Will more students drop out this year?

Sadly, I think so. With unavoidable covid driven restrictions the social side (particularly for freshers) will be slower and less extensive than normal, so students will have less chance to build a network of friends and study partners. There will be less team sports and nights out to bond over and less opportunity to burn off some stress or adrenalin. All sorts of clubs and societies will find it harder to run their welcome events and “normal” activities. At the same time it will be tougher for tutors to interact with students and spot early problems and provide advice and support. Many courses will be over full due to the mess with A level grades that were suddenly revised part way through admissions (so less staff time to go round), and some small fraction of students will have been awarded over generous predictions by their schools, and may not be up to the demands of a high entry course. Lets hope for the best however.

So basically top unis like UCL and Imperial would face the same things too right?

I think that all these potential problems are very “generic” and just about every UK university will be facing them. From my perspective lots of staff effort has been going into preparing teaching for mixed remote + on site delivery, but however good that is (and there ARE some really effective things being put together), it’s always going to be 2nd best to “business as usual” where a student having problems could just turn up at a tutors office for a quite chat and a bit of advice over a cup of coffee and behind closed doors.

How this varies between different universities is really hard to predict, one would imagine that the bigger institutions will have more strength in depth to absorb all the additional prep work and support students need, and Oxbridge and a few other places also come armed with an extra layer of Collegiate support, including on site accommodation and tutoring. That’s near impossible for most places to deliver.

At the same time, when you have a “cohort wide problem”, its often easier to make adjustments, e.g. everyone has a tougher time integrating this year which might hit course marks, so the whole thing can be moderated accordingly to keep retake numbers and absolute fails to a reasonable level.

i think it could work both ways tbh, while some students who are 18/19 and thinking of going to uni may decide to not go as there will not be a proper freshers week due to covid, there may also be an influx of people, perhaps mature students doing uni as they may have lost their jobs due to covid and may therefore have to re-think their career path. i know the course i am doing has had 2 more people join as they were made redundant/lost their jobs due to covid so are having to do a degree to try and find work

Wow thats cool tbh but due to the second wave do you think that unis might be COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN?

Wow thats cool tbh but due to the second wave do you think that unis might be COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN?

No

not sure tbh, however have you signed the gov petition to have uni fees reduced becos teaching is mainly online for lots of unis. I have. Paying £9250 for tuition fees for it to be online is a bit unfair in my opinion

Ok cool

And no, can you send me the link so I can sign it ? I really want tuition fees to reduce!

not sure tbh, however have you signed the gov petition to have uni fees reduced becos teaching is mainly online for lots of unis. I have. Paying £9250 for tuition fees for it to be online is a bit unfair in my opinion

Will do so now! Thanks!

np, the more people tht sign this hopefully the more likely the gov will implement it across the uk

So two comments on this (1) the fees are mandated by government, universities don’t get a say in the matter, and for some courses they don’t actually cover the costs of delivery as is and (2) its taking more staff time and resources, not less to deliver "covid compliant" teaching, while all the buildings, labs, libraries etc still need to be paid for so they are ready when they can be used fully again. I agree it’s not the same experience right now, but be careful what you wish for. If universities go bust, then both staff and students will be left hanging, who is going to deliver “the other half of your degree” ?

i appreciate tht, but for example, since uni's had to go online from march this year, lecturers will already have from march to may the content from the course already pre-recorded to give to the students starting this academic year 2020/21, they really only need to do the new stuff from september to march before they can reuse the resources they already created in lockdown if u get what i mean. I understand exactly where u are coming from with uni's going bust tho, feel like the gov need to step it up a bit and help uni's out instead of rolling out e scooter vouchers to everyone as thats not really a priority atm in my opinion

Sadly no on the teaching prep front, it’s not that simple, and trying to run something interactive like a tutorial, office hours or a research project remotely eats up a lot more time than being able to schedule an in person meeting and sit down with a lab book and bash through some ideas. There "may" be some useful stuff already in the can from last March, but that's just part of term 2 and 3. There is all of term 1 and a large fraction of term 2 to prep for this time round as well, and given that lots of term 3 is often exams and project work, this leave the bulk of the course to re-cast so you can deliver and support it remotely.