Colleges in the 2021-2022 Academic Year & Coronavirus (Part 2)

Parents Forum
5131

I think some schools will offer more online or hybrid classes going forward. Many schools started offering more online classes even before covid, and often students would take one or two per semester (or at least ‘attend’ lectures online because classrooms were too crowded, especially at UCLA and Cal or other big schools). My daughter took a few online because that’s how they were offered and it fit her schedule. Why not stay in her toasty bedroom rather than go to a lecture when it is 0 degrees? Professors can design their classes a little differently as time goes on, maybe having more of a lecture format one day and discussions the others?

Online learning is very popular for college students, much more than it was even 10 years ago. Not everyone wants to go to UNH or Western Govenors that is almost all online, full time, but many students do enjoy the convenience of taking a class or two online. Starbucks employees like the online classes (and free tuition) of the ASU classes online as it fits their lifestyles of having to work while in school. Colleges, given time, can work with professors who only want to teach online to design classes that way while others do the in person teaching. If no one signs up for the online classes, that professor would have to come back in or retire.

It wouldn’t surprise me if some schools start requiring a certain number of online classes per year or per degree, like Florida schools require 9 credits to be taken in summer sessions. Schools that can offer some online classes can make better use of their physical facilities by making in person classes smaller, opening more sections, spreading people out, offering more night classes, etc.

I wonder how many students who are unhappy with online classes will want to work from home to avoid commuting costs and time, having to put on business attire, pay for lunch every day? Will they claim that it is an inferior experience to have to work from home? My daughter loved working from home and still does it whenever she can, but mostly has to go into the office where she says she rarely sees or speaks to anyone all day (all in their cubes). Instead of having a meeting in the conference room, they all call into the meeting from their cubes! Her boyfriend gets to work from home 2-3 days per week and loves it. It is the new norm. He moved for a new job in June 2020 and NEVER went into the office or met anyone in person from his office (which is 6 blocks from his apt) until Nov 2021. Wasn’t fun, antisocial, or depressing? Nope, he loves it (and likes to spend the day with the dogs).

We’re all getting used to the new normal or changes all the time. When I began my career, everyone worked the same days and the same hours. Then it was flex hours, then flex days, work from home or whatever combo you like. When I went to college almost all my classes were M-F between 8 and 4, but now many schools have night and weekend classes. Change can be good.

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5132

Lots of the staff shortages are due to asymptomatic positives and isolation periods for positives that are very long. Every front desk person in my husband’s office is out because of an exposure or a positive test, no one is sick. They are all vaccinated and many are boosted.

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Most of us are social creatures. There are some that thrive with little to no social interaction. I don’t think that would describe the majority. My kid met and interacted with many potential study mates, friends, etc. at in person lectures and discussions her first quarter of in person school. She met someone that was hearing-impaired and they became friends. When the friend’s note taking app poops out (which is more often that you might imagine), my kid can offer her, not perfect yet existent, notes.

I attended two online conferences and, unless my work threatens me, I will never attend one again. I was supposed to chair one session and ended up chairing three because the chairs had to pick up or drop off their kids from school. My kids are older and I get it, finding quality child care is hard. But most attendees at the conference were multitasking. No much useful information was absorbed and zero connections were made. This is an honest assessment that I shared with the organizers.

My kid’s school is using some pretty alarmist language for the kids’ return to campus. At this point, the paradigm of a residential college experience is seriously in jeopardy. I am a grumpy optimist and feel that one way or another the social contract that binds us all will not dissolve and that we will move forward with our youth, our greatest social asset, in the forefront of our consideration. I have a 96 year old grandma alive that just got home from hospital after breaking her leg. We move with great caution and care around her because she is a force of nature and we adore her. She has little insight into our current public health crisis and has lived through much.

I wish all of you a very happy New Year. I very much enjoy reading about everyone’s thoughts and appreciate the differing points of view. Interestingly enough, I only really started spending time on CC at the start of this pandemic and even though I love you all, I wish these discussions were in person. Not seeing your face when you speak, not shaking your hand or hugging you when we meet or part makes this thought exchange bubble a little sterile. Good in the time of COVID…
I

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5134

D’s bf is a social guy too. My point was that things are different. Prior to covid (when he was hired but hadn’t started, it was expected that he’d go into the office every day, go to some site visits, go to conferences and in person meetings. Now he doesn’t do that. He communicates with others on video calls, sends a lot more emails. There are some good things about that like he gets to stay home with the dogs, doesn’t have to commute (although 6 blocks isn’t that taxing of a commute), saves money by eating lunch at home, etc. He likes some of it, wishes some things were different. He’s not that social with co-workers, but he’s more social with others in his life (my daughter, family, old friends from hs and college, neighbors who also have dogs). He’ll also tell you he gets a lot more done in 8 hours working from home than 9 at the office.

It’s just different.

I think kids who are in college right now are still making friends. Maybe they aren’t going to Cancun for spring break (I didn’t either) but they may be texting and video conferencing much more than I ever did with my classmates (since 5 to 10 of us shared a phone, hmm, we rarely communicated outside of class). There are online study groups. Which way is ‘better’? I think they are just different. I’m very ‘work social’ and I have always had a hard time not going into the office, but there are some things I do like about working from home. Zoom calls are not one of them but I’m getting better.

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Will the parents of all the Student Bs complain?

Why have any precautions at all, then? Let covid rip through the university.

It’s so hypocritical to kinda sorta follow the CDC protocols.

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What’s the alternative then ? Letting the covid positive people return while they may still be contagious and could spread it to colleagues? That wouldn’t be a good idea.

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My older daughter’s alma mater had 4 suicides in one month! Three of those were witnessed by other students. We can’t underestimate the toll that this taking on college students’ mental health!

Totally agree. If a student is happy sitting alone in their room on zoom, then there are options for this type of student. The rest should continue to fight for their freedom to have human interaction - a basic necessity for human growth. Rare is the person who didn’t get squirrely during the original shutdown. Domestic violence was up, as were suicides.

We forget, I think, that college is not a necessity or even a right. Those who are nervous or angry at a college’s Covid management, can leave at any time and find another place that meets their needs, or take advantage of the remote options, or not go to college at all. Those adults who feed the shutdown and isolation narratives are also free to never leave their homes again until every ounce of Covid is gone (as if) - but the majority of us want to live our lives and have human interactions and have been willing participants in vaccinating and mask wearing, only to be continually punished for doing the right thing.

The symptoms from the flu, pneumonia, bronchitis, mono, etc. that has passed through every college campus this fall is way worse than this latest strain but there is no reaction to that. There is little reaction to suicides other than a collective sigh of relief that it wasn’t “my” kid.

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Great points. Adaptability is key. My kids didn’t love remote learning especially being on campus but didn’t complain too much when all they had to do was roll out of bed to find and turn on their computer… :computer::wink:.

Both kids found new ways of doing things that helped them in their jobs. Both their schools early in the pandemic gave a choice to go to class (when it was safe to) and /or remote in. There definitely were days that going remote just made sense. Do you really have to go live with talking to an advisor or can you just schedule a time to talk remotely . Same with the professors. It actually cut down on useless travels times to use their time more effectively.

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If they knew in advance that was the plan and enjoy remote work, that is fine for them. Many of us signed up for one experience and are receiving a different one. While I find that acceptable on a very short term basis for an emergency ( spring 2020, for example), for us, it is not an acceptable long term solution to a known problem. Either deliver what was contracted for, or change the contract.

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Both were early also in the pandemic, like on Thursday University of Michigan closed down and on Monday remote classes began. My daughter’s school needed a week. The first week wasn’t pretty as some professors were not skilled at remote and the engineering kids got work dumped on them since the professors just thought, more is better and a 1 hour test became a 3 hour or longer test… So yea. My daughter’s Lacs discussion groups went pretty flat but once everyone adapted it was better but less then ideal.

Every family this year knew of the possibility of another strain and /or the situation getting worse. But no question this year’s start was better then the previous one’s. I know students on campus that are having as normal as possible college experiences and loving it. I have been to a sorority house prior to the Ohio State /Michigan game and it didn’t seem these kids weren’t having fun. They did take it outside once it was getting crowded. With self made mimosas in hand :raised_hand::wink:.?

I have told my kids every yearly if they need mental health services then seek them out and we don’t need to know about it. I understand that is much more difficult to obtain now. For those that can afford it there are many online companies doing services. But of course remotely.

Maybe it’s a cultural difference of being in the Midwest, I don’t know, but my kids friends still on college and my friends kids that are still in college, I just don’t hear these dire stories. Nothing is ideal but they all seem to adjust, making friends, being active on campus and having fun. I know this isn’t everyone’s experience. My son is what I call an introverted extrovert… Lol… So maybe that’s why it didn’t affect him and his friend group as much as others. They were all able to do great things in college and get hired and move on. He is seeing real life consequences of the virus at his job. Again, I sympathize with what people are going through and will be interesting to see if people take gap semesters if things go remote for an extended period of time.

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5141

Seems like any precautions by colleges are unlikely to stop the spread with R0 of around 10 (and probably over 5 even in a population fully vaccinated against the ancestral virus). Classrooms, dining halls, dorms, indoor or close contact sports, etc. will all be opportunities for the virus. Outdoor uncrowded activity is much less risky, but most people do not like going outdoors in the winter in many places.

In theory, everyone could rapid test before going where they may expose others. But the tests are not available in sufficient numbers, and that depends on everyone being responsible, doing the test when needed, and doing the test properly.

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5142

I do think your point of view is affected by the schools your son and his friends attend. I agree that most kids we know are making the most of it, socializing off campus, plowing through the classes that might still be remote…and that’s because most kids we know here at home are at Big Ten schools where kids live off campus starting soph year and never expected small, intimate classes. So, yes, they have a social life. They roll with the possibility of still having some remote class. They do not have the restrictions imposed on them that your D would have if she were younger and still at her LAC.

The Big Ten kids’ expectations of what college life would look like doesn’t exactly match reality, but it’s way closer than the expectations of the kids going to NE LACs, CA schools, and other areas where testing protocols and limited socializing has made their experience quite different than planned. Many of these schools have very limited off campus housing. Kids live on campus all four years and the restrictions have been hard. It’s harder to make friends. It’s harder to connect with a campus culture that’s been smashed by the virus. I would say fall 2021 was really, really close to normal except for masks in class, but the sadness of what’s been lost in the last 18 months hovers over the campuses and the kids feel it in a big way. The current juniors can’t believe they are about to be seniors - their only normal semester on campus being forever ago as freshmen. Many of them mourn for what they thought college was going to be.

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My junior goes to a private college in NY. He had a pretty typical year this year, got to play his D1 sport, classes were in person and he had a normal social life. Vaccinations required, only people getting regularly tested were those with exemptions. Masks in the classrooms/indoors except the gym and dining hall. He is not mourning anything. And he had a pretty crappy year last year (spent all of first semester in a cast, spent all of winter break recovering from surgery, his girlfriend broke up with him shortly into second semester).

If anything, I feel bad for D23 - her high school experience has been nothing like what she hoped/expected. Her “semblance of normal” as a high school junior certainly has not returned like my college junior’s has.

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5144

Isn’t reality for most college students attending a local college that one commutes to from where they lived before college? Residential colleges like state flagships and prestige privates would not be the norm generally, although they are typical in the forum demographic.

Of course, commuter students’ college and lives have been disrupted, but their lives are not as tightly bound to their colleges when they are not in class or doing school work, so what their colleges do does not affect their lives outside of class and school work, unlike for those who bought the full on-campus residential college experience.

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This is how D’s Texas large public does it. No mask or vaccine mandate. No surveillance testing. University is sticking its’ head in the sand and plugging along. Delta burned through the campus in August and Omicron will burn through in January. D had only one professor wear a mask and request 100% of class wear mask. Very little mask wearing by faculty, staff, workers, students. Edit: The university is in a red area of a red state.

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I agree that high school juniors and seniors have had a bad go of it for sure. The college experience over the last two years has been so dependent on the actual college.

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Does your son live off campus?

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And this is why we can’t get out of this pandemic.

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The disparity in college experiences is part of the problem. A normal activity at one college-6 kids watching the Superbowl in a dorm room-got students tossed off campus and facing years of disciplinary probation at another. Each college responded in a unique way, so I don’t think one can generalize that “it isn’t that bad” or one should adapt. The students at that campus have the best sense for what they endured, and might face next.

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We were never going to get out of this GLOBAL pandemic anyway.

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