And Yale speaks:
Lots of football players have been testing positive. I think all of them are asymptomatic? To me, that just means SO many people have the virus and don’t know. And aren’t being hospitalized or dying. Isn’t there some positive thing about finding more and more cases? In Florida, the average age of positive cases is going way down. I think it’s down to 35 now. Yet deaths are not piling up. Again, don’t we think this could be considered good news? Aren’t we starting to see evidence that, while the virus is very contagious, it’s not as deadly as some fear? Maybe we should be shifting to protecting those who are older and with the specific underlying conditions that have been proven to cause complications with the virus.
I have a feeling that colleges are going to see a lot of asymptomatic positives if they are testing students upon arrival. If the football teams are any indication, there could be a decent percent of the overall student body showing up with the virus. Hope schools are ready to isolate all of those.
Are you all planning on having your kids tested right before they go to school?
@homerdog…I can’t tell you how many times we’ve talked about the weather lately and how glad D is to be going to school in NC instead of a colder climate. Seeing the writing on the wall though, I am anxiously awaiting whether or not the school will be increasing - or decreasing - tuition, room & board. Any further increase may be a deal killer for me.
D’s school says it is testing everyone when they show up for school.
I still can’t figure out what sports teams will do when athletes test positive during the season. All contacts (those coming within 6’ of the positive case for more than 15 minutes within 2 days pre-symptoms if they exist) are supposed to quarantine for 2 weeks from date of contact.
D23 just returned to campus to intern at a lab (she is staying at a summer sublet off campus housing) and they will administer tests every 2 weeks.
While I am not crazy about the idea of asking everyone to quarantine themselves for a period of time when they arrive on campus, I do worry about people coming from hot spots. Those kids coming in from Florida or Texas, where cases are rising seem to be much likely to be infected than those coming from northeast states where numbers have been steadily dropping.
That said, S’s school has released a schedule that has classes starting two days after the last dorm move in date so there will be no quarantining for anyone. They said yesterday that all upperclassmen who are living on campus can stay in the housing they have already selected which made many parents on my facebook group happy. Upperclassmen dorms include doubles with private bathrooms, suites of varying sizes, but also singles where there is one large bathroom on each floor. I guess they decided these are all OK. They have also said they will allow people to stay in the dorms and will keep food service open, even if there is a new stay at home order issued - so they won’t be sending everyone home again like they did in the spring.
There is still no word on testing, quarantining, contact tracing, and all the other things people here are talking about It almost seems like they are just going to wing it and if people get sick they go back on-line and let everyone but the sick people (I assume but they haven’t even said that) stay in the dorms.
I’m guessing that while the majority of us are on CC because we have at least 1 child who attends/will attend a 4 year college, some have more than one child, and some of those other kids may be on a different path. My ds20 is headed to college, but ds22 may or may not take that path. He’s as bright as his older brother, in some ways more so. But he’s not in love with academics. And if he chooses to apprentice himself in a trade, we will celebrate as fully as we are for ds20. I’m also guessing that technical schools are also struggling to figure out what fall will look like, especially given the hands-on nature of the work…
It isn’t an either-or choice, although the second is probably increasing in importance to many students and parents as economic stress on the non-wealthy increases and economic inequality increases.
I know some students who are still receiving emails from colleges they turned down saying it isn’t too late to transfer and any scholarship money is still on the table.
I also know that students are keeping these offers in their back pockets, encouraged by parents, for many reasons - closer to home, less expensive, no tuition increase, better virus planning etc
Thanks, @ThinkOn. The veil dancing continues. At this point, is there much doubt that Yale is even less prepared to open all of its undergraduate houses than Harvard?
Football at big schools like Texas generate so much money that the games will be played if there is anyway to do it.
Non-revenue sports are very likely to be severely curtailed if not canceled.
So they are not going the route of MIT and Harvard - limiting the number of students invited back - but are allowing all students the option to come back for a hybrid learning situation (but ‘mostly’ online). Interesting.
Interesting. DS20 had several merit offers, and none have tried to recruit him away from where he has committed. I’m actually surprised. I wonder if that will change later in the summer once more colleges have fully confirmed their plans? I imagine shuffling will take place, and some schools will find themselves more under enrolled and will need to pivot to trying to attract some of those kids back.
We are in CT and ds is going to school in western Mass., but he seriously considered a school in the south that gave him significant merit aid, but we were unable to visit due to Covid. However, given what seems to be a slightly more relaxed view on social distancing and mask-wearing in some places outside of New England and the tri-state area, I’m so relieved he didn’t choose it. Had he done so, we would for sure be looking to pull him from that school in favor of one in a state we were more comfortable with in terms of social distancing, numbers, re-opening plans, etc.
From what I hear the number of freshmen that have double deposited is very high and schools are struggling to set up residence halls. If there is a second wave or spike it’s very likely the students who have double deposited will pick the school close to home, and that decision could be made at the last minute throwing the budget and plan out the window.
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@suzyQ7 It states back to live in residence in “de-densified conditions”…which leads me to believe that there will be some limiting of the number of students invited back since most rooms are already singles and doubles. Sigh.
I think that the schools that are going down the path of lowering density by limiting the number of students on campus and focusing on online capabilities are making more of a data driven plan. Question is, once you go down that path, why have anyone on campus at all?
I agree. And are tuition and fees the same for those on campus vs. those not?
I do see both sides of the tuition discussion (costs colleges just as much if not more to deliver classes remotely) but remote students won’t be able to participate in clubs and activities, or have access to certain services, to the same degree that those who are on campus can.
Maybe remote students won’t have to pay any fees, at the very least? Will be interesting to see how colleges address this when the send out first semester/quarter invoices.
I don’t know what is the big deal with college students having to quarantine 10-14 days. They have been quarantined for months while taking online classes since Mid March! What’s with 2 weeks among friends? A piece of cake. It just means they are not going out partying, everything will be taken care of for them. They are not going to let your kids going hungry. They still have access to everything, just not physically.
Seems to me that cost of attending for remote students would be tuition only? I’d not expect and fees for dorm, food, gym use, etc. I would not expect any discount for tuition itself for most schools.
This is true. When they said students might be in the classroom with the professor remotely, I was picturing the professor being projected on the classroom screen with the room technology, so that everyone was watching the same thing. Something like that would require someone to sign on and access the feed. It could, perhaps, be one of the students. It seems complicated if the professor is going to try to interact with the class.
If the prof is remote, the best way for interaction is for everyone to be remote. That way the prof can respond to students questions (raising their “electronic hand”). Having the prof projected on a large screen in a large class setting actually seems worse than all online.