@roycroftmom wrote:
landlords will get the rent per the leases students have already signed, and students are more than eager to move back to their college towns.
Not always true about getting rent on leases. I am a landlord (I hate the term BTW) and rent to several college student (groups) and regular families. Most pay, some don’t. I’ve already had to put a student on a payment plan as they say they can’t pay due to family covid loss issues. Some, with nothing to lose, just say, “Sue me, I own nothing” and it is a case-by-case situation for me.
Some people like to think of property owners as big, rich, evil monsters. In reality, many of us are small-timers, with monthly bills to pay like everybody.
This is something we will need to decide. DS19 has a signed lease for a room in a shared house with 7 other students. If classes remain on-line he may be better off continuing to live at home where there are only 4 of us. Yes we will still have to pay rent but that was a cost that we were going to have to pay regardless, so it’s not like it will cost more if he doesn’t move in initially. We live less than an hour away from his school so if there was a latter pivot to in-person classes it wouldn’t be a big deal to move him into the house at that time. On the other hand he may prefer the camaraderie of living with his fellow roommates. There is also the chance that as a Physics major a number of his classes maybe hybrid format and he will have in-person labs.
since the K-12 discussion is here, Denmark and Norway opened up their elementary schools 2 weeks ago. I checked their case numbers and they have not gone up but rather down, so however they are managing the schools, it has not caused a big rise in cases. Other European countries are opening up schools .
"First and foremost, American University will be open this fall and providing the high-quality, dynamic educational experience that is the foundation of our mission while taking all necessary steps to safeguard our community. We all want to return to our beloved campus, and we are exploring many scenarios involving in-person, online, and hybrid models. We will make a decision for the fall that is at the intersection of the best available information about health and safety and our ability to implement our work and educational pursuits at the highest level.
Our approach is designed to yield the right structures for our current undergraduate and graduate students and our incoming first-year students. The upheaval of the past several months demands an educational experience and community that is supportive, flexible, and presents a wide range of options that meet individual needs. And that is what we are working to provide.
To that end, we are not simply focused on a short-term solution for one semester, but rather we are thinking about a longer horizon, so that our students can experience the full measure of American University now and into the future. We are on a journey that will unfold over years and our decisions will reflect that.
The task forces, comprised of our academic and administration leaders and key experts, are actively crafting options for fall that will ultimately yield a fully developed plan to offer the highest possible educational experience with the highest possible level of safety. Their work–in conjunction with the ongoing efforts of the cross-functional COVID-19 Working Group, the modeling and analysis of our financial office, and academic planning across the university–encompasses health and safety, workforce planning, and educational operations for our students and faculty. The task forces will report their recommendations to the executive leadership team and me by mid-May, which will lead to an announcement of our fall plans no later than mid-June."
@homerdog For the people still at Amherst under Massachusetts’s stay at home order, they can still go to the dining hall to obtain food; same with Maine’s 14-day “quarantine”. They will probably switch to a to-go model.
In our state they seem to be tied together. If the governor and state education department don’t allow schools to open in the fall, I think that means all of them.
Adding distance education to an existing college infrastructure based on in-person education is just an added cost, unlike converting to a distance education model where the in-person stuff like buildings and much of the faculty and staff are eliminated.
Some universities like ASU and UND have both in-person education and distance education, but that is also different in that the distance education students are not students waiting to come back to fill currently empty classrooms that are being maintained for in-person education (though the pre-COVID-19 in-person students are waiting for that). They probably had smaller costs to convert their in-person students to distance education students due to having a well developed distance education infrastructure.
Be glad that your college is not in Hawaii. There, the 14-day quarantine for arrivals (residents, visitors, or inter-island travelers) means stay in your home (or in your hotel room or rented housing) for the entire 14 days (or until you leave) except to get medical care, with no visitors (food must be delivered).
Colleges in Hawaii will have to deal with this when out-of-state or other-island students want to return to the island where the campus is. UH Manoa, HPU, and BYU Hawaii all have substantial numbers of out-of-state students (and some in-state students are from other islands).
There are stories of this type of thing going unnoticed for months or years because the deceased tenant had all of his/her bills on automatic payment, and his/her bank account had enough money or automatic deposits from pensions or whatever to cover all of the automatic payments.
Florida tech announced today that Freshmen will move in on Aug 10 and classes will start on campus on Aug 17. Florida tech has a few things going for it - almost all dorms are suites with single bedrooms for each student, and they share the bathrooms and kitchette. All freshmen live in the suites with 4 to a suite. The other students live in 1, 2, 3, or 4 bedroom suites. The frats and sororities are single bedroom suites too. Freshmen and sophomores live on/near campus and about 1/2 the upperclassmen live in some kind of related university apartments, houses, or suites. My daughter lived in a single family home for 2 years, right next to campus.
Florida tech also already has a big online learning program so anyone who wants to stay online can do that, or do a mix. They have a lot of PPE and have been making masks and shield on their 3D printers, sewing masks, have lab goggles, etc.
And it is in Florida so no chance the governor will prohibit in person classes.
I think there is a low chance that the Massachusetts governor would not allow in-person college classes to resume next year because
The Massachusetts economy is especially reliant on college students.
The current governor is a Republican, albeit a very bipartisan one. He has a very high approval rating. However, he is actually pro-choice because he doesn’t believe the government should interfere in private matters, and is more of a libertarian in my opinion than a Republican; he is all for limited government. So I find it hard to believe he would tell colleges they couldn’t resume in-person classes in fall.
i don’t think colleges will all treat this the same; I think the experiences in the individual states where each college is located will weigh heavily into the decisions. If, indeed, the colleges are allowed to make the decision rather than the state making the decision.
I’d like to add another way, which is already happening:
Treatment improves.
I’m in metro-NYC and survival numbers for hospitalized patients are going up. Doctors have learned a lot about the illness and how to treat its effects. More people are recovering, especially the rare young, healthy people who get seriously ill. They are keeping far more people off ventilators than they could a month ago.
Of course a tragic number of people are still dying every day, so that can obscure the fact that we are making progress against the virus and step-by-step we will continue to have better treatment even before preventative meds or vaccines.
Better than having those 1000 full pay kids take a gap year.
For a school with $50,000 tuition, 200 students taking a gap year would be $10M. (10%)
For a school with $75,000 tuition, 133 students taking a gap year would be $10M. (6.65%)
But elite (as well as probably those a tier or two down) LACs can just fill the gap year students’ slots with students from the waitlist. IMO, there are plenty of people who would jump at those spots for the fall.