My fears for Covid generation and university students in quarantine – Jayne Dowle

I am so relieved that my two are not locked down and stranded miles away from home.

I fear I would break the rules and go and fetch them, even if it meant we all had to self-isolate for a fortnight and pay a massive fine.

Had it not been for a quirk of study path and career choice, it’s highly possible that my own 18-year-old son, Jack, would have been amongst this year’s higher education intake.

Instead, he’s still living at home whilst studying at Barnsley College for a diploma in broadcast journalism.

This course will qualify him to apply for a degree next year, but I don’t think this will be an option attractive to either of us, given the experiences his friends are undergoing at what should be one of the most exciting and liberating times of their young lives.

Starting university in 2020 is certainly life-changing, and not in a good way. One of Jack’s friends, who left home in Barnsley to study in Leeds a few weeks ago, has tested positive for coronavirus and is now under 14-day quarantine. He says that she’s not feeling ill as such and is bearing up pretty well. “Don’t believe all you see on TV mum,” he cautioned. “She’s not waving at a window with no food.”

Oh, for the insouciance of the young. This is a very worrying situation. As of Tuesday, 45 UK universities reported positive coronavirus cases.

In most of the affected universities, the proportion of students testing positive is a small part of the overall population. Yet, as we all know, it only takes one case in one setting to trigger a whole series of preventative measures which put the onus on the individual to self-isolate.

This was a disaster waiting to happen but you can only wonder, yet again, why the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, didn’t see the scale of the problem coming, especially when Scottish universities reported cases a couple of weeks prior.

There are so many questions, including the biggest one of all that has been shirked by successive Education Secretaries since 2010.

The whole bloated higher education sector has been in dire need of a complete re-set since David Cameron’s coalition government sanctioned a rise in punitive tuition fees; currently an annual maximum of £9,250 for a UK student.

As Sir Chris Husbands, the vice chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, says: “We have a moral right to do something.”

Whilst advocating more favourable loan repayment terms rather than a reduction in fees, he does at least acknowledge that it would be sensible to make adjustments to reflect this “highly unusual year”.

Tuition fees are only half of the equation however; enforced quarantine has also exposed the extortionate racket that is student accommodation. Too often these halls of residence have been built and are run with profit at the forefront.

I understand that higher education must pay its own way, but this pandemic has blown the whole market-economy model apart.

We need a serious public figure – and not in the Baroness Dido Harding cronyism mould – to undertake the now desperately-needed root-and-branch review of higher education.

As the Government and its scientists continue to remind us, coronavirus is not going to go away. We face the very real prospect of living alongside the disease for some years to come.

What will happen next year, if young people decide that a degree is simply not worth the risk? Where will the market-economy model sit then?

What will become of this ‘Covid generation’? Another 
one of Jack’s friends decided
to drop out of studying business at Leicester at the very last moment because of the pandemic. Now he’s unemployed and overwhelmed with confusion.

Will the experience of starting university in the middle of a global pandemic derail their future in the same way that
the Second World War halted
the lives of their great-grandparents?

If you’re taking the long – and rigorous – view, you’ll argue that it could all be character-building and our teenagers will emerge stronger, more serious and sober as a result.

I’d agree to a point, but not when the only certainty is thousands of pounds-worth of student debt and future prospects more perilous than ever.

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James Mitchinson