Interesting: of the above public universities and colleges that have announced, ca. 75% will be primarily in-person, as opposed to around 45-50% of those private colleges and universities that have announced.
Of the 12 “ivy-plus” universities and colleges, only 2 or 17% will be primarily in-person.
For reference, the overall tally at the Chronicle of Higher Education shows 59% of ca. 1,000 universities and colleges that have announced so far will be primarily in-person.
So it seems likely that the most prestigious colleges in the nation feel no pressure to deliver in-person instruction as the majority of colleges and universities do.
The only potential explanation for this anomaly is that the demand for the elite universities has nothing to do with actual instructional quality or educational value, and everything to do with the value of what economists call “signaling.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but $75,000 per year for the privilege of staring at screens? Really?
Will employers still consider graduates of such a program well-educated?
How long before the prestige and academic reputation of Yale et al. begin to decline?
Harvard reported on a recent zoom call that almost all students wanted to be back on campus, but only freshman will be on campus in the fall, and seniors in the spring according to current plans. My son, an entering freshman, is pretty disappointed.
But I think you misunderstand if you think that the real value of an elite college is the teaching. Quite often the professors at elite colleges are no better at teaching than professors at hundreds of other colleges across the USA. I attended a state flagship for undergrad and a HYPSM for grad school. I saw no difference in teaching quality.
What is different at elite colleges however is interaction and learning from the peer group. And restricting the number of students on class and their socialization is probably what will hurt students the most.
In many cases, elite students have been taught online for years. As one example, every one of the strongest math kids in the USA uses Art of Problem Solving, which for years was purely online only.
It’s clear that the elite colleges are primarily networks that validate and acculturate a student and give entree into a few employers who demand the elite label.
But the main point is that the university pricing model is not sustainable or justifiable if the instruction is primarily online.
Even the AoPS courses you refer to, as expensive as they are, do not charge more than $2,000 for each 36-week course, which would equate to not more than $10,000 in annual tuition for five solid academic high school or middle school courses.
Compare that to ~$60,000 in annual tuition for Ivy-on-Screens. Hard to see how parents, employers and grad schools will continue to believe that such degrees indicate superior merit. Or that Congress will allow their endowment returns to continue to be untaxed.
Fwiw I looked at a summary of 31 super-prestigious (“draw” => 2, ie the yield rate is at least 2x the admission rate) private colleges and universities that have announced, and the primarily online vs in-person decision is highly correlated with draw, ie with prestige.
The lower the draw/prestige, the higher the likelihood that the school will be primarily in-person. The higher the draw/prestige, the higher the likelihood the school’s classes will be primarily or even entirely online.
In short, they go online not because of any scientific logic but because they can.
@thibault More like $50k+ without housing. Cheaper even for Princeton with a 10% cut. You made a great point - If in-person vs. online makes no difference to the brand, then we can conclude that Ivy+ products are just like coca cola - mostly bubbles and marketing stories.
Maybe the average age of faculty is higher at the private schools? They might belong to a higher risk group. Not sure…
"Davidson College’s C2i the Data Dashboard includes Fall 2020 reopening plans classified into the following descriptions:
-Fully In person – Classes will exclusively be conducted in person
-Primarily in person, some courses just online – Classes will be mainly conducted in person with certain exceptions for online delivery
-Fully online no students on campus – Classes will only be conducted online, residence halls closed
-Fully online with at least some students on campus – Classes will only be allowed online, residence halls open
-Primarily online, some courses just in person – Classes will be taught primarily online with the exception of some courses. Example: allowing classes with lab components to meet in person
-Hyflex teaching – Professors are allowed to decide how to teach their course on a rolling basis. Some weeks/days online, some weeks/day in person and so on
-Simultaneous teaching – Professors will be required to teach their courses online and in person, at the same time
-Professor’s choice – The institution has allowed their professors to pick their method of academic delivery
-TBD – No announcement has been made about Fall 2020 instruction
-No COVID-19 mentions – Some institutions do not have COVID-19 updates available on their websites, these tend to be religiously aligned or special-mission institutions.
-Some variety of methods, non specific plan – Institutions provide a list of general intentions but do not have a clear plan.
-Closed – The institution has shut its doors since the last IPEDS update.
-Already an online institution – The institution already provided all courses online, prior to March 2020.
-Other – A mode of instruction not listed among those above. "
In the C2i Dashboard you can filter the institutions by selecting “Fall 2020” from the options on the left-hand rail, then select the > symbol to open the drawer and select “Four Year Schools.”
That will open up a series of filter criteria in the main workspace, where you can sort by “REOPENING STATUS” and then by varies aggregations (Carnegie Classification, NCAA Division, USNWR ranking, peer institutions, banned mascots & cancelled founders etc.)
As noted previously, the main determinant of whether a college opens to primarily in-person instruction is prestige - whether they can. That is, can the college force us parents and our kids to accept inferior instruction because they know we won’t bail.
Here’s what Davidson’s C2i Data Dashboard indicates about Carnegie Classification - Doctoral Research Universities, Highest /Higher Research Activity, for 165 universities who’ve provided info on their plans:
Top 25 (USNWR): 14 online, 3 in-person (others hybrid or TBD) = 84% online
To give their child the privilege of staring at screens while sitting in a dorm room, here’s what the parents of a full-freight student (roughly half the total enrolled) will pay in 2020-21. This includes tuition, fees, books & supplies costs, and living costs:
GWU and Georgetown are giving 10% tuition discounts this semester and there is no R and B . For GWU they will be losing 300M . If this continues in the spring semester will they survive?
Note that the cookie crumbled when DC announced that every student coming in except for some states needed to quarantine first. Basically DC does not want students there. Add in a huge March on the 28th that DC will not be able to control their quarantine rules on, and this is what happened.
Georgetown = $55,794 tuition * .9 = $50,214
George W. U. = $56,935 tuition * .9 = $51,241
ie ~$50k for the privilege of sitting in your room at home and staring at screens.
Consider: the undergraduate online courses at Arizona State Online cost from $530-728 per course, or ca. $6-7k for a year’s worth of courses (assuming 5 courses each semester).
Seems doubtful that employers and graduate schools would view an online course from GeorgeX U. as 8 times better than the same course pursued at ASU Online.
Q: Why is any university charging 7-8x what ASU is charging for a substantially identical product?
Without Covid for certain degrees there are benefits of GW/AU/GT. I dont want to debate that here. And not everyone is full pay. I was just reporting what they did. I know someone who left a small private to attend ASU online. The topic here is announcements for the fall. not the value of education
The topic of my thread is actually not just who’s opening but also why.
As the Davidson database indicates, there’s an extraordinarily wide range of responses.
It seems very odd that the most expensive colleges are also, by and large, those most likely to close their campuses. This suggests that the decision to open or close might not be primarily driven by medical or other public health judgments.
Which is of course extremely relevant to a thread about who’s opening, and why.
I think the assumption that people are paying the sticker price is flawed. Although my child did not qualify for need-based aid he was offered a Presidential Scholarship (purely merit) which would have brought that GW tuition to under $30k.
American is also offering a 10% discount. And as far as DC not wanting the students there, while a good number are staying home, many (perhaps more) are also returning to live apartments with 1-5 roommates. I only know about sophomores but I would think juniors and seniors might also be returning or perhaps never left. There are even some parents of freshmen looking for off-campus housing.
I don’t want to assume anything but I wonder if GW, Georgetown, Catholic, etc will all have a similar proportion of kids heading back to the city?
Look who’s backtracking on previous announcements now, even as most of the less-expensive/less-prestigious universities are staying the course - announcements during the last 2 weeks.
Columbia: announced August 14 they will be 100% online
Stanford: announced on August 13 that they will be 100% online
Penn: announced August 11 they will be 100% online
Brown: announced August 11 they will be 100% online
Princeton: announced August 7 that they will be 100% online
(previously announced) Harvard will be 100% online
(previously announced) MIT will be 100% online
As of August 18, Cornell will continue to pursue a hybrid model, as will Yale and Dartmouth.
Q: Why are these particular universities doing this while other less-prestigious but academically-excellent universities remain open to in-person instruction?
A: Because they can.
They know there are a subset of parents who will pay any price, bear any burden, accept any form of shabby treatment in order to snag Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket.
At some point, probably sooner than expected, the whole elite undergraduate college prestige game is going to be exposed as a sham.
Those universities that remained open during this time are the ones that will likely thrive even as the Online-Ivies decline in prestige and reputation.
Regarding those major universities whose reputation, already very high, will probably rise as the Online-Ivies’ reputation falls, here are 12 excellent Tier I public research universities that as of Aug. 18 remain open to primarily or partly in-person instruction:
True that the future is unwritten but I think it highly unlikely that the presidents of these universities - Purdue, TAMU, Texas and tOSU, as well as the flagship universities of Georgia and Utah and also Georgia Tech - will shut down their in-person classes.