Will colleges raise prices? Outside the T20 I don’t see how. Simple economics. Supply and demand.
Job losses, investment losses, less full-pay international students, less US students, plus a possible disrupter like online learning will push supply and demand.
I think you’ll see an uptick in community college and state school enrollments. Flight to safety and reduced costs.
I also think you’ll see more schools go under or consolidate. That’s just part of the higher ed business cycle. Boom and bust.
Nothing new here though. We’ve been seeing schools close. It might just accelerate unless the federal reserve backstops everything and you see unemployed and underemployed get some type of retraining.
Crud. Sorry. I thought everyone got a few articles free from NYT. It really pins most of the runaway costs of higher ed. on oversized salaries for non-teaching administration. NYT tends to be very pro-education (in a general sense) so I found the article interesting.
Certainly the increasing demands we see every day in our high school would also be reflected in higher ed (you mention several- mental health support comes to mind).
Based on the URL, it appears to be an opinion piece (that, in the print version of the newspaper, would be in the editorial/opinion section), rather than a news article.
Traditional print newspapers kept the opinionated stuff in a separate section from the news articles. Although, on their web sites, they may clearly mark the opinion web pages as opinion, readers may be less likely to notice the distinction between opinion and news article on the web than in print. Of course, television news is even worse in mixing opinion and news so that viewers may be less able to tell the difference.
Nevertheless, it is likely the case that some of what is collectively called “administrative bloat” is due to the accumulation of small ancillary services, each of which individually has a small fiscal effect and is generally considered a good idea when looked at in isolation (often due to a vocal constituency that wants it there but no real opposition), but which adds up to a significant added cost when all such things are added together.
Regarding waitlist, I think it will depend on waitlisted where, if you waitlisted at a OOS flagship, it is a double edge sword, you might gain by less international students but lose at kids who use their instate flagship as a safety and may bail on a private school due to cost. Now if you are waitlisted at a LAC or really pricey school you stand a better chance bc of both the international student and the US student who flees to their state flagship. My son got into a OOS state flagship ( Uminn ) but we did not get to see it, still do not have a complete aid package and it is 1000 miles away so I doubt it will make the cut. So a spot will open up but maybe some kid from Minn was gonna go to NYU and decides to save cash and stay home and takes my son spot, the waitlisted kid never gets out of waitlist land.
Many public universities are the lower cost option for their in-state students, so if they raise their in-state prices, they are still likely to fill their seats, especially as more students choose them over even more expensive private schools. Pressure to raise prices will come from state budget cuts due to falling tax revenue.
Tax revenues drop because there’s less income. If there’s less income, how do parents pay higher tuition? They can’t. The only options are to shift demand to less expensive schools (CC or cheaper OOS options), not attend at all or look at alternatives.
Colleges have been able to pass along cost increases for years. Maybe this time they can’t. It really all depends on how long the economy is depressed from the virus.
It happens in the private sector all-the-time. A business has a competitive advantage that allows them to set the market. Eventually competition or a disruptor changes the dynamic and they can no longer charge what they want. IBM, Xerox, Sears, Kodak, and Blockbuster come to mind. US higher ed isn’t exempt.
Right now there are a lot of potential disruptors…corona, the economy, demographics, and less international students. Distance learning could be the new competitor. I suspect the pace of college closings and acquisitions will increase.
Unless you are in Pennsylvania or some similar state with respect to unaffordable in-state public universities, out-of-state options are not that likely to be less expensive for most students.
Even if in-state public universities raise prices, they will still get some additional demand (even at the now higher price) from students who previously would have chosen more expensive private or out-of-state colleges but are now unable or unwilling due to either or both of price increases at those colleges or worse household finances.
I.e. if the in-state public price increases from $25k to $30k, some students will be priced out, but others who in the past would have paid $40k, $50k, … for a private or out-of-state school now decide that, even at $30k, the in-state public is the best choice for them.
I think one thing that will be very different next year is that few students will do study abroad. Some of the LACs have 1/2 the junior class away for part of the year (or all) but I bet next year there will be very few, so that will mean 250-500 more kids on campus from that class.
Those who have filed for DACA can renew their applications but they aren’t taking any new DACA applicants. The group that had filed is getting older and some may have graduated. The number of DACA students will be decreasing.
Since we all are aware of the Covid-19 outbreak and it is disturbing all the Industry and of course even the education sector will also going to affect furthur admission. In coming to Admission Year, Most of the students will avoid Aborad education.
I don’t think the number of undocumented students will decrease. Not having DACA makes their journey even harder. Here locally students who were brought here by their parents have limited options to fund higher ed already. The local small schools are often their only option.
Students who have strong SAT/ACT scores by March of junior year likely will be advantaged in elite admissions. Many top students take the tests early, and are satisfied with one sitting. Though colleges will have to be test optional, strong scores will surely help applications in a year when other test scores like APs and SAT2 are uncertain and second semester grades may be pass/fail or less reliable indicators.
How would a recession impact college admissions? What was the impact in 2008? The recession’s impact will be greater than the virus. The virus will pass, but the economic damage will be already done. However I do think that it is already priced into the stock market and we will not see the dow go below 20000. I expect the dow to get back to 29,000 fairly quickly. My personal portfolio is 100% stocks so I have lost a lot but I am not planning in taking that money out for a long time as my parents are paying for my education. But the stock market is not the economy and the overall economy will suffer much worse than the stock market. GS is predicting 15% unemployment which is a very scary number. We won’t just magically go back to 3 % when the virus is done, it will be a long road to recovery.
Also…the AP exams are now 45 minutes without mc. In my opinion, it will be harder to distinguish between students who mastered their AP courses and those who learned their AP courses ok. This will have an impact on college admission since college wouldn’t know if the 5 on AP exam is actually a 4 or a real 5.
Adding on to that is the fact that because the tests are online, there’s going to be more cheating this year, making it even harder to know if the student really knows the material. And apparently it’s also open book?
Being open book means that using the book/notes/etc. while taking the test will not be cheating. (Of course, open book tests generally have more difficult problems.)
Getting help from other people would still be a way to cheat.
Sorry, I probably should have phrased that better. I meant that the online format makes it more likely that people will cheat by getting help from people and stuff, and that on an unrelated note, it looks like it’s also going to be open book, which sounds like it’ll make some of the exams way easier (like AP Psych, which already has a reputation for being easy if you can memorize stuff well).
Yeah but think of the opposite. Lots of good kids counting on those AP classes to possibly help them graduate college early. Can’t penalize them. I’m only guessing but the kids taking AP classes are usually better prepared and more motivated…hopefully the honor system works.