The thing I was trying to say earlier in the summer was that the measures being taken on campus - often a fairly intensively used space at any university - are all about reducing that intensity by a large intensity, say by two thirds for arguments sake.

You can then operate a campus fairly safely. Not as safely as some would like but roughly as safely as say shops. The question is, if you then recruit the same number of students as usual - where does the pressure shift to?

I think a few things happen. First you end up with intense pressure on shared facilities like seating and study space which some students need because their home doesn't work for that.

Next you put intense pressure on homes because student HMOs were never really designed to "hold" students all day. Space, broadband etc.

Then in terms of halls, the idea seems to be that buildings that were never really designed to be homes (they are at best places to sleep) have to lose some of the community spaces they have...

... but for some reason most uni and PBSA operators are running them at 90-95% capacity where campuses are at 33%

Then think about the same problem from a city or town POV. Sun's out, not so much of a problem. But if say in the evening you're at 33% of your usual licensed trade capacity you have the same problem.

The point I'm making is that everyone seems to assume that their bit needs to reduce in capacity and that therefore their bit can be replaced by students "staying in". But that means "staying in" in buildings or places that were never designed to be "stayed in" like that.

And they are living arrangements that almost guarantee lower compliance with test and trace than any other group. As a reminder in the general pop of those who reported having experienced symptoms, only 18.2% said they had not left home since developing symptoms.

What I find odd is that we appeared to conclude in April ish that campuses would have to reduce capacity dramatically, but halls, HMOs, Tesco Metros, etc could all return to intensive. And more than that - would bear bring dramatically more intensively used precisely because...

... we were moving everyone off campus!

I think in the end what we failed to do as a country was say "where do we want students to be" both all week and all year from a transmission POV and work back from there.

By the way the "move the problem" thing is just as bad for commuters. The home where students live never designed for full time study. That's what schools and colleges were... for.

Them I think you have to add in the "what are they buying" thing. Yes there's the teaching. But for students the "massive online pivot" wasn't the massive thing about April.

If you had four hours contact a week, those four hours being done on a screen (when you were probably staring at a screen during those four hours anyway!) is nothing.

For students the dramatic (and by comparison much less understood or considered change) was the loss of community and campus. A bit was recreated by SUs online but not that much.

So now we spent the summer still selling a) teaching/learning, b) community + social capital and c) place (ie tourism) and said "it'll be a bit different"

But. On a) we've taken away most of the campus capacity and social capacity that made "independent learning" (which is often actually social learning) work.

On b) we've taken away almost all of the opportunities both on bonding and bridging social capital

And on c) we're now basically telling people to stay in, at least at night - and in the day in a few weeks.

Then add in that we've offered no financial assistance or cushions or safety nets to students and a pathetic test and trace system all when we know - we actually know - we have a student mental health crisis.

And then. We say you can't see your parents at the weekend. My word.

I keep coming back to this. No-one "senior" in government or the sector has ever been able to answer my question "what are they supposed to do all week" or "where are they supposed to be".

And as long as we have no answer to that question - or as long as the answer is "in their tiny room on their own" - is as long as we'll have a major problem.

One final thing. Have said for a couple of weeks now that support for students comes "horizontally" (friends, family, course mates, societies) and "vertically" (academics, support services etc). And it can be accessed on a "pull down" or "proactive push" basis.

We have to accept generally that the former is just not going to develop in anything like the same way this year. I'll rue on not warning students or predicting this earlier another day.

The point is that it means that to compensate we have to massively step up the vertical. And I don't just mean on request, pull down availability of support - by definition I mean "proactive push".

This is exemplified by the students and parents of them in Glasgow right now that are amazed that nobody has proactively checked in on each of them. Even though an email will have offered an advice line or whatever.

If I was running gold command in a uni anywhere I'd be prioritizing proactive push support for students via phone banks. I'd want a report every day on what students are saying, feeling and needing. And id be responding from there.

This is not a year to wait for module evaluation or the NSS. Nor is it a year to wait for students to come to us to access support.