By Harry Shellard
Students returning to De Montfort University are infuriated after calls to drop tuition prices were ignored.
The Leicester students returned to campus after a lengthy absence due to the Coronavirus pandemic. For many people it was the first time back at university in eight months.
After teaching was cut short last year due to strikes and COVID-19, many students felt angered at the fact they were still paying the standard tuition rates at the university.
Over the summer months, hundreds of thousands of people signed government petitions to reimburse students who weren’t getting the full service they paid for.
This was debated in Parliament resulting in the government claiming it was up to the universities to solve the issue.
During the summer, there was speculation as to how things would resume on campus. The university had decided to adopt the approach of blended learning.
It proposed a mixture of online classes and face-to-face teaching which would reduce the amount of people on campus at any one point in time.
Not only has teaching been affected by the pandemic, but students’ access to resources such as the library have been greatly cut down.
Current students need to book time slots to avoid overcrowding areas which is a big change to the library’s previous way of operating.
However, some students don’t even have the luxury of face-to-face tutoring, but instead have classes that are fully online.
This was the case for 3rd year business student Oliver Hubbard who was disappointed when he found out.
“I feel the price of tuition doesn’t reflect the level of teaching we’ll receive this year. Although I understand the costs of exams, teaching and lecturers’ time spent creating lessons for us, I still think it’s completely unfair.
“COVID is and will cause a drop off in the quality of teaching and I think the price should reflect this.
“Online resources have been fairly useful and I’m glad I’ve been provided with something, but it will never be the same as face-to-face lectures and seminars,” he said.
Not only has teaching been affected by the pandemic, but students’ access to resources such as the library have been greatly cut down.
