University Managed Accommodation charges January-April 2021 Spring Semester demand? But room empty?

bluecarlady

Anyone know of any students in this situation.

[Deleted User]

Yes.  Thousands of students are in this situation.

bluecarlady

Hi zx81, but you don't know anyone personally who is being pursued by their university for Spring rent when they just were not allowed back to campus to take up their studies.  I am taking about University managed accommodation not private rentals BTW.

[Deleted User]

If they were not allowed back and therefore the service is not available, then you would have grounds not to pay. But the devil is in the detail.

tooldle

As above but I can also add that many students have claimed not to be using their accommodation, only for it to be established that they have been resident for periods, giving Universities good cause to not 'cancel' accommodation agreements. The difficulty comes in the meaning of 'not being allowed back to campus to take up their studies'. UK HE has not been closed, for many campus is open and operating. 
I work in HE. My daughter has been resident in her University town throughout, all be it not in University managed accommodation.

bluecarlady

We do seem to be the only family then where outstanding accommodation charges fell due then, as a result of the failure of our child to complete a waiver declaration in February to say they were not returning to their room.  You had to hand your key in to take advantage of that offer.  We are in Wales and the University is way down South in the Garden of England BTW.  It was safer all round to have our child living with us in South Wales.   Thanks for your replies toodle and zx81 but really I was hoping to hear from students and families who genuinely left their accommodations in November/December 2020 and did not return.

tooldle

If your young adult has failed to follow the process to get a waiver, the best advice I can give is for the young adult concerned to investigate the possibility of a late application. If there are exceptional circumstances and evidence of, a late application may be accepted, subject to the institution's policy.
Student Union normally provide an advice clinic of some sort. If your young adult draws a blank elsewhere, i would suggest booking an apt with the SU.

tooldle

@bluecarlady. I’m also in South Wales. My daughter is at Uni in SE England. She was in hall for her first year and did get a partial refund for the summer term. As you mention, keys were returned as  part of the process. Throughout the 2020/2021 academic year she has been resident in her University town.
An adult student failing to apply for a waiver or having evidenced grounds for appeal, is not the fault of the University. Generally speaking the comms are overdone to prevent students ‘missing’ communications. Appeal processes are clearly set down to assist those who do ‘miss’ the comms and there are always some that do. 

SingleSue

Youngest couldn't access his accommodation until near the end of March from early in December, he got a small reduction on his halls rent in the two semesters impacted as did other students in the university managed accommodation.

He's grumbled about it a little but then he did get a semester free in the first lockdown when most of the students returned home but as he was shielding, had to remain in his accommodation as he couldn't be returned safely.

He's more annoyed about paying out full whack tuition fees for online learning since March last year....

Pennywise

tooldle said:

As above but I can also add that many students have claimed not to be using their accommodation, only for it to be established that they have been resident for periods, giving Universities good cause to not 'cancel' accommodation agreements. The difficulty comes in the meaning of 'not being allowed back to campus to take up their studies'. UK HE has not been closed, for many campus is open and operating. 
I work in HE. My daughter has been resident in her University town throughout, all be it not in University managed accommodation.

My son's Uni regularly sent out email forms asking their students to confirm whether they were in their campus accommodation or not.  This then fed into checking claims for partial rent refunds.  The Uni made it clear they'd be checking their campus wifi/ethernet systems to randomly check whether students were accessing the Uni's campus internet system, so that was the deterrent for students not to say they weren't on campus if they were.  Obviously, impossible to know whether they did check internet usage but it was a good deterrent.  (Students can only access Uni internet by logging in via their student ID - the "guest" internet was time limited so they'd have to have a constant stream of new email addresses if they wanted to use the guest wifi for the longer term).

JamoLew

SingleSue said:

Youngest couldn't access his accommodation until near the end of March from early in December, he got a small reduction on his halls rent in the two semesters impacted as did other students in the university managed accommodation.

He's grumbled about it a little but then he did get a semester free in the first lockdown when most of the students returned home but as he was shielding, had to remain in his accommodation as he couldn't be returned safely.

He's more annoyed about paying out full whack tuition fees for online learning since March last year....

in actuality - the work involved for the admin staff and lecturers is way more to provide online lectures.

Everything has to be redone into a format that is suitable for this method of delivery - so lecturers have actually been working significantly harder/longer hours to facilitate this.

And all for a 0% pay rise and no gratitude from anyone that they are at least making an effort to continue the delivery of education

Trust me, the vast majority of Uni staff don't want to be delivering this way either and bills/wages still need to be paid

** My wife is a Uni lecturer for a Medical based qualification, so I have a lot of first hand knowledge on this