I agree there’s value in all of that, but it’s a luxury for many.
Who knows what will happen, but the LAC model will be under pressure before the research university model.
I will have to look at the stats, but even currently I’m pretty sure more college students commute to college than live on campus, counting community and online college.
Agree on the risk of anxiety and depression for all of these students, high schoolers maybe more so than college students.
Why is there the assumption that online instruction at the expensive place is somehow going to be no better than online instruction at the cheap place? That same argument could be made for in-class instruction! Yes, the emergency remote thing has all of us scrambling, but by the fall we will be better at it.
If it is reasonable to expect differences between live instruction at a Famous-Name-LAC and a Big-State-U, it also is reasonable to expect differences between the online experiences. Even in just one week of classes, I see a difference in instructional management for my smaller class than for my larger one. The whole class discussions I saw in that smaller class in Zoom were much more lively, and management of the break out groups was much easier (allowing for more student-student participation and student-instructor communication) than in the larger one.
Now if the truth really is that this coronavirus adventure has scared you into tightening your belt, that is another thing entirely. But please be straight with your kid about that. Don’t use distance instruction as an excuse.
Well because what you get at the expensive place isn’t always measured by the instructional quality itself but also by what you get from living on campus with the other students - the whole 24-7 lifestyle. If it were totally about best instructional quality for the dollar my kids would probably go to the local community college for their first 2 years and then transfer. But I’m not convinced that paying top dollar for an online course from small, name-brand LAC is going to get better results than paying a minimal fee for a similar online course from College of San Mateo or Skyline.
However, it may depend on the student. Some students may find remote learning perfectly fine (or better for those who also have scheduling constraints around work and/or family obligations), while others would do better in a more traditional classroom environment. Those who succeeded at completing online degrees at ASU, etc. are likely somewhat self-selected as those who can succeed in that format; it is not assured that all students will be as successful.
Of course, the traditional in-person classroom tends to be much more expensive on the cost side, so it may end up becoming more of a luxury item for those with wealthy parents.
The on-campus experience is a luxury item in the world of college education. Most college students commute from where they lived before college to a local community college or university.
Obviously, for those who can afford the luxury of the on-campus experience, it may be bothersome to pay a premium for a college where that is the norm, but not actually get it due to “temporary” switch to distance learning.
I have a daughter who is currently a junior. Most of her classes involve labs, which sort of just disappear with on-line classes. I am very doubtful regarding whether classes will resume normally in September of 2020.
She also has gotten funding to continue her research through the summer, and we do not know whether this will happen.
I think that we are just going to wait and see what happens.
I am hoping to buy time and am awaiting colleges to grant a june 1 decision date.
I’m of the opinion that online learning is lesser. I completed my undergrad at a totally legitimate state school online, and continued to my first masters at another totally legitimate public school online. My husband gave WGU a whirl for grad school. I’ve also attended college and grad school in person, and for me there is no real comparison. My older daughter (a college freshman) feels the same. My younger daughter (high school senior) loves online DE classes but only because she hates any classroom that isn’t a dance studio. I think it’s quite real and fair that small LACs admit it’s not the same. My daughter didn’t pick Haverford for online classes. My younger daughter already got her gap year approved but she isn’t attending an elite school by any stretch.
ETA: For my own self, I can learn fine from online courses, but it just doesn’t feel the same to me. For my older daughter, she just doesn’t learn/retain things the same as she does in a small classroom setting.
@happymomof1 For us, it’s not about tightening our belts. Our feelings around more online semesters and maybe taking a gap semester are more about expectations. We “signed up” for S19 to have a certain experience and are willing to pay for that but not necessarily for something different. We had no choice (like all parents) about this semester so, already, he’s not getting what we paid for. If this moves into next semester, we will have the opportunity to decide what he will do.
I am so glad that I came across this thread this morning. In yesterday’s mail, D20 received one of those “We Can’t Wait to See You at ____ “ from our nearby state university. She looked at it, tossed it on the kitchen counter with other college marketing material, and I took that opportunity to say something that I knew she would not want to hear. I told D20 that we really needed to go ahead and put a deposit down, so she could secure her spot in the Honors College at the nearby university. She told me that she would rather go to an out-of-state university that is 12 hours away. I told her that I had no way of predicting the future, but that based on the current pandemic, the far away school would not be affordable. And that she should consider the significantly cheaper in-state option, and maybe transfer in the future. I thought D20 would argue, but all she said was that she just couldn’t see how Fall 2020 semesters will happen anyway. 
Distance has been an issue with colleges giving students just a couple of days to pack up and move out. It is logistically difficult. We have seen here on CC that parents had to take time off of work and fly into locations for drive a long way staying at hotels.
There is a college in my state that gave the students an extra long spring break and are doing distance learning for a few weeks. They act like the students will be returning to campus to their dorm rooms. Ultimately they will have to give that up. Then families and students will have to return to pack up their rooms while the virus is in its peak.
This type of scenario was not even imagined by me when my kids headed off across the country. It would definitely be part of the calculation now.
Tens of thousands of college students manage to pack up and return home without requiring parental support. Whether that occurs in May or March, it is the same process, and can be done in a very short time by any responsible college student.
I can’t speak to others’ experiences but in our family, the virus has absolutely led to a [parental, at least] preference for closer and preference for cheaper.
The preference for “closer” is probably more emotional than anything else, though I acknowledge the moving/storage/stuff/travel complications and I do think it is a real consideration.
The preference for “cheaper” is a direct result of our 529 losses, even in a fund that was supposedly “target date” and I would have thought would be less in the market at this time for our DS20. We were kind of marginally ready for DS’s top choice with the FA award (already unsuccessfully appealed). Now I think it would be financially imprudent to go that route.
And I agree that if DS is going to be in our house at online classes, I’m kind of grumbly about paying for the expensive option for that reason as well.
Sure is a lot easier with a parent. My daughter, being unable to rent a car (like most college age students) would have struggled to move out by herself.
How to get from (and back) to the airport 2.5 hours away? Take a train/bus, and have a much greater risk of infection…at the time of move out there were already many infections in the Boston area.
Getting boxes to a storage facility also required a car. Uber not really a thing in her college town.
Getting 7 boxes to the school’s mail center…much easier with 2 peeps. And no one on campus to help.
International students somehow find a way to manage pack out without parents flying back into the country. I honestly never saw parents doing this at my out of state college years ago. While I guess it is nice if you want to do so, it really isn’t necessary. There are many services that will pick up boxes, on and off site storage options at many places, and students do help each other, or can if necessary pay or get creative with ways to help each other.
My point is that it is easier with two people and in our case that was a parent.
Just to correct a common misconception on this forum, many college students can and do rent cars. My high school student did. Yes, they will have to pay the high young driver surcharges, but if renting for only a day or two, it can be economical. All rental agencies require drivers to be at least age 18, some require 19 or 20. Many colleges also offer zip cars to rent by the hour.
I think the problem with packing up at this crazy time is that not everyone was packing up on the same day and, on any given day, not that many kids were on campus. At Bowdoin, kids were flying back during their spring break and had a window of eight days to come back. That meant that there wasn’t a whole floor of kids to help each other get boxes, loan cars to each other, help each other pack up. At a normal pack up time, I assume there would be a lot of scurrying around with friends helping in the dorms and it was different this time.
I don’t think, in good conscious, I could have sent S19 on a plane in the middle of March by himself to pack himself up by himself, find storage, and complete the move. 300 of the 1800 kids on campus did not return at all and had friends and their families help pack them up. We were lucky that was an option for us and S19’s stuff is now clean and safe and sound in his roommate’s house in Boston. It kind of takes a village during this time. I’m not regretting the distance at all. Everyone did what they had to do whether it was flying a parent out with a student or accepting help from more local friends.
Exactly. There were two other students/parents moving out of her entire dorm that day, campus was very quiet. You could not get boxes or tape on campus…so I had to drive to a store to procure supplies. You could not store stuff on campus, nor did they offer a service to get stuff to a storage locker.
Not to mention, it was a lot of hard work and exhausting 28 hours or so…2.5 hour flight and 2.5 hour drive, then 5 hours or so of packing/cleaning. Schlep boxes for mailing to mail center, drive stored stuff to storage locker, 2.5 hour drive back to the airport. We felt time was of the essence, with a risk of air travel being interrupted or shut down, etc.
All in all, happy I was able to help her. She was also (like other kids we saw that day) very emotional due to having to move out…this was nothing like a normal move out day at the end of the semester.
Not helpful for you daughter unfortunately, but if any others are reading and their student needs to rent a car there are a few less often known options to try: