The digital coffee chat with friends is the highlight of her current social life for the Heidelberg law student Annalena Wirth. It is the second semester in which she is studying online due to corona – the Corona regulation prohibits classroom teaching throughout November. “I was really looking forward to the lectures and was very sad that these are only held digitally,” says the 19 – year-old spokeswoman for the Student council of the University of Heidelberg.

After weeks of brooding over a housework in her small student dorm, she had been looking forward to contacts at a lecture – but she found yourself in the anonymity of an online event. Solving cases in working groups is now flat. Instead, you have to struggle with technology; In her first lecture the online system only allowed 250 participants. “If there are more, the one with the strongest internet comes into play,” she explains.

Effects of digital studies Up until now, Wirth saw it as an advantage to live alone in a one-room apartment. Now she envies her fellow students who live in shared apartments and are always approached. It is also not possible to have lunch together in the cafeteria, food is only “to go”. For the freshmen it is particularly difficult to orientate themselves, to make contacts, to make friends or to get tips from older fellow students. All of this is part of student life. “It’s a very stressful time,” the young woman sums up.

Loneliness, technical problems, financial worries because of losing a part-time job – the problems faced by students are far more elementary than just not partying. According to a study by the German Center for University and Science Research published in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , isolation is a major worry. 80 Percent of the students surveyed between June and August suffer from the lack of exchange with fellow students. 63 Percentage of missing contact with the lecturer. Only percent grapple with the pitfalls of online teaching.

In the southwest, students and Professors hoped until shortly before the start of the winter semester last Monday that the concepts for as much face-to-face teaching as possible would be implemented. In contrast to daycare centers and schools, the universities’ educational institutions were not spared the forced retreat into the digital age. This disappointment has now also called on the rectors of the nine universities in the state.

The head of the state rectors’ conference, Stephan Dabbert, paints for the students who came to the universities this and last semester gloomy picture. The development has serious consequences for them. “In the book studies, for example, the two digital semesters mean that a bachelor’s student will not enter the university for a third of his or her study time and has no direct exchange with the lecturers or his fellow students,” says Dabbert. “This will inevitably have an impact on the duration of the course and the success of the course,” added the rector of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. According to the study published in the period believe 47 Percentage of students that their studies will be extended due to the pandemic.

Heidelberg Rector Bernhard Eitel also prepares the students for tough times. In a welcome email at the start of his studies, he shows, among other things, the difficulties that the 5000 freshmen and students newly enrolled in Heidelberg are confronted with: “The current circumstances make it difficult Massive to get to know each other, to exchange information and to organize studies as part of life. ”

Measures of the universities Despite all the criticism of the universities of the worsened study conditions, the Ministry of Science sees them doing their job well. All universities have worked intensively on formats to pick up freshmen as well as second semesters and create the best possible starting conditions for them. Many universities could have welcomed their freshmen to face-to-face events even before the restrictions. Others are changing their offers for the coming days and weeks under high pressure, praises Theresia Bauer’s (Greens) department.

Annalena Wirth, who is studying in her third semester, does not help much at the moment. She is happy that at least the university library is not closed. She flees there when the ceiling falls on her head at home.

(olb)