Students at top UK universities have been turned away from lectures due to overcrowding and told to watch the lecture on live-streams, according to The Observer. 

Students from universities in Nottingham, Lancaster and Manchester have been refused entry to their lectures as a result of lecture theatres reaching full capacity. As a response, the universities have been offering students the opportunity to watch a YouTube live-stream or watch the lecture in  ‘overflow’ rooms – without the ability to actively engage in lectures. 

Universities UK, the representative body of UK higher education, stated that: ‘Universities will be mindful to ensure this does not compromise the quality of teaching or disadvantage students not attending in person.’

The University of Manchester told The Observer that ‘when overcrowding does occur, we work with schools to resolve it as quickly as possible and use various solutions, including moving the lecture to a larger location or splitting the cohort into smaller groups.’ 

This issue was also present at the University of Nottingham, who stated that: ‘For a two-week period last September, a particular set of law lectures proved more popular than anticipated for the allocated theatre capacity… Rather than disappoint students, we arranged a live stream of the lecture for some 20 students in the adjoining theatre, with full technical support and additional tutorials to ensure they could explore the lecture topic in person with tutors.’

The National Union of Students (NUS) has since stated that overcrowded lectures is a result of ‘desperate’ universities over-subscribing their courses in order to increase tuition-fee income. 

Giving their views on the issue of overcrowded lectures, one University of Birmingham student told Redbrick: ‘I think it’s ridiculous that we pay £9250-a-year but can’t fit into a lecture theatre. I think universities should be cutting down their class sizes, holding more classes or building bigger lecture theatres.’ 

Another UoB student said that ‘we already give universities a lot of pressure so I think we should not pressure them over class sizes. Half the people don’t turn up to lectures anyway so why should they bother.’ 

With overcrowding becoming an ever increasing problem for UK universities, UoB has recently undertaken building developments in order to provide students with additional study spaces, lecture theatres and seminar rooms. One such development is the recently completed Teaching and Learning Building, located on the Green Heart, which possesses ‘a 500 seater lecture theatre, a 250 seater interactive lecture theatre, 10 seminar rooms for 30 students at a time and learning spaces for up to 1,000 students’ – in order to ‘support the modern learning experience’ at the university. 

However, with undergraduate and postgraduate intake at universities increasing steadily year on year since 2012, how universities will deal with the increasing demand is not yet understood and will most certainly require increased investment into new developments on campuses.