Of course, that was before there were 4000 colleges and a shrinking demographic of traditional college age kids, and cost of attendance did not exceed the US median income.
^ Some colleges have survived, some have not.
A ton did not survive the Civil War, for instance (especially in the South). Covid-19 almost certainly won’t be as bad (hopefully not), but the US is extremely overcolleged.
I think the elite privates are going to have to largely forbid gap years, etc. because of this crisis. They will have to force the issue with families to take a bet on them, that things will be better next year, that the students will be able to partake in the particular experience they market for the majority of their college careers, if not, sadly, right away.
But pandemic hygiene measures do eliminate many of the advantages of elite privates. My D’s elite college prided themselves on their “natural, sustainable” landscaping, and concern for perfect green lawns and wasteful, expensive annuals was considered prole. What I cared about is that as an undergraduate, my D could study original mss. of Frederick the Great’s correspondence in the library if she wanted to, and have a small seminar class with a world-renowned scholar. “Rip-Off U” is subjective. I wouldn’t buy a product that had “bells and whistles” I didn’t want. If I paid a premium price for a product whose appeal was based on bells and whistles that became temporarily unavailable, I’d be upset.
The higher the student’s expectations of the college experience, the more this coming year will be a disappointment. A significant portion of my current students just see college as the orderly collection of credits toward a degree that (hopefully) provides economic security. They were never in college for intellectual community, class signalling, or social bonding.
Those who would take a gap year so they don’t lose a year of “normal” college experience need to keep in mind that experience may not be “normal” again, due to either the persistence of the virus for years or the deterioration of finances at many colleges (other than a few super elites).
@homerdog yikes! is right. Good for you for writing a response. I wouldn’t know where to begin to reply to something so insulting and uncalled for.
I’m not so sure this is true in the general case. Speaking as someone who is almost all of these things, for me focusing on one intense course is way better than having to constantly switch from one course to another and juggle deadlines for four different courses. Four courses instead of one is four times as much chance for disorganization and four times as many things to procrastinate about. One straight line is easier for me.
Whatever colleges do in the fall, it’s not going to be great for large chunks of students. Shorter terms can be more intense and challenging from a time-management standpoint. Online learning in general requires students to be organized and self-motivated, and it’s not ideal for many students who require the structure and accountability of face-to-face meetings. The reality is that nothing is going to be ideal. Students are going to have to be more independent and self-regulating than many of them are used to being. There is no way around it.
Condensing a course to fit into a short time span makes a difference for a kid who falls behind in that class. S/he won’t have time to catch up. Midterms that start in about 3 weeks could be a shock if s/he isn’t used to it.
Faculty will have to be more flexible as well. Whatever the,Williams faculty thought of its online offerings, 70% of the students wanted no part of them again. There is an undergrad petition at Harvard as well. Not so easy to steamroll these kids.
Online offerings are not a matter of choice. Faculty don’t want to do it either. They are being as flexible as they can already. Students who don’t like online course delivery can complain to the skies but it won’t do any good as long as colleges can’t reopen as normal.
some colleges appear to be offering more options rather than online-summer semesters, late/early starts, etc. I read that approximately 70% of colleges expect to open on campus in person in some form. The remaining 30% should have both a good reason why they are not, and a reasonable alternative to offer.
I was surprised by today’s email as well. I don’t know how much the state or local health departments will impact the decision. I would guess that the college would most definitely prefer everyone come back to campus, but maybe that decision is not completely in their control?
The online classes have been very good. The fact that the majority of students want to be back on campus is not a reflection on the online offerings. I have written this before, but my kids both miss the social activities and working on problem sets with their friends that only happen when on campus. This is why they don’t want to be online again in the fall.
@shuttlebus Did the email mention whether entering first years also would have a choice to start in the spring if fall was online?
Exactly. Especially if they are the same type of schools and are in the same state. For us, if Bates and Colby are on campus, we would expect Bowdoin to be as well.
Unless the resident state forces a different outcome, a return to campus will likely be very much school specific. Part of the country, active cases in that part of the country, capability to create a safe environment, access to healthcare will all play a part. It seems daily I read or hear of different approaches. The smaller schools tend to be more optimistic about bringing kids back as they have fewer bodies to deal with but they all will have socializing issues.
Someone told me (and it may have been mentioned already) that Purdue, Stanford and some others were in meetings with VP Pence and the task force to ID best practices create a model that works. That’s promising. Lots of moving parts and changing variables in real time.
I don’t know. I just asked my son and he said he wasn’t sure, but he said that the Williams Record has an article that discusses it and has the comments from the president. I haven’t read it yet, but it is online.
ETA: I misunderstood my son this morning. He did get an email this morning, but it was an email from a friend who attached the Record article where the president’s comments were stated.
Yes, and faculty will not be making these decisions. State/local governments and university administrators will. Location matters. A rural LAC in the Midwest will be more likely to be able to open up than an urban university in the Northeast. An institution’s plans will also depend on what its competitors do. My employer is a private, but we compete with the state schools for students, so if the state schools go fully online in the fall (as the CSUs have done) , we will too. We will have no choice. We have to equal the state institutions in accessibility or we will lose students. Other institutions will have different pressures, depending on region, infection rates, population density etc. College administrators are playing a game of chicken with each other, waiting to see what their competitors are doing.
Where I live and work, some form of social distancing mandate is going to continue for months. Parents are not going to be comfortable sending their kids to dorms, communal bathrooms, and dining halls to live in those petri dishes. 18-20-year olds aren’t going to practice social distancing when their behavior is not being policed, because they think they are immortal. Who is going to enforce social distancing on campus? If there is another outbreak, the college faces legal liability issues if students get sick. It’s a nightmare for administrators to ponder these possibilities. There is no easy or clear answer. No one is trying to “steamroll” or bilk students. There is no big conspiracy to defraud them of their college experience.
Yes, I would agree that for MANY kids online classes haven’t been “worse.” (Or "garbage"as some twit claimed earlier.) They’re different, certainly, but for the good/committed student and faculty member they can be exciting.
And I would agree that’s at best a short-term solution. Because learning is more than doing school work. It’s collaboration, talking with peers/professors, exposure to a huge offering of classes, possibilities, dreams.
Many parents on this forum have saved and scrimped to be able to give that to their children. And yes, it hurts to see that whole important facet of education to be so curtailed/threatened/uncertain.
@NJSue i don’t know if it’s true that a midwestern LAC in a state with fewer Covid cases would be more likely to be open. Some states that are doing well aren’t looking to have students flying in from all over the country to their campuses.