I would say that my son did exactly the opposite of what the author says. He followed his passionate interest, all while maintaining academics and a healthy social life. He then got in not in spite of, but because of this path.
Meanwhile, the author is bitter because she lost part of her social college experience due to the pandemic. Well, Ms. Hartman, GROW UP! Everyone lost during the pandemic, and nearly a million in the US lost their lives, with an additional 2000 Covid deaths per day currently ongoing. And she is throwing a ridiculous tantrum because she lost another in-building housing day???
I think part of the answer lies in the push for credentialism as a means for getting ahead which has become, as the article you quoted notes, an arms race for having a better and better school on one’s resume.
One of my favorite movies is Animal House and what many do not know is that it is not an entire work of fictional imagination but was based loosely on the author Chris Miller’s experience at Dartmouth in the very early 1960s. That was an era in which there were more jobs for college grads than there were college grads so just getting a BA/BS was a reasonably reliable way into a decent job. Demographics have changed and the name of the school has become increasingly important to one’s job prospects when not earning a pre-professional degree (nursing, engineering, accounting, etc). Parents realize this and steer their kids from an early age to build the kind of accomplishments top-tier schools look for.
I have to respectfully disagree. There are some sectors of the economy that made enormous profits during the pandemic while other strata of society suffered disproportionately.
One sector which made sure it didn’t lose out is colleges and universities. They offered an inferior product but didn’t cut the cost - even the ones with endowments so big that they could afford to take a hit. The kids suffered but they didn’t. Professors didn’t lose anything. I know because my sister is one. In many cases they got to teach from the comfort of their living rooms. I haven’t heard of any who were forced to take leaves if they weren’t up to the working conditions. Their needs were given greater deference than the students despite the fact that the mission of the university is to serve the needs of the students.
That article was an interesting read. To sum it up, she basically said, “Wah wah, I’m mad that COVID happened during college at Harvard!”
Guess what? It’s a free country. She didn’t have to continue attending. She could have taken a leave of absence from school for awhile. She could have transferred elsewhere if she didn’t like the rules.
So sorry, Ms Special Snowflake. The world doesn’t revolve around you.
Actually, they were (to some extent) forced to offer an inferior product that cost them more to deliver – a lose-lose situation. Any COVID-19 mitigation costs more while reducing the quality of the product, while not doing COVID-19 mitigation costs more while reducing the quality of the product.
Swaths of the country at lower risk than the average professor also worked from home during the pandemic, so I’m not sure why we are singling out academics. That average professor also had to redesign all of her curricula and pedagogy for an online environment, which anyone with a sister in higher education knows takes a lot of incremental time and effort — time and effort for which few professors were compensated. Finally, the higher education sector got crushed by the pandemic, at least in terms of operating income:
If everyone really wants Harvard to function as if they were a normal business with a product to sell to consumers, I don’t think many will appreciate the outcome. There’s a reason the 50 most expensive colleges all charge the same sticker price, and it isn’t because higher education provides the same value everywhere or is priced at the intersection of two supply and demand curves. Harvard could double tuition tomorrow and still have 10 times the number of qualified applicants as they have spots.
For better or for worse, Harvard can do whatever they want, and what they wanted to do in this case was to follow CDC, MA, and Cambridge guidelines and regulations to protect faculty, staff, and community members as best they could. Along with a mission, Harvard also has a vision and core values that make faculty, staff, and residents of Cambridge — not just students — key stakeholders of the university. And that’s without even going into the research and service pillars for which modern universities also exist, and which are of equal importance to teaching.
In sum, the above explains why all of the class action suits filed over tuition refunds have been thrown out of court. There is no contractual obligation for a college to provide in-person education, especially during a pandemic. Now if you want to call for room & board refunds for closed housing & dining services or some sort of refund for activities fees at the College, I’m amenable to at least listen. But tuition? Not even the author of the article really complained about the education portion of her experience. Her kvetch was about masks, vaccines, socialization, and quality of life.
Lots of kids did take gap years, including my GD. But that’s beside the point. In 20-21, they shut down the campus for all except one semester of freshmen and one semester of seniors. They grossly overreacted. Tons of colleges around the country found ways to handle this that were more in the interests of students - including Tufts which is just 2 miles away and facing the exact same conditions.
Whether Harvard could get away unscathed with this level of irresponsibility does not justify what they did IMO.
Your comparison to those at lower risk than professors who worked from home begs the question. Sure, my next door neighbor who is an engineer/project manager for an aircraft manufacturer is still working from home. Why? Because it doesn’t affect the quality of his work or the ability of his team to complete their projects. But those in the service sector either did go to work even when their risk was much higher than professors (hospitals and a whole range of other health care professionals) or were laid off. We really need to compare apples to apples.
The fact that colleges didn’t compensate professors for extra work required of them is between the college and the professors. It has nothing to do with the students.
Your claim that Harvard was simply following CDC, MA, and Cambridge guidelines doesn’t hold up either. Tufts in the next town didn’t take measures nearly as draconian. Public schools all over the country kept schools open much if the year. There’s nothing so unique about Harvard that required them to shut down the way they did.
Simply answer this question. If it was so necessary for Harvard to shut down their campus almost entirely, how did Purdue, a much larger and more complex institution manage to stay open? How did Rice manage to stay open? How did so many other manage to stay open? All irresponsible?
PS - The reason we’re singling out academics here is because this is a college forum. Eh? And this thread is discussing a student’s comments about her college. Discussing academics is what we do here.
