Coronavirus: Giving college students good advice about 2020-21

Parent Cafe
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I know you are trying to be helpful, bu zipcar doesn’t help with the 2.5 hour drive from the airport to the school, for example. And her school’s zipcars are tiny…less than helpful for a move, very helpful if needed to run an errand somewhere.

Regarding gig workers…maybe available around her school, not sure…this is not an urban area. I also chuckle at the thought of someone going into a suite of 4 girls, with stuff literally everywhere and trying to get it all packed up accurately.

It really was an unprecedented, overwhelming situation this time. I am sure she could move out at the end of a semester by herself.

42

DS and many kids that are accelerated in math have learned most of their math via online courses, in our case AoPS. Clearly, some kids have no problem with online learning but I do not think it is for everyone. Hopefully after this necessary experiment with online learning, some of the public high schools will offer more online learning, perhaps even allowing those that are able to work ahead via online instruction with periodic face-to-face time with teachers thus freeing up the teachers to spend more time with those that need more personalized learning.

As stated upthread, the excessive college fees will hopefully come down a fair bit though since we are paying for far more than instruction and the colleges might not be able to provide that to the same degree as pre-Covid19.

43

Yes, I know your situation is in the past and wasn’t commenting on it, just offering suggestions for others since there are quite a few people who are going to be figuring this out in a few weeks/months when stuff needs to be moved out of the dorms.

44

I think the number one issue will be COST and more than ever, it should be the priority. It does not make a lot of sense for a student to pay OOS tuition at a Flagship or an expensive private college when these classes are going to be offered online.

Many Colleges are extending the commitment day to June 1st which I believe should now be the standard at every college during this cycle. Everyone needs more time to figure out what is going to happen. This situation is not going to get better by May 1s.

The amount of revenue a school can lose will be enormous. Take a school like Ohio State. They require both freshmen and sophomores to live on campus. Can you imagine the financial loss they will be taking by not having 15000 kids not paying for room and board and a meal plan?

OSU has also gone deep into their admissions. So far this year, they have admitted 6000 more students this year and perhaps they will continue to do so. They know that whoever they have admitted prior to February might not commit or enroll.

This situation is the same for many schools where a lot of the EA, ED, and even rolling admissions might be going deep into their deferred or waitlists. The other issue with this is that they have a clue who might be waiting until the last moment to pay the enrollment fee. At the same time, you might see a situation where a student pays a fee to a school with a May 1 deadline only to eventually commit to a school with a June 1 deadline

45

CU has already put all summer courses online only. Many of the summer classes are already online, but now all will be. They do not think the dorms will be open. The big consumer of summer dorms is youth camps - cheerleading, band, sports, government themed, etc., and while those haven’t been cancelled yet it is not looking good. Also, a lot of the labs were closed.

The government is watching Australia. It is now fall and the watch is on to see if there is another swell with the change of season.

Some schools are still talking about re-opening in May. It’s not going to happen; k-college are done for the school year. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/03/04/closing-schools-saved-lives-during-the-spanish.html

Sleep away college is a luxury in times of a good economy. During the pandemic, it is much more than a luxury. It could be unsafe for the students and the faculty to have classes in person. We are very lucky that we have computers and other ways to continue learning. In 1918, the schools were just closed.

46

In a perfect scenario, colleges will all move deadlines to June 1 and have a plan for fall. At the very least, they could post contingency plans if it’s deemed not safe to go back - something along the lines of (1) plan to go online for first semester with details about how that will look and what it would cost or (2) plan to go to school in the fall and move to online courses if X happens. I guess that’s not realistic, though, because no one knows how this is going to play out.

Let’s say, though, that this pandemic only affects the 2020-21 school year. Would that make anyone’s decision different who has an incoming freshman? Freshman year could be different than expected but then the next three years would be intact. I fear that parents who are changing their tunes are doing so short sightedly unless the cost is the big issue. If we had a 2020 grad, I don’t think we would make her change where she planned to go to school but would maybe ask for a gap year. We are charging ahead as planned for our D21’s search and distance and cost priorities likely won’t change.

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@twoinanddone but this pandemic isn’t going to last for four years. “Sleep away” college isn’t going to all of a sudden gone.

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Also, a lot of the first year’s classes are in general ed or non-major prerequisites and in many cases, students hate taking some of these classes. Paying the lower premium to get these out of the way might make more sense today more than ever.

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As far as packing by students or parents, etc., it’s worth noting that some students had zero choice about this. Several colleges took advantage of the fact that their students were gone on spring break and made the call not to restart in-person classes. Two students I know still have serious stuff at school. One has a car there. She’d flown home for break and car is 1500 miles away. She’d driven it out to school in January so that she could work an internship in a nearby city. She’s poor and she scrounged for money to buy the car, all self-earned–a major investment in time, effort, and expense. A second person suffered a similar fate in that she got electronic key-locked out of her dorm–she tried to go back to retrieve text books that she’d left in her room thinking she’d be back. No chance. Text books can be hundreds of dollars each.

Think carefully about where your student goes to school and what they bring with them. At this point, will the schools let the students back in? Will the schools dumpster the belongings? Valuables? Prescription meds? How will this be handled before the fall when new students are presumably due?

As far as online learning, someone upstream pointed out briefly the issue of labs. My daughter is in a field that has not only labs but extensive field research. Like every weekend they were out in the field. Many things cannot be taught online. A short list of what is hard to teach online: Music performance, theory, composition; art and design (industrial design, packaging, architecture, etc); dance and any sort of physical education (and this is not a luxury of oh I want to take swimming this year, if you hope to enter the field); most of the premed courses require labs and clinical work; oceanography and archeology and geology – and the list goes on and on. Even law school has clinical work and application. Online learning only gets you so far.

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Why would online learning be any cheaper-are you expecting colleges to cut faculty salaries for online rather than in person classes? If not, I do not understand where parents think the cost savings is going to come from to allow tuition reductions.

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I don’t think tuition will be reduced at all, and the colleges will still loose money. Most will try to hang on until students and return. Many will go bankrupt in the process.

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Colleges will simply NOT be able to let tons of students defer or take gap years while in college. Especially colleges where most students live on campus. They plan each year based on how many students leave due to graduation or study abroad. The knock on effect will mess up subsequent new classes of incoming freshmen. I expect a LOT of waitlist use this year.

@homerdog , our kids attend similar schools and I agree 100% that the online experience isn’t the same. This isn’t going to last indefinitely. How much will your son lose by not staying on course with his degree? If everyone takes a gap year, what happens to the glut of kids all graduating a year later than originally intended? Is it not possible that so many kids become totally demoralized and demotivated by skipping a year that they simply give up? If this is the foreseeable future, is it not better to undergo some kind of instruction, albeit remotely, to allow these students to learn, have structure, have something to get them through the possible coming months? I don’t have answers, btw.

As far as my family goes, my son will absolutely be starting his education up again in August, online if needed. If this continues, what else is he going to do with himself? Getting a summer job will be very difficult I expect, and I’m not going to have him just working a delivery job for a whole college year when he could be getting his education.

I suspect that in these early days of online education, there are hiccups that are going to work themselves out so that kids are going to have a more satisfactory experience. I do worry about hands-on stuff in terms of arts and labs, etc… Again, I don’t have answers, but if I had a student going into college for Fall 2020, they’d be going, whether that school is Bates or Binghamton.?

@Itisatruth , this is a thought provoking (and kind of scary) post. In your opinion, how long can this continue? I understand 100% the seriousness of this new disease. Should restrictions to daily life be eased a little, maybe in a couple of months? Can we consider treating this as an illness that vulnerable people will need to be protected from more aggressively, via isolation? If the curve is flattened, will medical professionals then be able to cope with those needing more aggressive care?

A vaccine will surely be created, I suppose in a year to 18 months. I guess what I’m thinking is that, while I totally support isolation, and am doing so strictly, our society literally will break down if this continues much longer. How are authorities weighing the balance of protecting people versus the larger breakdown of order in a civilized society? Are we soon going to be living in a Mad Max world?

We are a big country that intensely values freedom. The ball was dropped early on when more could have been done to contain this. I can’t imagine US society submitting to the strict (yet apparently effective) tactics used by the Chinese. I do wonder if, at some point later in the summer, the cure might be worse than the disease. To be clear, I believe in the recommendations of the CDC and other experts. There is going to be more knowledge gathered in the coming months that will affect decisions too.

Anyway, I feel that creating normality for our kids is important. I would absolutely not hesitate to have my college freshman start in September, online or not. I expect some colleges will adjust their pricing accordingly, should the semester have to begin online.

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@Rivet2000 I agree that a lot of colleges, especially smaller liberal arts colleges with national reputations or big endowments, will sadly get shuttered by this pandemic.

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That’s our plan for our 2020 but made easier by the fact that she was already planning a gap year. Getting the college junior to consider a leave of absence next year is a harder sell.

55

This article in the Times is about as depressing of an article as I’d want to read today…

"Historically, college students who graduate into a recession have settled for lower-paying jobs at less prestigious companies than people who finished college even a year earlier. Economists have found that the impact of that bad luck can linger for as long as 10 or 15 years, leading to higher unemployment rates and lower salaries — a phenomenon known as “scarring.”

Whether the class of 2020 will face long-term consequences depends on a range of factors, including the length of the pandemic and the severity of the recession that seems certain to follow. But it doesn’t look good.

“I’m worried for them,” said Lisa Kahn, an economist who has studied how recessions affect college graduates. “If they’re graduating into a large recession, they’re going to suffer some pretty severe short-term consequences. And that’s probably going to stay with them for almost the next decade.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/business/coronavirus-class-of-2020-jobs.html

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Right now, we’ve paid the enrollment fee for our DS20 for next year at Umass Amherst and plan to move forward, even if it means a fall semester online. We weighed the idea of sending him to our instate flagship for the fall or even a year (UConn) in order to save $ if things remain online, but then he will lose his merit scholarship at UMass Amherst. That means no real savings in the long run. Umass doesn’t do deferrals, so that’s out as well. So it was either go for it, or bail. We chose to move forward.

I guess I have to believe that this won’t last for 4 years, and right now I view it as paying for the whole 4 year package. If most schools are online in the fall, he won’t be alone, as everyone will be missing out on the same thing. If that’s the case, we will do what we can to make living at home less disappointing and look forward to January.

Ask me in a month and I may feel differently, but this is where I am today.

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@Lindagaf Thanks for that thoughtful post.

I don’t want to derail this thread with too much discussion of scenarios and models (looks like there are some robust threads about that elsewhere) but it appears that 8-12 weeks of pretty complete shutdown (that people adhere to) can do an impressive job at reducing case loads and avoiding health system overshoot. You’re right that we are a big country and it’s hard (logistically & politically) to do that everywhere all at once. It’s also true that different US states are at different points in the outbreak, but it’s crazy (epidemiologically) to think about waiting for some local trigger (# of cases, # of hospitalizations) before imposing a stay-at-home order. Despite how disruptive the stay-at-home situation is, you get the most benefit from doing this early, not waiting until community transmission has already taken hold.

“But what about testing?” More testing, more rapid testing, more accurate testing, and more antibody testing would all help enormously. Mostly what it would help us do, though, is to quickly identify cases so we could isolate them, trace contacts, and test & quarantine contacts. Right now test availability is too low and case counts are too high to do this.

“But what about a vaccine?” BEST case scenario is we have a vaccine in 18 months. That only happens if one of the early candidates already in human trials is effective and safe. Otherwise it’s longer.

“But can’t we just ease up on social distancing and protect the vulnerable separately?” This was the UK’s initial “let it burn through the population” plan that they have backed off from. The challenges with this approach are 1) vulnerable people don’t live alone, they live in families, and Americans aren’t likely to tolerate removing cases from their homes for isolation; 2) we don’t always know who the vulnerable are ahead of time; and 3) a lot of people would die.

My sincere hope is that we will achieve at least regional/statewide shutdown in most places (even if rolling) for 4-8 weeks and reset case counts to levels that hospitals can handle. In this “best case” scenario, though, we DO see case counts rise again in the fall and through next year, hopefully in a controlled way. If that happens, I don’t see how colleges/universities remain open throughout. Thus my original post about how to give good advice to students given that colleges may have to either run the whole year as a virtual year, or cycle on-and-off, possibly with short notice.

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“How will this be handled before the fall when new students are presumably due?”

Or worse, when the dorms are used as hospital overflow??

@Dustyfeathers also to add to your can’t-online list, chemistry and other lab STEM subjects.

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Fall study-abroad students were told to sign up for on campus classes as well at some schools, no decision on if study abroad allowed then.

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@Lindagaf i understand what you’re saying. I just think it’s a big unknown how parents are going to react if online is the only option for fall. In both of Bowdoin’s online town halls, the question was asked about tuition refunds. It’s on people’s minds. Colleges know that. Of course I don’t want to interrupt S19’s college experience but isn’t it already disrupted? I think the only problem would be what he would do with his time if he sat out a semester and that would indeed be an issue. If it would be impossible for him to be engaged with the world somehow during that time, we would have to consider letting him continue online. We don’t want him home with nothing to do. My brain is where it is right now. Over time, I don’t know how I will feel about it.

I’m a planner and I don’t like change. And my H and S19 have also said another online semester is not happening at $30k. I’m sure neither of them has thought this out completely. Like most kids, S19 is emotional about it and wants back on campus.

Maybe I’m just bracing for when we need to really make that decision. I want to hear how different families would decide.