@JanieWalker - I would think Syracuse is a pretty prestigious school and with tuition costing about 30K a Semester wo room and board, 30 k for online instruction Seems Cuse understands this bc they stated they are open to having kids take gap years. This parent I guess is not adaptable enough bc the idea of paying 30K a semester for my kid to be online form my home for his freshman year was not happening. There sadly will be kids who got in or will get in off the waitlist whose family can no longer afford 70k plus to send them to school this fall, are they just not adaptable enough? It seems your premise will be tested since it seems schools are going to their waitlist early this year and we will see how easy it is to meet their yield.
That’s completely different. My discussion was about kids wanting gap years for the sole reason of not wanting to start online, not because COVID-related economy matters devastated the family finances.
One of my kids is a high school senior. I fully expect COVID will be here her entire college career, at least until she is a senior. There is little reason to believe otherwise. So we can all take some time to adjust if we want, and then get back to school.
There are a large number of middle class parents who undergo serious financial strain in order to give their kids a certain college experience – that’s the thinking behind making the choice, if one isn’t incredibly wealthy and doesn’t get a huge financial package. Of course, such a calculation would be vastly changed at the moment, especially in this new economic world, even if one’s family finances weren’t completely devastated. It’s just being pragmatic.
Why you shouldn’t take a gap semester this fall
https://dailycollegian.com/2020/04/why-you-shouldnt-take-a-gap-semester-this-fall/
Basically, it says…What else are you going to do with your time? May as well get an education.
No, you get 6 months from when you leave school and if you go back to school the payments are again suspended. If you take time off during school (like take off a semester after you have already started taking loans) they you may use up your grace period for those ‘pre-break’ loans. My daughter did, but the loans she took after the break still had 6 months left. What the loan servicer did was give her the six months for the ‘newer’ loans and make the due date the same for all loans, and then charged her interest on the loans taken pre-break, with the option to pay that interest only.
Right now she doesn’t have to make payments at all until Aug. She was thrilled.
Thanks for posting this. It perfectly sums up my sentiments and the sentiments of nearly all my friends. I think most parents are going to come to these same conclusions eventually, after maybe another couple weeks of grieving over a system that is not going to be the same for a very long time, if ever again.
(I also agree in a tuition reduction for online courses fwiw, but I understand why colleges would have a hard time making that happen.)
I can see both sides of this as I have a first year student in college at an expensive liberal arts college and a junior in high school. I am speculating of course but I doubt all of these kids talking about gap years will actually take them. What will they do? A year is a long time with no plan and I wonder if colleges will approve a gap year without a plan? I would imagine there will be some sort of limit. The other issue I see with having a student at a highly selective school is that colleges would not have trouble replacing students who want gap years or gap semesters with other students willing to ride it out. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. My son wants to stay with his class so he will return to school even if online. It is a ton of money but I am telling myself I am paying for the four year experience and this too shall pass.
So regardless of expensive Lac or public, learning is still going on in college. My senior daughter at a LAC still finished her senior thesis and had finals in her other classes. Getting ready for virtual graduation and still on campus in her apartment.
My son also in his on-campus apartment just took as a junior his finals. 6 hours for 2 problems and has 2 more to go. (in this one class). They gave the kids a take home test and he can’t believe how indepth and tough it is. Their normal tests are like 80 minutes in engineering. Maybe they are just screwing with the kids to keep them engaged? But he is learning.
Your children will keep learning this fall and next year. It will just look /feel a bit different at some schools. Online /virtual classes /"learning /meetings are here to stay in some form whether it’s this year and or next (yes, the hybrid system is now a reality).
At some schools it was already happening with recorded classes. All classes will be recorded this year. (just my opinion), they would have to be so kids can go back to them for reference or maybe a time limit like for the next 30 days you can view these lectures.
Virtual meetings again can just be more efficient and so on.
We will look back like 5 years from now thinking… Why didn’t we do this sooner? ?
Agree with the comments above that the college experience is much more than the class room instruction. In fact it is hard to argue that online instruction is in any way close to that experience. What does it mean to attend a “prestigious” university if its basically a YouTube channel? The greatest minds and teachers on virtually any topic can be found online in most cases anyway. If it is really just about learning information then nobody with a lap top and the internet needs to get out of bed. Of course that isn’t what college is about. Its about independence and growth and interactions with peers and self discovery. All of which doesn’t happen on Zoom from your childhood bedroom.
Now I understand that no one can be blamed for this unprecedented crisis (apart from the Communist Party of China, but that’s for a different forum). But it is hard to justify the trouble and expense of “attending” college online. If a return to campus and something close to normal college life isn’t going to happen next semester or even all next year then why wouldn’t kids look to wait to return and do something else in the interim?
My son who is finishing his second year at the University of Florida is considering taking a year off if he can if they are still only having online instruction come the Fall. My thought is if this is allowed it may be a great idea to work for a year and wait out a return to normal. But I fear the school will not want to allow this as they will loose too much revenue and will claim that the online instruction is just as good and worth the full tuition regardless of the fact that it clearly is not the college experience he would be paying for.
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Agree with the comments above that the college experience is much more than the class room instruction. In fact it is hard to argue that online instruction is in any way close to that experience. What does it mean to attend a “prestigious” university if its basically a YouTube channel? The greatest minds and teachers on virtually any topic can be found online in most cases anyway. If it is really just about learning information then nobody with a lap top and the internet needs to get out of bed. Of course that isn’t what college is about. Its about independence and growth and interactions with peers and self discovery. All of which doesn’t happen on Zoom from your childhood bedroom.
Yes. I agree with this. We just learned that Bowdoin will not limit leave of absences for fall. An article in the school newspaper that took a survey showed that more than 50% of kids will take the semester off if online. That survey was taken by about 400 students. The whole student body is 1800 so I’m not sure how many kids would really take a break but it could be a pretty big number. 90 percent of these kids also said they think Bowdoin is doing a good job with online classes and managing this crisis but just want what they want - to be back on campus.
@momzilla2D that article says take online classes this fall but take them how you wish. It doesn’t say you should stay at your school necessarily. If S19 takes a break, we likely would have him take some less expensive online classes even though they won’t transfer…but they would be classes that look good for his professional aspirations. He could take a data analytics class or Harvard has a pre-MBA program that’s made up of three classes. The Harvard program costs $2200. Online class at Bowdoin would cost us 30k.
Gap years and leaves of absence should all be options driven, I believe, by conditions that vary by state and school. Problem is that most decisions will need to be made without 100% confidence. How may semesters/years are you willing to sit out school, and how many semester/years are schools willing to allow students to sit out (as that impacts newly graduating seniors). We discuss various scenarios often - if this, then this else,… Probably a great SAH table game.
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Maybe I’m cynical but many colleges will attempt to bring students back to campus with the promise of both in-person and online classes to help “ease” students/family concerns. They are going to make it more attractive to students to want to go back to school (instead of taking a gap semester or year) even if it’s a slightly lesser experience.
The colleges, like Bowdoin, with a healthy endowment and balance sheet will provide a better experience during this prolonged crisis than the cheaper public colleges.
The big question is: “Are students who are contemplating a gap year going to take are year off if the college is open in the fall for a hybrid experience?”
My gut feeling is they will attend in the fall because of FOMO and wanting to be with their class.
@Rivet2000 that’s true. I hope that schools are clear on what campus will be like if class is back on campus so that kids can make informed decisions. Even with that info, though, things could change for the worse or possibly for the better. For us, if class is online, it’s a hard no. If class is back on campus but kids are in singles, there’s no eating at the cafeteria, no sports, no gatherings more than ten, closed campus with no option to come home for fall break or Thanksgiving - we don’t know. He doesn’t want that but, if he takes a pass for just one semester, I’m guessing he will have no housing if he wants to come back in Jan. He and his friends really want to stick together and will choose a semester break if online. If campus opens and is so limited, they will need to do some soul searching.
@socaldad2002 I totally agree with that. All schools want kids back and kids won’t want to miss out. I guess S19 might see it as an adventure then. We are already thinking through which classes he should take if they go back. Classes with professors he already knows would be good so he wouldn’t be starting from scratch on those relationships. Also, he has one more gen ed to take so he might choose to take something to fulfill that since they don’t have to be super challenging classes. We don’t really want him loading up on classes in his major for fall if they go back. For the most part, we’d rather him take those classes when they are more likely to be more back to normal.
Right now, Maine looks like they might have a 14 day quarantine for all out of staters that the governor might extend through August. In that case, Bowdoin would have to push off the beginning of school.
And part of me wonders, if class will be so different, if Bowdoin will just do online, take the hit of kids not taking those classes, and try to re-group for winter. Maybe they will take the gamble and hope more kids take online than they expect. I know they want kids back but they also want to give kids the best experience they can and say they are working on making online classes even better than they are now so I assume there will be a lot of info on that if they go the online route.
In the absence of an effective vaccine, novel coronavirus will be circulating widely for at least the next two years. Probably more like three to four. I truly hope something unexpected happens and I am proven wrong.
- Do you have evidence that infection confers long-term immunity? I have not seen any.
- Even if it did, about 250 million people in this country will have to have been infected to create herd immunity. As of right now, the U.S. has recorded 1.19 million cases. Even if that number is underestimated by a factor of 10, we still have not reached even 12 million yet. And don't forget, the last million infections will take a lot longer than the first million, as the rate of spread slows.
With respect to #1… Caveat that I am of course not a doctor as I am a HS senior. BUT…my two aunts are internal medicine docs, and my paternal grandfather is an inefectious disease specialist at Columbia. ALL of them are pretty darn sure that antibodies will result in immunity- at least for some reasonable amount of time.
The testing on this virus has been suspect at best. “Re-infection” has been word of mouth and based on faulty data. The overwhelming historical data on coronavirus is that antibodies result in immunity in some form. I’ve asked my family why there are all of these proclamations that immunity is not “guaranteed” and they laugh. They said that is scientists and physicians being themselves. They HAVE to say it, since it is not medically “proven” through data, etc. But just about every doctor believes it is an amazingly overwhelming likelihood that immunity will exist.
Btw I asked all of those questions because I have antibodies. Asymptomatic except for my toes, after which upon seeing my grandfather urged my parents to test me.
This topic has been weighing heavily on my mind. D20 attends an independent day school that could not have done a better job in transitioning to on-line learning. It still does not come close to what she was experiencing at school. Not being able to play her sport, participate in clubs, have lunch with friends and teachers makes for a lonely existence. Oh, and not being able to go to prom or attend graduation are bummers too. She has approached on-line learning with a positive attitude and has adapted well, but is this really how her college experience should start? Additionally, S18 is in getting ready for finals. He attends a LAC and his on-line experience has been mostly positive, but one class has not been good at all. The thought of spending $60K for two kids to continue doing what they are currently doing is tough to take. . At this point in time, I have no idea what we will do. Thank you to those parents in the same boat who have shared their thoughts on this topic. I find it helpful to hear from folks who are wrestling with these same decisions. Your perspectives continually give me food for thought.
I have been thinking about it like buying a car. Would I pay the full sticker price for a 2020 model if it was used? No way! So why would I pay the same price for a lesser college experience. The learning may be just as good on-line as in person (the car will still get me where I want to go), but the residential experience will be missing (no pristine new car with 0 miles). I will be saving money on room and board which covers the expense to live at school, but still be paying for all of the other experiences that come from living at school - clubs, friends, etc. In the end, I might be desperate enough to buy that car, but right now it is too soon to tell.