UK universities to provide ‘significant’ in-person teaching in autumn

" most students can expect significant in-person teaching and a wide range of social activities and support services. Universities are committed to providing an engaging academic and social experience,” is this Boris speak for we dont have a clue? or just delusional optimism? Just remember that these are the people who gave us a pensions crisis and this man is "currently a member of the Government’s high-level stakeholder working group on EU Exit" Trustworthy? I ask you? Would you buy a used university sector from this man?

I feel that academic staff and our safety is being forgotten in this. I'm over 60, I have life-long asthma. The risks arising from my exposure to hundreds of people in confined spaces is huge. Even in small group teaching. We have jobs, we have a right to a safe working environment. Please do not be deluded into thinking that academic work is some kind of vocation an that staff should be prepared to sacrifice themselves for the good of - what? Institutional income?

This is not journalism; this is repeating a press release (https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Most-universities-will-teach-in-person-this-autumn.aspx ) with no critical scrutiny. Are most UK universities "planning" to provide normal, physically in-person, small-group teaching from the start of the new academic year? Doubtless yes. But is it true to say that most "will" do so? Have any universities actually committed to doing so? I doubt it. If you look carefully at what individual universities have said, it is PR smoke-and-mirrors: carefully worded to encourage students (and their parents) to believe they will get normal physical small-group teaching from September while also carefully avoiding any promise of this. Sometimes this involves playing with the terminology. For example, Manchester says students "will" get "face-to-face" teaching-- and then explains this may be "face-to-face teaching activities in a digital format". (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/coronavirus-applicants-update/) If THE wants to do proper journalism, they might try surveying university staff to find out what is really going on-- how much uncertainty there still is, as of now, regarding what will happen in September. This uncertainty is entirely reasonable-- the circumstances are uncertain. We should be honest about it.

Exeter has made a similar ambiguous statement.'Small group face to face teaching when safe to do so and at other times online' To me this seems to suggest live seminars online.HE are being very slippery.Caveat Emptor

I should add,of course universities are promising some f2f . This will require students to take up university accommodation, as if they would contemplate losing this overpriced earner.