Is it worth it?

Parents Forum
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Is any private college worth the cost in a pandemic?

Imagine that you are a senior at Harvard. Half of your sophomore year 2nd semester was remote. All of your junior year was remote. And now Harvard has announced that the first 3 weeks of the 2nd semester of your senior year will be remote. Obviously they are buying time to see how the recent Covid surge trends. It’s certainly possible that the entire semester or a significant part of it could be remote.

Is this what you bargained for when you celebrated your acceptance to Harvard 4 years ago? Is this what you parents thought you were buying when you decided to commit 1/3 of a million dollars to pay for these 4 years. Harvard advertises small class sizes. Close contact with professors. Mentoring. Residential colleges. Is this what you’ve gotten over the past 4 years?

And yet Harvard has shamelessly taken their students’ money without any refunds despite the fact that they have the financial resources to have done so.

I single out Harvard only because a member of my family is there and I am close to that situation. But the same is true at many other colleges and universities across the country. We wouldn’t accept this failure to perform as advertised in a car purchase, but we accept it without complaint from a university.

If I were sending a child off to college during this pandemic, I’d think long and hard before committing anything more than the cost of my state college. I’d certainly investigate long and hard how any college of interest has responded to the pandemic before committing to them. Getting into a kid’s dream school can turn out to be a nightmare in the wrong situation as long as this pandemic keeps returning, as long as this country refuses to get fully vaccinated, and as long as nations refuse to pool their resources to get the whole world vaccinated as low vacc countries simply become breeding grounds for new variants which eventually come here.

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As much as I understand the plural of anecdote is not data, I will say that D20 has found it well worth being at her private college for the last two years. Her first year was entirely virtual/hybrid (though residential on campus), and she still thinks it was worth it.

This year, after vaccinations, life on campus has been much more what I think most people think of as being “the college experience”. With masks indoors.

She has learned a lot, met good friends, made connections with professorial mentors and others in her fields of interest, has a great research job with one of her professors. Admittedly, she is the kind of student who went to virtual office hours, accepted invitations to virtual symposiums, and created a new student organization while virtual - making strong connections with her professors and other students during her first year.

Is it perfect? No, but it wouldn’t have been perfect in pre-pandemic times either. And the pandemic restrictions aren’t what she talks about when she has her low moments.

Her low moments have been about hard classes, navigating disappointment both academically and in her personal life and figuring out how to move forward, dealing with the day to day stresses all young adults experience during college.

I think her college has done a very good job with clear communication, expectation setting and opportunities offered during these last two trying years. I do agree parents and students should think long and hard about the decisions they make regarding college and go into it clear eyed about what they want to get out of the experience and how much it is worth (before signing on the dotted line).

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I guess the question is always going to be, “as compared to what?” Sure, it would have been better for D24 to begin her freshman year at Barnard in person, but she still met classmates and eventually attended a class in person in the spring of last year. This fall she had a terrific semester … until roughly the last two weeks, when it seemed as if every person she knew had Covid (eventually she got it too). As for this coming semester: yeah, we would all be heartbroken if colleges remained closed for an entire semester, but I don’t think anyone really wants that.

So I can’t say it wasn’t worth it. D has developed meaningful friendships with classmates and roomies, has found her academic niche, and is slowly figuring out what kind of career she wishes to pursue. If she can do all that while Covid is on the air, then I figure she’s well positioned for a great Jr/Sr year.

I don’t disagree that schools like Harvard should consider some sort of discount or refund, but I don’t blame them for where we are right now in terms of public health.

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You would if you wanted the car. If you bought a car and it wasn’t what you expected or paid for, you’d ask for your money back – but then you’d have no car! You could go buy the Ford Fiesta or a Kia, but you can’t have the BMW or Audi at the same price.

Your family member is going to have the Harvard degree forever. The diploma is not going to have an * to show the student received a discounted education. The experience may not have been as enjoyable but the education should still be top notch and that’s what the tuition pays for. If someone isn’t getting their money’s worth on the R&B, ask for a refund, but the tuition is for the education.

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This is a great thread topic. I think about this issue daily. I worry that different variations of Covid may continue to develop over the next few years, maybe longer just as the flu virus constantly changes.

Between excessive student loan debt burdens and Covid’s variations, the educational landscape may change forever. Online remote learning & social isolation may become even more common. We cannot keep trying to force students back into a system that is now outdated due to Covid & to excessive costs. Same for the workplace & same for how we shop.

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The real question is whether selecting a college based on fit is worth extra cost when the elements that contribute to fit are not available.

This is true for students who attend a pubic university OOS, a private college for extra tuition, a college which is far away, or a college which has an inconvenient time division.

Focusing exclusively on the extra financial cost that some people have for attending Harvard is a bit provocative, not to mention narrow, as it does not actually help explore the ways that the pandemic affects college decisions.

The questions, as it expressed, once again focusses on the wealthiest segment of the population. Low and middle income families either do not attend these “elite” private colleges, or have generous financial aid which makes attending these colleges worthwhile whether there is a pandemic or not. We are really talking about the the 2% or so of families with students who attend an “elite” private college who are wealthy enough to be paying more than they would for a public university.

Harvard is selling a Harvard degree, that’s it. They only use “small classes” and such, because it would be crass to have “attend Harvard because Harvard” as their only selling point.

After all, for all the whining of Harvard students and parents of Harvard students that they feel “cheated” because of the pandemic, I am not seeing a mass exodus of Harvard students to less “prestigious” colleges which are in person or hybrid.

So it seems that the vast majority of these parents and their kids are quite satisfied with staying at Harvard despite everything.

Actually, people who purchase cars based on the prestige of the name accept the many flaws of these cars without complaints as well. Jaguars absolutely suck, Jeeps are heaps of garbage, and Hummers are awful. Yet the wealthy buy these and happily drive them around, because they are not buying the performance, they are buying the status symbol.

The status symbol of a Harvard degree is not affected by the fact that there is a pandemic.

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I disagree. They’re selling an educational experience. That’s what they tell you on the tours and info sessions. It’s what they tell you on line and in their literature. It’s what they tell you when they point to summer experiences abroad for no extra cost.

I hope I was clear in saying that Harvard is only an example. This isn’t a thread to whine about Harvard. My point is in line with your opening statement about fit and your comment about including publics OOS, etc. That’s exactly what I was trying to spotlight.

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While it was clear that it wasn’t specifically about Harvard, it did seem to be focused on colleges which are similar to Harvard. Thank you for clarifying.

BTW, I think that your relative is whining (a bit) about Harvard, not you. It seemed to me that you were merely bringing their comments for us to consider. You are not a whiner.

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I understand college costs money. Lots of money. And I don’t necessarily discount that college “experience” many cherish. But what would your student have done differently in a pandemic? Is there anything else s/he could have done instead of college? Life isn’t the same anywhere and college may still be the best place to be during the pandemic. Time wasted for a college-age kid would be even more costly.

Obviously, students would have preferred in-person classes and being physically with their friends. However, they did learn a valuable lesson in how to adapt to a changing world, a world in which remote interactions are becoming more common and frequent. For my son, not only did he take classes remotely, but he also TA’ed remotely, did research remotely, interned remotely. He interacted with professors, post docs, doctoral candidates, and fellow students remotely (sometimes their being oceans apart). He even did internship remotely and concurrently during the school year, which he likely wouldn’t have been able to do in a more normal year (he probably earned enough to cover nearly half of full CoA last year). There’re always some new opportunities as a result of any change, even if that change is caused by a pandemic.

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Just as the pandemic has greatly expedited a digital transformation in so many industries, this could very well be the start of an alternative to higher education. The system itself will fight that as so much of the “college experience” is a profit center, but as the pandemic requires improvement in delivery of a digital education, who knows what the future looks like?

I for one am old fashioned and see the tremendous value of college as overall personal growth which includes all the “outside the classroom” experiences. Just the decisions each student has to make on a daily basis, and the consequences of those decisions. Do I sleep in and miss freshmen calculus because I stayed out way too late? Do I force myself to join a club when none of my friends are involved? Do I cave in to peer pressure to play pickup hoop when I know I need to study more for the exam? To me, that’s a BIG part of college. Yes the quality of classes and opportunities to explore interesting topics / connect with profs is VERY important.

What is it all worth? Hard to reduce this to a transaction. I do think it will become quite common for complete online degrees. They existed prior to the pandemic but the past 2 years have created more legitimacy. I would have hated that, but some love it. Certainly provides an opportunity for many to work while “attending” and reduce their debt. I have to admit, prior to the pandemic I completed a fairly technical industry certification online and it was really good. I liked the opportunity to revue lectures and problem sets to really grasp the information, beyond just passing an exam. Didn’t think I would, but I did enjoy the experience.

Whole new world of opportunities for tech to disrupt / improve.

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If my student was looking for a traditional college experience, then no - as a full pay family to Harvard or any other private university, it would not be worth it to be sitting in her room at home, or in a dorm or off campus apartment, learning remotely. I would try to have some patience for temporary situations, but if I thought it was going to be long term then we’d have to have some tough family conversations. Honestly, I don’t even think my D would fight me on it, if she were not able to experience the social aspects of college.

We are full pay (minus a merit scholarship) at an OOS public (although it is, IMO, one of the more “reasonably” priced OOS) and depending on how far along she was in the degree process, we would hesitate to continue to pay OOS if the prognosis for remote learning was long term or permanent.

I think it would be very sad and detrimental to mental health to take away the in-person college experience in favor of a remote/digital learning experience. Like rickle said, these are key personal growth years. What kind of future generations would result from kids who never leave their bedrooms to learn or eventually work? They need human interaction to survive. We need to retain the choice to be with other people.

We have been very lucky that D’s univ has remained in-person (with vax’s & masks indoors). My unscientific, mainly based on anecdotal info, observation is that large public universities are less likely to shut down and go remote. If I had another kid getting ready to choose a college and I was concerned about the prospect of remote learning at a high price tag, I would steer clear of small privates, Ivy’s & LAC’s.

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I think I would hesitate to spend $60/70/80k on college if my kid was going to be attending school from his bedroom. We faced this issue at the end of 2019 when my S24 was accepted to a super elite prep school but decided against it because of the uncertainty around covid. This school ended up being remote for many students for large parts of last year and although the decision not to attend was his (I actually encouraged him to say yes) I can’t say I’m sorry that we didn’t spend $50k for that kind of experience. Older son has several friends at the school and they had a terrible year - emotionally, socially and educationally. Maybe he will regret his decision at some point as he won’t be able to say he attended XYZ but so far he is happy with his choice. We are keeping our eyes on how all the colleges S22 has applied to are handling covid and that will definitely play into our decision making this spring.

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Good thread question! Just a note on the quote above…Harvard has not announced that any of spring semester will be remote. Spring classes have always been planned to start on January 24; Harvard basically went remote for the winter break (they announced this at the end of finals so it didn’t affect the fall semester, and the remote period goes only through January 21). This does not affect the typical undergrad students; only people who are working on campus during winter break. Of course, they may end up extending this in the coming weeks, but as of right now, they have not said they are altering the spring semester, so the undergrads are expected to have 2 intact in-person semesters this year.

I do have a child there, who would be a senior. Here’s a clearer background on what the kids there are experiencing: Freshman year was normal, sophomore year was normal until mid-March, then junior year was online classes, and senior year back to completely in-person with vibrant social lives, activities, dining halls, sports, parties, research, full dorms, etc. More than 1/3 of the current senior class took 1 or 2 semesters off last year, so will not have the full possible 2.5 remote semesters, but rather .5 or 1.5, depending on how long they “gapped”. Kids I know who did stay enrolled in classes last year tended to make the best of it; these are resourceful people! Some took advantage of the situation to go with a group of classmates to live in great locations–kind of once in a lifetime experience! Seems the majority returned to Cambridge and rented housing with big groups of friends, so they still had a large critical mass of classmates to spend time with in the Cambridge/Boston area. I think it’s safe to say they’d all have preferred in-person classes last year, but they still got to spend time with amazing peers they met through school. Additionally, Harvard did announce they were going remote early and invested in making the remote experience as great as possible (my child was not thrilled with the results, however :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:). So they still had well-facilitated live on-line classes with their professors and talented peers (each course was required to maintain live, interactive classes; they could not just be videos for students to watch alone, etc). I am also grateful that they had the resources to provide frequent, easy testing to the kids so that barely any of them contracted covid and they were able to relax and enjoy themselves when they were in large groups, knowing that all the people around them were recently tested (something some public schools were also able to pull off).

So, do I think it’s been worth it? Well, I certainly wish the pandemic hadn’t happened during their college time. But all the things he was hoping to get at his school vs. other choices of schools have continued to pan out. In his case, he had 1 and a half semesters with remote classes, out of 8 semesters. He hated online class, but would have hated online anywhere, and perhaps even more at schools that didn’t invest as heavily on training and technology to optimize online classes. But even during those 1.5 semesters, he was glad he was doing it with the people at his school. There isn’t even a tiny part of him or us who wished he was at a different school as this school is a fantastic fit for him. But we are praying that Omicron comes and goes quickly, for everyone’s sake!!

Now if you were making up a hypothetical and the option was 8 remote semesters at Harvard vs. 8 in-person semesters at a public school (I like public universities to begin with), that’s a no-brainer–4 in-person years, please!!

(Note: suffice it to say that my child and we do not AT ALL agree with MWolf that Harvard is only selling the degree and that there is nothing else uniquely valuable about the school and its people, but I am not going to list the reasons (that go far beyond a piece of paper) why the school was chosen. Also silly for MWolf to suggest that there should be “a mass exodus of Harvard students” to colleges which are in-person or hybrid, when Harvard itself has been in-person all year. One last note on MWolf’s comments, I have a (used) Jeep! It never occurred to me that it is a status symbol, and that is not why I bought it. It is SO FUN to drive, I am crazy about its aesthetics, I actually feel like it is the opposite of a status symbol and kind of a very casual and low-key and unfancy car for a middle-aged person, and I love that it is an American car. Haven’t had a lick of trouble with it, and we are over 100,000 miles. It is coming across very presumptuous that you assert you know why people buy things and your assumption is that it’s for status. I think you are off-base on this one.

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I absolutely think it’s legit to consider a college’s past and future approach to Covid. We will be doing this with S24 when he applies to school (sadly, I can’t discount the possibility we will still have some virus to worry about 2 yrs from now). But it won’t cause us (or many others) to precipitously abandon applications to private schools or expensive publics.

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Actually, my DC’s small private LAC has been in person the entire time other than that 1/2 semester in the spring of 2020. (They had one class virtually.)

Their second choice, private LAC was completely virtual for 2020-2021.

Other DC’s state school was virtual for all of 2020-2021 (very few allowed to live on campus).
And our state flagship was virtual for 2020-2021 (many living on campus)

So it seems to run the gamut.

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I’m so thankful my daughter graduated in May 2020. She said she would have taken off a year (or more!) if she hadn’t gotten out when she did. I think the low point for her was trying to hold jazz band rehearsals virtually.

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Yeah - like I said, unscientific :smiley:. The big public universities in my neck of the woods (ACC/SEC) have been open and as normal as they can be under the circumstances (some are more lax on masking than others). And from reading on here, the Ivy’s and more popular privates & LAC’s (places that would be very pricey for full pay families - to reference the topic in the OP), seem to be more likely to shut down/delay opening - but then again, they are also more likely to be doing surveillance testing than the large public U’s.

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Yes. Have two kids and they had vastly different Covid experiences at their respective colleges. Both private. Different parts of the country , one in NY. Very different level of resources and capabilities, and frankly attitude, about handling covid.

I would say S’ was manageable. This was his senior yr and they made the most out of it. Was a little sad that the only reason they would go on campus was for classes as basically everything else was shut down. But they lived within walking distance to campus and off campus hangouts. They had a lot of fun.

D’s on the other hand , her freshmen yr, was a nightmare. Closed campus / total virtual school from home her first semester. On campus but “in jail” her second semester as there was literally nothing to do, very few food options, no in person anything (masked or not), and a sniffle forced an over zealous quarantine / isolation experience to the point where kids wouldn’t go to health services for ANYTHING for fear they would be “sent away” for 10 days. Really awful way to handle things. Much better this past fall. But she has already said that if Omnicron returns campus to those bleak days, she won’t be returning. Tuition is due on 1/4. Wonder if they’ll do refunds and what effect that will have on overall operations. Small school and I’m sure they need every dollar they get.

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For my daughter it too was important to move back to the city for the fall, have access to campus, library and other working spaces and have the background “noise” / presence of other students.
Yes, the large lectures were online - but she felt that made no difference whether you sit in row 20 of a lecture hall or sitting in your apartment. On the other hand, seminar style and other small classes were attended in person, of course, fully masked.

I do understand that thought - and for some majors (like Dance) more than others.

Still, I feel my daughter got her money’s worth - but more so: Barnard had huge unexpected expenses, refitting all class and seminar rooms during Summer 2020 with video conferencing equipment trying to enable every student to attend any class in person, or from isolation, or from their home country, as the situation might individually dictate.

There was added investment into equipment/retrofitting existing housing, but also common areas.

They converted “paid student jobs” to outright “grants” when on-site work could not be offered for a while, to minimize the financial impact on their low-income students.

They have a dedicated lab to test everyone on campus once a week, with results on people’s apps the next day - and since the test count is fairly predictable, return time was not affected by waves or lulls.

They had to put together a Covid Response Team with people from different disciplines, to handle everything from logistics, contracting, contact tracing, to reporting, statistics and web portal.

With the University, they even added unique academic offerings related to the pandemic, guest-taught by recognized experts in virology, immunology, …

So, at least in the case of Barnard, I feel they incurred a lot of extra expenses that ultimately did go towards my daughters’ education and well-being - and which I would have wanted them to spend precisely that way. They definitely earned the money I paid - in fact, their fund-raising campaign this fall raised 23% more than the previous record from Fall 2020.

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Initially, my daughter was devastated when she was sent home in March 2020; and for the rest of that spring semester there certainly were a lot of inefficiencies. But, her college invested heavily into revamping all instructional spaces for hybrid attendance - so that the Fall 2020 semester was productive, academically challenging, although remote. She moved back to the city for the Spring semester to continue her college experience and have the benefit of learning spaces, etc. (She lived off-campus, at a rent that was no more than housing fees, thus it felt less restrictive than dorms were at that time.)

Looking back, yes, she certainly wished she hadn’t “lost” 1 1/2 semesters as far as the SOCIAL college experience, but definitely continued to thrive academically.

Per example, even though she’s not a science-major, she enrolled in the University’s class about the pandemic, that had very renowned guest lecturers covering the pandemic from the angle of their particular specialty - an in-depth class into virology, immunology, and public health management that she otherwise would have never considered.

Also, she was able to pick up an (in person) full-year internship at another T30 university in the city, for a hands-on research project specific to the pandemic.

To answer the topic title: Yes, I feel it was “worth it” - from many different angles.

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