@Itisatruth I don’t believe LACs with big endowments will be shuttered by this but things will have to change- maybe big projects on campus come to a halt, maybe financial aid practices change for a bit, etc.
I would keep an eye on each college’s updates. Bowdoin is already saying they are looking at the finances and told us some of the changes that will happen. Good for schools to be clear about that as they make adjustments.
Argh, I of course meant “without” national reputations or big endowments.
@homerdog
“I think the number one issue will be COST”
I think that this is entirely correct.
A lot of parents have had their investments collapse in value at the same time that their jobs are at least in short term limbo. Meanwhile universities are having their endowments drop in value.
I do not understand how universities can compute need based aid for parents who might or might not have a job in September.
It has been clear for a few weeks that some restaurants will disappear due to this pandemic. I am beginning to wonder how many colleges will do the same.
“We are very lucky that we have computers and other ways to continue learning.”
The Internet certainly makes this pandemic isolation less bad than it could have been.
One factor I haven’t seen mentioned much is that in some areas the college dorms will likely be used for hospital or clinic beds as cases surge, also as housing for first responders or those in quarantine. If those beds are still in use come July, colleges will have little planning flexibility.
Schools around here didn’t end up packing kids up and having them come home until after some cases occurred at colleges. our family has health issues that make us higher risk. That’s a serious concern for me. Many schools have found they had cases before they had students leave campus. I think schools didn’t want to call things off too early and I think that is likely to happen in the future. By the time these schools shuts things down, there was significant community spread so even driving back home and needing to use a restroom or gas station could come with risk. Flying even more so. I would not want to have been flying anywhere when colleges around this region of the country started shutting down and don’t think it was a safe time to fly at all. So, I do have reservations about distance.
I’m pretty sure many students having to do so all at once would leave some having to take buses or planes or have parents come get them as it would lead to shortages.
I will take the risk to a young adult of catching the virus on a plane over the likelihood of a car crash any day, but YMMV.
I also worry that some state colleges may be hit badly. Our state has considered closing some (and at one time all) of the regional campuses, for example! They are currently all still open but I would hate to see one of them be closed. I am not so sure that state colleges are necessarily safer.
@suteiki77 Well shame on those schools. I agree that many waited too long. There were schools, though, like Harvard that decided early with no short timelines - it was pack up and go now and school is online for the rest of the semester. Many other schools, within a few days of that announcement, followed suit. It was the schools that dragged the decision on and on - maybe a two week close, maybe an extension of spring break, maybe come back from spring break and we will try campus with social distancing that really blew it. And some worse than others where kids stayed WAY too long. I’m guessing that was a fiscal decision for the schools that made the kids wait too long for the final decision to close. Hopefully, if this happens again, they all know to close shop and move back and not have these arbitrary “back to campus” dates that were never going to happen.
Any way to gauge whether a specific school is at danger of not making it through? My d is at a small regional LAC (although she’s waiting word on a transfer) and my hs senior son has quite a few lesser known schools on his list.
The business magazine Forbes has a rating of private colleges’ financial strength that may be useful as a starting point.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2019/11/27/dawn-of-the-dead-for-hundreds-of-the-nations-private-colleges-its-merge-or-perish/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/11/27/how-fit-is-your-school-the-methodology-behind-forbes-2019-college-financial-health-grades/
I would imagine that all of these college towns will be pushing hard to have students (undergrad / graduate) come back to college as soon as possible as their campus is the lifeblood of their communities.
Can the hundreds of college towns such as Chapel Hill, Lewisburg, Ann Arbor, Davis, etc survive with prolonged college campus shutdowns?
I could see a process where students are tested for the antibody (i.e. had the virus and are now immune) and since they are no longer a threat, allowed back on campus. Students without the antibody will be doing online instruction until they get the virus and recover or a vaccine is developed.
Food for thought…
Harvard decided early because at the time there was an outbreak from the Biogen conference at Cambridge. It was a hasty decision that wasn’t very well planned out. Some schools that took a bit more time were able to make better arrangements for their students, including covering all shipping costs of essential materials or more to students’ homes, and storing the rest on campus free of charge, if the students don’t reside locally. Some even offer to pay for travel expenses and cover room and board at the same level (even if the students stay home) for those on financial aid. Future students should take a hard look at how each college is handling this crisis and take it into consideration when selecting colleges. It shows colleges’ commitment to their students.
It is not known if this virus has an antibody. Other corona viruses have not had a long lasting immunity.
@1NJParent Well you know I agree with that.
Our refund check for the full price of room and board was already sent out last Thursday, Bowdoin stored stuff if kids needed that, they paid for one pretty large box to be sent home for free with what kids needed for summer if they couldn’t get to campus.
Contrast that with U Wisconsin, where kids were sent home and then a few days later were given notice at 10:00 am to get their stuff out by 9:00pm that night or someone will pack it and the university didn’t know when students would be allowed back to get their things. We had friends who jumped in their cars and got there just in time to pack up and get out. That was not handled well. Lots of variations on that where our local friends still have their stuff in their dorms rooms (ie. at Alabama) with no info on when they are allowed back.
I’ve bookmarked the coronavirus update pages for all of the schools on D21’s list so I can continue to monitor how each school is taking care of its students. Two of the three schools we were planning to visit this week invited her to virtual info sessions with live students present via Zoom to answer questions. That makes me happy and then not so happy that the third one isn’t doing that yet. It shows that those schools are pivoting quickly and doing what they need to do.
@homerdog Thanks! I don’t know if it is the school’s fault. I think it was caused by lack of ability to test and official numbers for our state being way off as a result. Parts of our state didn’t have any official cases so the schools stayed open, but I felt increasingly uneasy. I don’t trust the judgement of others to always be right about when is the time to close things down. My SIL took her students on a field trip the day before they announced they had someone test positive according to her. I hope that if we have a second wave and have to shut things down that we will be more prepared and that it won’t take someone getting sick to make it happen or that it won’t happen and then we discover in the next few days that people tested positive at the school (as happened in some places here). My son visited one such school 2 1/2 weeks ago now, so thankfully didn’t get it while there. Lowish chance he would have but still, not very comforting at the time I learned of it.
Sure, it’s not 100% but Dr Fauci is very confident that once you have the virus you will be immune. I’m sure we will know more before college starts in the fall.
@ucbalumnus thanks. I have looked at that site, and all of the colleges I’m looking at are around C+or lower. Yikes! But I don’t think all of them are in danger of closing. Trying to figure out how all of they might fare after something like this is what’s hard.
FWIW, the Bucknell president has given a great outline of their situation and plans. Bucknell is rated A- by Forbes.
You can find the info here: https://www.bucknell.edu/life-bucknell/health-wellness-safety/coronavirus-covid-19-updates/coronavirus-covid-19-messages
If you scroll down it’s the March 24 message.
I think the best thing to keep in mind about his message is that he says not only do we not have all the answers, we don’t even know all of the questions yet.
From an academic point of view, the cost to the student of college closure increases as the student gets closer to graduation. If the college closes after the student’s ___ year…
From a financial point of view, students dependent on merit scholarships for affordability will find that large merit scholarships are less common for transfer students, so a forced transfer due to college closure can make affordability more difficult for them. For students dependent on need-based financial aid, the financially weaker colleges are more likely to have worse need-based financial aid in the first place.