Proof – As If We Needed More – That The Wrong People Are Attending University

The parents of a student who killed herself after receiving inaccurate exam results are calling for universities to provide better support.

What? How exactly are universities to anticipate some snowflake topping herself over something so trivial...except, perhaps, by better screening of the people they let in? 

Mared Foulkes, from Anglesey, received an email in July 2020 saying that she had failed an assessment and could not progress to her third year – even though she had already re-sat it and passed.

Did she know she'd passed on the retake? The article doesn't make it clear. 

Mared’s family want to see a change in the law on how universities support students with mental health issues, and how they communicate with the families of students.

Mared’s mother, Iona Foulkes, said: “She came home that evening from work and we had a normal family meal.

“Then she decided she wanted to make a cheesecake and said she was going to the local supermarket and asked if I wanted anything.

"She took the car keys and left.”

Two police officers visited the house later that evening to tell her family that she had died.

How this could have been forseen by the university, if the family didn't suss it out, is anyone's guess.  

"She had worked so hard at her course," her mother added. "She had her heart set on becoming a pharmacist from a young age. She had done voluntary work in a hospital in the Philippines and been accepted to study in China.

“To be informed that you have failed two years of study and you couldn’t progress – it must have been horrific.

“You are talking about a 21-year-old, a young person getting this information.

Did she expect to go through life never encountering disappointment? If so, her family failed her.  

“It is a tragedy which should never have happened. It shouldn’t be. Something needs to change – quickly – before more families have to endure what we have to live with for the rest of our lives.”

Well, we could mandate mental health assessment before attendance? 

Nine months before Mared died, she had visited the university’s support services to discuss her mental health, but her family did not find out until a year after her death.

They had no idea? It's not like the university could breach her confidentiality and tell them, is it?