Regardless of whether or not you approve of such judgmentalism by employers, for many desired jobs, employers are in a position where they can be that way, and some probably are. And that was before the virus events and associated economic effects; job markets are likely to be even more employer’s markets in most cases going forward.
Don’t decide to not take a gap year out of fear of what a potential employer might think in the possible event it requires a transcript.
My kid is a rising sophomore. He has really no choice but to return in the fall regardless of whether it’s online or in person due to his scholarship. Without it we can’t afford it. Honestly, it will be a struggle with the scholarship considering the hit the 529 is taking. But this is life right now. We all have decisions to make.
I completely understand kids who don’t want to be online in the fall. I don’t see it as weakness, or selfishness or a failing. And some of you are really reaching comparing it to war, or suggesting it will be something to be ashamed of in the future- give me a break.
I think everyone is heightened right now, so some responses probably reflect that, even if the intention isn’t to be judgmental. Your circumstances are what they are, and you’re entitled to decide with your son what is best for him.
Someone posted a link to Fordham’s plan for the fall in another thread. It seems to cover a lot of bases:
https://www.fordham.edu/info/29768/fall_2020
Most are not residential, most have very limited “campus” and “campus life”. And they still manage to educate their populations.
Maybe the American model – with all its posh campuses, hand holding, Greek scene, clubs and sports – maybe that’s no longer sustainable in our post-Covid, poorer reality.
Just like it matters very little where you went to high school, but matters that you graduated - the same may one day be the case with undergraduate education, with the exception of a couple dozen truly exclusive, selective schools.
American students whose parents could afford that $250,000 Bachelor’s degree have lived in a bubble. Covid may just have burst it.
I’m sure they are good, kind, unselfish people. But I’ve never hired based on how “good, kind and unselfish” job applicants are. I wanted people who are intellectually brilliant, extremely dedicated and resilient in the face of a challenge. I wanted them to wow me with what they’d achieved (granted this was hiring for high end MBB-type consulting jobs and I’m sure is not typical of the vast majority of roles). And I wanted them to be unafraid to stand up for their beliefs and explain them logically and convincingly.
To me privilege is a disadvantage not an asset because you generally won’t have advanced as far from where you started. So what impresses me is the same sort of thing that impresses a judge for a Truman, Marshall or Rhodes scholarship - and the winners there are often not from a particularly privileged background. What they do have is a “narrative” and a story that fits together perfectly, without them having just decided to “take a break”.
So yes I judged people who didn’t impress me in those ways by not hiring them. That didn’t mean I would have looked down on them in a social situation if I’d met them in a non-work setting. It’s nice to have good, kind, unselfish friends.
@1NJParent Am I wrong in reading that article that Fordham will begin all classes in some remote, online format, that students will not, at least at first, have in person classes and that they will not be returning to campus in August, although online classes will start?
FWIW I think it is now standard to ask when a job applicant started college and when they graduated. At least, it was a required part of all my kid’s online applications for finance jobs.
yes, you are. They are saying they are planning to return to campus, and even if they do, it will be a hybrid model where some students "dial in" and other come to class (with rotations/etc). This is for social distancing. If it turns out they HAVE TO go all online, they will be ready. If it turns out they can be on campus for a while, but then have to go all online, they will be ready.
Fordham will be fully in session throughout the academic year 2020-2021. To the greatest extent that the public health situation permits, we seek to teach our students in person and on campus.
Limited Classroom Capacity
When we return to campus, public health regulations will almost certainly require us to reduce seating capacity in all of our classrooms. The flexible hybrid learning environment will enable an instructor, for instance, to divide the scheduled class time per week into two or more time slots and meet with smaller groups of students in the various time slots.
Complementary asynchronous instructional modules will fill out the rest of the course and help prepare students to take part in the more intensive and personalized interactive sessions. Because this approach does not fit every section in the same way, we will publish revised classroom seating capacities once they are determined and ask each instructor to decide how best to satisfy this public health requirement.
Flexibility to Pivot to Remote Instruction
Anticipating that at various points during the academic year, individual students or instructors may not be able to be physically present in class (for reasons of illness, self-isolation, a compromised immune system, delays in gaining a student visa, etc.), such individuals will still be able to engage in synchronous components of their courses through videoconferencing technology (e.g., Zoom or Blackboard Collaborate).
If a resurgence of the virus necessitates that Fordham suspend all face-to-face instruction for a period, the asynchronous portions of courses would be unaffected, while the synchronous portions would continue via videoconferencing technology with minimal disruption.
^^^Fordham plans to minimize the disruption when it switches classes from remote to in-person, or vice versa. One component of most classes (asynchronous recordings) will always be the same (whether remote or on-campus), but the other component (synchronous Zoom/Blackboard sessions) will change. Being in NYC, Fordham is more likely to start the fall term online. If the situation later permits, students then return to campus.
@Twoin18 Good, kind and unselfish people can also be brilliant, dedicated and resilient. These qualities are not mutually exclusive.
That is what people think of the American model of college, but most American college students commute to college from where they lived before. The residential college experience is mostly an upper to upper middle class thing these days, with a relatively small number of students from lower SES parents but with competitive high school academic credentials (despite competing against those whose higher SES parents were better able to provide opportunities to earn merit) being able to partake on financial aid or scholarship.
All true – and all facts of which we are aware. Yet as you yourself have seen here on CC, there ARE many parents who send their children to these types of school, and they are very upset about the upcoming changes to their children’s “college experience.” Those colleges and universities, those arts and music schools and yes, those STEM schools – and their related “experience” is why CC exists, frankly.
I personally believe many of those wonderful - albeit economically unsustainable - schools and universities will go the way of the dinosaur. COVID has just exploded – and will be just as deadly to the 2nd tier private LACs and universities as the comet/asteroid was to dinosaurs.
One of the classes my son is currently taking (at a different college) is structured similarly, even before COVID-19. Lectures are always delivered via video recordings (the professor is good at delivering online lectures as he also does it for Coursera). Students are supposed to study the materials before the classes, which are purely for discussions. For remote learning, the only change is that the discussions are now over Zoom rather than in-person.
They specifically said that they were going to start according to schedule (late August). I don’t get the idea of ‘starting first online’ - the BEST chance for low case counts are going to be August/September - and the best chance for a ‘second wave’ is after that. So, i’m guessing most colleges will start in August (in person) and go from there. Testing is going to be what it is by then. The state and the colleges have 3 months to get everything together.
I’m not sure I understand the privilege argument. Wouldn’t having the ability to take a gap year or afford to attend an expensive university online both be the result of privilege? Would spending a year helping with contact tracing or tutoring kids who missed instructional time make them any more or less privileged than their peers who are taking classes remotely? I would imagine that employers are going to see a lot of non-traditional educational profiles over the next several years.
There’re a few unknowns that may change this calculus:
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We don’t yet know whether the current wave will go away this summer (likely but not guaranteed).
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Some schools and localities may not be ready by late August (needed tests, PPEs, etc.)
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According to a study of historical epidemics over the last 250 years (an article in NYTimes but I don’t have the link at the moment), the second wave has always been about 6 months behind the first wave. If that pattern holds, the second wave will start in August/September.
My son, an international student decided to attend Fordham this fall. I read the Fordham’s plan and couldn’t imagine what the class will look like. Either online or on campus, it is what it is. I am trying not to think too much.
So point of fact is that is is LIKELY Fordham will start remotely in the Fall, not on campus.