours when Uni started). As I had income and there was a home income at my parents house, I didn't qualify for any grant. If I had not bothered working, I would have got the equivialent of my wages in a free grant.
80% fEC if I recall.
Varies by funder but most work out less than 80% fEC once exceptions and things are taken into account.
Mid/long term you can see the university buildings being re-purposed. Pretty straight forward to run a maths, philosophy, economics, computer science degree remotely so they take the space in those buildings and give it over to sciences, engineering, arts etc. You could even have courses that are available online run from one central point rather than having every university offering a slightly different course, basically a massive open university. I get that if you did that you'd lose out on research, thought exercises, idea sharing etc so you'd need to think of ways to carry that on.
I appreciate that's unlikely to happen in the next year.
Admin will be the first to go completely (or near as damn it) remote. Admin space will then be repurposed to expand teaching/research capacity.
Big Sharp Teeth
Striker
Really? What makes you think that?
Chappers
Striker
This shit storm would put me right off working in a hospital tbh.
Can't believe she's starting uni.
Yup I'm getting old.
Straight forward is over-egging it, not the right expression, but I meant in the sense that they don't require labs or other practical, hands-on equipment. They consistent of lectures, study groups etc which can be done remotely, the only exception being exams which would probably have to be done on site to ensure no cheating.
Wild Card
Winger
They might reconsider if the jobs market goes down the pan. You never know if all international markets are hit as well they might still come.
I left uni in 2008 in the aftermath of the financial crisis with a business management and accounting degree. It took me bloody ages to get a job and even longer to actually get a job in my degree area.
Big Sharp Teeth
Striker
Yeah, relative to some other subjects they might be a bit more straight forward, but you still have to reconsider the pedagogy and develop dedicated resources for online use, decide how group work will take place and be monitored etc. If you just stick some text resources and lecture recordings online and have the odd zoom session it’s not going to go too well. Trying to replicate face to face learning online is not straight forward at all.
Interestingly (depending on your point of view) running some physical lab experiments remotely is more straightforward than running some more basic general collaborative sessions.
we’re truly returning to normality if a load of bitter middle-aged blokes have time to spare on the subject of slagging students off
well done Boris
well done Boris
Yeah, I said medium to long term but if they're saying they're doing the next academic year online they must think they can do it at least in part
anth
Winger
You’d be surprised how many people don’t have access to decent IT equipment. A big thing Ive noticed is in years gone by people would have a desktop in the house. Then they started getting laptops, often one each, now people just get a tablet for the house and share it.
Take our cluster in computer sciences, they have a highish end pc with a decent graphics card for compiling stuff, they all have a raspberry pi 3 for students to learn on other devices. It’s not just a standard pc cluster.
They can pay for a laptop out of the beer money they aren't using. Or more seriously, if unis aren't offering on site courses I'd expect their overheads to reduce so a suitable device could become part of the fee. But you're right I probably do think there's more access than there is. There's no ideal solution.
I hadn't thought about the processing power at all, no argument with that.
DaveH
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There are also Computer Science courses (an increasing amount) that have an electronics component to it. With Arduino and similar devices about, this is so much easier than it was back in the day (I had to build a Z80 wire by wire, with my own software on an EEPROM that took 20 minutes to erase again with UV light!). My degree also had a Real Time Systems module with specialist hardware for that.
Group work was a big part to some courses and while stuff can be done online, working side by side around a big table takes some beating. This applies to most courses.
Same for work. I don't agree that admin teams will become 100% remote. I'm in charge of an IT support team and we are doing most of our job online. The established members of the team are doing fine, but I also had two new people into my team. One of those the week before lockdown. Introducing him to new stuff and getting him involved is so much slower than if he was there in the office with us. A lot of the group problem solving does not happen, because there is no office discussion that other people get pulled into. If we continued like this for another 5 years, we would have half a team that had never met or actually had any form of personal relationship with. They would just be a face on the end of a video call. If that happens, my team (and I suspect most others) will be poorer for it.
This has proved that people can work at home occasionally or in bad snow days, just don't bother coming in (my team already operated like this). But I don't think it is as sustainable long term.
AndrewP
Striker
I'm amazed they bother with a pi these days, thought people would just use virtualisation instead.
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