Originally Posted by
squawk
Postgraduate researchers, who are not employees and therefore have no employment rights whatsoever, have often had it even worse: I know several who weren’t able to access specialised equipment/software for many months
These "postgraduate researchers" are students that have, once again, been let down by the university bigwigs. There's also an argument that some junior employees - most notably postdoctoral researchers - have been treated even more harshly than the PhD students because they can't access student wellbeing services, and they aren't part of the student appraisal system. Of course, all consequences of decisions made by senior academics sitting on cushy permanent jobs.
By setting a return date of 17 May, the government might hope that many students simply won't return to university in any meaningful way until September. The risk of student unrest is just too high: we've already seen trouble in Manchester, and the last thing we want is student protests on the scale of 2010.