Objective:

October 2020 start for students meeting grade offers at first choice university

Nothing is as destructive to students as the unfair crushing of young hope and aspiration.  Attention should be focused, urgently, on restoring and salvaging. 

Please sign this petition if you agree that every effort should be made, cooperatively, to ensure that all students who have attained their offers are allowed to start their courses this year at their first choice institutions.

The Problem for Students:

Not all students are in a financial position to take a year out.  For some subjects, including STEM, a year out is as disadvantageous as it would be for elite sport.  It is unfair to next year’s finishing school students to mortgage their places to this year’s students.

The Problem for Universities:

Removing the cap on numbers has given some clarity but the universities still face accommodation problems exacerbated by Covid-19 arrangements and caps on individual course numbers, for example medicine, engineering or chemistry, due to placement and lab space arrangements.  Some universities potentially have contractual agreements with too many students while others face a shortfall in numbers.  Collaborations, sharing accommodation and facilities, between different institutions would help the oversubscribed to cope with their numbers and the undersubscribed to generate some income but would be unlikely to be enough.

The Request:

The support of existing staff, students and academics for the acceptance of the extra numbers and the resulting extra work and strain on resources would enable universities to make bold decisions. 

As importantly, the offer of support from outside academia in the form of placements, extra lab space and accommodation would help manage the practical issues.

A guarantee from government of sufficient financial support to keep solvent those institutions who will lose out this year, due to the higher number of higher grades would bring stability.  These institutions will be back to usual numbers in 2021. Additional funding from the government for courses where numbers are capped by costs. (Medicine,…)

Please also tweet “October 2020 start for students meeting grade offers at first choice university” if you agree.

It will not be easy but it is not impossible.  Together, it will be possible to maximise access this year and reduce the impact on next year's finishing school students.

For the academic institutions and employers:

The OATSS, Open Access Training Support Structures, is a start-up project which has been seeking support from a host institution in order to make a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship application later this year. It is intended to broaden access, monetise training and increase academic and non academic interactions at university level but the framework can be used this year to address the above issues.  Any interested institution should contact, irena.borzym@oatss.co.uk.  Irena Borzym is the Nicholas Handy Lecturer in Mathematics at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge with many years of experience teaching at the college.

This document is written in a personal capacity, representing personal views and is in no way representative of the college or university position.