This has been a terrible year for education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Our hearts go out to secondary school students who fear their qualifications will be worthless and who have been deprived of end of education proms and parties. Even more, our hearts go out to primary school children such as my grandchildren who are missing their friends and, within the same week, returned to school, were sent home and returned again only for the school to be closed indefinitely. And this is us coming out of lockdown. But the situation for university students is truly terrible. Many are away from home, confined to barracks, being widely—and erroneously—blamed for spreading the coronavirus and having to pay tens of thousands of pounds for the privilege.
Moreover, the delivery of their programmes has been mainly online and, while that is working better than many expected, they are missing the normal social contact on campuses and not, in any of the expected ways, having anything approaching a university experience. Newspaper reports abound of students having parties broken up, being fined, expelled or chased by the police and their claims of being imprisoned. Students have rebelled and did so remarkably in Manchester by tearing down fences meant to separate their residences and restrict their movement. Students are asking questions of vice-chancellors about the level of fees they are paying for an education which is being delivered in ways that must be saving money for universities. I am sure that the heating has not been turned on in many university offices for over a year. Staff are working from home, heating their own houses, and using their own computers and electricity to carry on with their jobs.
But education fees for many students are paid from their loans and these will not have to be repaid for many years and only after earning a reasonable salary. The most expensive aspect of being a student, and living away from home, is the accommodation fees and living costs. Not all students live in university campuses, but many do and pay thousands of pounds for their rooms in halls. Some students are being forced to return to their accommodation and some, for example international students, have no option and are being treated very badly. But their presence on campus is pointless as they are still being taught online. Others are excluded from campus but continue to pay for their accommodation with no sign of any remission in fees. Students are also beginning to question what they are paying for in accommodation fees and will, doubtless, protest on campus next year. I predict a few occupations of vice-chancellors’ office suites.
Nevertheless, students are an ephemeral population with short memories; they will move on and become absorbed in their careers. On the other hand, their parents, many of whom will have paid their exorbitant fees and living costs, will have longer memories. Parents of younger siblings planning a parentally funded university education, having witnessed the appalling way many universities have treated their children during the present pandemic, will be very reluctant to pay again. We have entered an age when a pandemic, or the fear of one, will always be on the horizon. Unless we learn from this one that most of what we did was wrong and with virtue-signalling university vice-chancellors tripping over each other to be the most responsive to the pandemic, there can be no guarantee that this will not all happen again.
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