Students don’t pay for residential college. Parents do. The main thing they’re paying for is tuition, and those charges are typically calculated by credit hour not how long the semester is or whether or not class is in person or remote. If colleges haven’t reduced the number of credits they’re awarding, why would they reduce tuition?
Room and board works the same way. If OP’s child is getting a dorm room and meal plan for the semester then they should expect to be charged for them. The college isn’t saving money in overhead by shortening the semester. Do families think college staffs go home when students leave? Breaks are when deep cleaning, deferred maintenance, and most projects happen. The other positions that can’t be done remotely are generally held by vendors. Colleges don’t see any savings when vendors lay off staff, so there are no savings to pass on.
Remote courses cost more than in person classes. Faculty need additional equipment and tech services that they didn’t need for face to face classes. Labs still have to be set up, experiments recorded (and rerecorded if lighting is bad or there’s a technical issue), and then cleaned up for the next one. They’re actually doing more work (that of a lab tech plus the responsibilities of a production assistant) for no additional pay.
Do families want a discount based on the savings from laying off staff? For a 5,000 student campus the lost job of one custodial worker will save you about $10 bucks each. An administrative assistant would net you about $4. Junior faculty are better targets. The “savings” for them starts at ~$12-15.
I hear the arguments against a discount, although some schools are doing it. However, tuition increases are hard to swallow. It will be interesting to see how much colleges that have frozen tuition this year raise it next year.
I know many students and families who have kids looking at colleges for the near future, myself included - we are definitely taking their actions during this pandemic into consideration.
First, students do pay for a residential college not parents. My child is paying for his dorm, not me! He must utilize college housing as long as some of his classes remain F2F. No choice- he can not be f2f if he’s at home and not on the campus. Second while the original plan is to give a modified meal plan for the whole semester (same cost but limited menus, hours, service etc.) the fact is many schools will modify those even further and not provide them for the entire semester. If the school closes early either at Thanksgiving or earlier they are NOT providing room and board for the entire semester. I would like to see how you feel when you pay for a hotel room for a week and they boot you out after 3 days but tell you to pay for the week anyway.
Furthermore, colleges may not see savings when a vendor lays off staff but they do see savings if the vendor is not utilized and the service is not needed. At one of my dc school they are not providing most of the transportation between campuses (big savings for school) on the other hand my dc must now bring a car to campus to deal with this change (big expense for child).
Online: Cameras. Microphones. Software. Servers. Increased bandwidth. Wiring and installation. Faculty and staff training. Additional technology support staff.
Hybrid: In addition to the above, increased labor expense from more intensive cleaning and sanitizing protocols. Labor and hard goods for repurposing existing spaces to decrease social density. Adding temporary space to decrease social density. COVID testing program. Additional healthcare support staff. On campus daycare for faculty and staff with children not able to go to school in person.
These are just the tip of the iceberg of additional expense for schools struggling to navigate the current reality in relative short order. Last semester, it was not unreasonable to expect refunds or credits for goods and services paid for but not received due to abrupt closure. But now, given the significant additional expense schools are incurring in an attempt to continue to provide an education (and stay in business), expecting some sort of tuition reduction is naive and shortsighted.
You can look into how the school used the CARE funds from the first government stimulus. Schools got a big chunk of money and they had different ways to use it on students. U of Wyoming paid all the work study students for the spring semester their full awards plus gave some other money to students. Now the governor has released $50M to the higher ed system and they are giving every student (I think every) $3500 this year as a grant. That’s a huge amount at a school that has low tuition and a lot of other money.
So check with the school to see if there is more money through grants for this year.