If they test positive, they’d be isolated for at least two weeks. That might be a deterrent.
of course remote classes can be done well and, in three out of four of S19’s classes, they were almost exactly the same. The content was terrific. Class was always live lectures with discussions. In the two classes where kids wound form study groups, the professor grouped the kids and they met twice a week to do homework, etc. His non-fiction writing seminar was live with all twelve kids on the screen discussing each other’s works just like it would have been. He could make appointments to talk to any of his professors pretty much whenever he wanted. But it’s not the SAME anyway. There’s no spontaneous meeting up at the cafeteria with a prof or walking to class with one. And some kids are more comfortable speaking up in person than they are on zoom. It’s just artificial. You all get that right? Zooming with your mom on Mother’s Day is different than being with her. Did he learn the concepts he wanted to learn - yes. But the little extras you get that are important to him are just really hard to replicate over a screen.
So, if he’s going back to campus just to sit in his room and still stare at the screen, not sure it’s any better. We will have to decide how much of on-campus life is possible. What I don’t want? Is for him to be calling home and saying this sucks and his friends all think it sucks and they are all unhappy. That’s why kids need to be very clear on what they can and cannot do if they go back. It’s going to be hard to make a decision if school is back on campus but almost everything is taken away. Right now S19’s beef is that school is all of the stress without any of the fun. I feel like that’s going to be the deal if kids go back to campus too.
All of this - is remote class good or not good is not the issue. It’s that it’s remote.
And wearing masks every time one is out on campus or in class is hard. You’ve all worn them to the store, right? Can you imagine wearing them everywhere and for every class that is live? How will they concentrate?
I find all of this discussion about tuition discounting interesting. I’ll live if my kids’ school doesn’t discount—honestly, I’m not expecting it, and I’m ok with that. But truthfully I think “tuition” is the category where most of the extra value comes in beyond classes, not “room and board”. What I mean is, although my kids’ academic classes are quite important to their education, all of the on-campus activities contribute at least as much to their education. The opportunity to lead (or just participate) in clubs such as the college version of student leadership council, Engineers without Borders, theater plays, run vast volunteer organizations, run campus tours, musical ensembles, social justice campaigns, a million other things. Then there are just all of the absolutely breathtaking opportunities to hear world leaders speak on campus, other incredible speakers and presentations. There are just so many ways kids learn on campus that go WAY beyond their classrooms. Professors do not have a lock on educating kids—I find that the other KIDS teach the kids pretty much at least as much (I’m saying this as someone who teaches on campus!!). In particular, this may be especially what people are paying for at top colleges, the Incredible peer group and the opportunity to work with those peers in myriad ways on campus outside of the classroom. Where does this fit in—tuition or room and board? I’d assume tuition. So to me, the questions above about whether the content of classes is different online, or the rigor, or the psets, etc, just massively misses the greatest on-campus educational opportunities that exist. Is this what a prior poster meant when listing choice B as “residential experience”? It could be. Residential experience includes what I mentioned above, plus marvelous social opportunities, networking opportunities, general fun, and a ton of other things. There is tremendous value to all of this, much of it highly educational. I’m not actually suggesting a discount to tuition in the fall, because the practicality of that seems very difficult. But to suggest that there is no loss if the academic classes maintain their rigor strikes me as completely off-base.
I’ve resigned myself to thinking my kiddos’ school will be online in the fall (I’ve always believed in, “underpromise, overdeliver!), but there isn’t the teeniest part of me that thinks it will remotely approach the value of what an on-campus experience offers. But it’s hard to complain given all of the problems in the world. So sad.
If I had a rising Freshman and they could take a gap year, they would. 75K is a lot of money to throw down the drain. The value of the degree is still the same, but you are losing 25% of in class interaction and that’s a lot. If I had a kid already in college it would depend on what year they were in. If they were established and had already taken most of their courses, it would be a different discussion than if they were rising sophomores still trying to find their way. Depends on the school and the kid.
“The strongest brand in the world is not Apple or Mercedes-Benz or Coca-Cola. The strongest brands are MIT, Oxford, and Stanford. The reality is an MIT degree is still worth a quarter of a million dollars in tuition. But is Boston College worth a quarter of a million? I don’t know.”
Yes. Second tier privates and publics that rely on large OOS body for funding are indeed in big trouble.
“In ten years, it’s feasible to think that MIT doesn’t welcome 1,000 freshmen to campus; it welcomes 10,000.”
Now, this part is pure bunk. MIT’s model does not scale easily.
Because that is not their model. If you don’t like that, you can go to another school. Simple as that.
It’s not going to be less than in terms of MIT’s [fire hose](What does “drinking from a fire hose” mean? | MIT Admissions) rigor. But it’s not going to be the same in terms of outside the classroom experience that MIT is known for.
And future employers should view MIT diploma the same way they always have. Simple as that. (I doubt they would even look at the transcript, but if they would, they would not be able to tell the difference between classes taken online and in-person)
MIT is not any other school.
If DS’s freshman year is online, it will be a bummer. But if MIT decides to offer a small discount for the trouble, I won’t loose any sleep over what employers will think about it.
And if they don’t offer a discount, I will still sign the checks with a smile on my face.
Isn’t that what Harvard Extension School does?
Online MIT classes are not very good. I have MIT student at home and hear constant complains. I would never pay for an online semester at MIT or any other school if I had a choice . Luckily I have an MIT senior so it’s not the decision we have to make.
People need to stop drinking the kool aid and ask real questions.
Can you elaborate on the nature of complaints?
The current students DS20 has been in touch with generally indicate that while it’s not the same as being on campus (naturally), the rigor and content are still there, as is the support system.
Everyone wants to be back on campus, sure. This is no one’s first choice. But when you say you would never pay for an online semester - what would you do instead? Encourage your student to take a year off? Transfer to a community college?
Sometimes you just gotta take your lumps.
I don’t know what Harvard extension school does, but I suspect MIT doesn’t have enough UROPs for forty thousand undergrads.
@Rivet2000 What do you mean?
@homerdog I think that people need to ask more questions about how good online offerings will be as opposed to if they will be used. I think that the vast majority of schools will use online delivery for some (or most) of their course content. The question is - can the schools deliver, and at what quality. In the near future schools will need to share more details so parents and students an make informed decisions.
Your kids will adapt. Nothing in this fall will be ideal. They will adapt. Just having other student around campus will be a positive. If classes online and your kids on campus. They will adapt. They will meet in places to study and social distance. They already zoom or FaceTime for stuff anyway. They will go on social distance walks… But with friends. They will meet new people and they will all say how much this sucks… Together. They will do some campus groups online. Then can still get pizza but sit further apart. They will adapt. They will sit in lecture halls on the day “their” group goes to. They will wear masks when they are told to. They will walk for a smaller meeting and they will video call their professor because they will adapt.
Hopefully, unless they are forced to stay home. I’m pretty shocked McGill already said they will be online in the fall. Crushing for Freshman.
Harvard Extension School is an online undergraduate school run by Harvard. Not sure how many students are there, I don’t know that much about it, but just pointing out that you don’t have to look out 10 years to see top brand universities doing online offerings (article you referenced).
Most college students commute to college from where they lived before college, and there is not much in the way of an on-campus college experience at most of the commuter colleges. I.e. most college students are paying tuition for the experience in the classes and the proof of achievement in them (completing a degree), rather than some of the extra features of the college experience that are so heavily emphasized on these forums.
Of course, it is understandable that if you are paying a premium for the experience (as opposed to academic content or prestige), you might be disappointed now that the experience has been equalized across colleges at what you consider to be a less desirable level.
Oddly enough, I was just thinking this about ten minutes ago, the elite-brand takeover. The problem, put unkindly: someone has to teach all those kids, and the more that show up, the fewer are actually elite. And the people teaching there don’t know what to do with those kids. A more polite way of saying this is: it doesn’t scale.
Maybe ten years ago I was forced to come to terms with something a little painful: my daughter wouldn’t have a “college experience” like mine. At the time I assumed it was just because we wouldn’t have the money for it, but after a while I realized that even if we did, it’d be a totally different thing — anxious, points-crazed, inequality-riven. The world is different now.
The kids who’re in this situation — no, they won’t get what we were thinking they’d get. But the sooner they, and you, come to terms with that, the better. Because then you can work with what is. The constant in all of this is that the virus doesn’t care or negotiate. The virus merely infects, and it’s proving to be rather impressive. So you can say “it’s only 20” or “it’s only 10” and try to negotiate biblically, but all it means is that you increase the risk that someone in your household will die of this thing or be seriously weakened by it.
I am quite worried about that damage, btw, and what happens in late fall, when flu begins to circulate. This virus does damage to tissues all over the body, and then maybe stays, or maybe goes. We test for presence of the virus in the mouth or nose, not the kidneys, or fat or vascular tissue. How long does it take to heal from this damage? If the answer is “quite a long time,” or “in fact lots of people aren’t going to be quite right afterwards,” then all it takes is another good virus to come through and pick them off.
So maybe you had it, or your husband did, and you’re now “recovered”, meaning you feel all right for getting along and there’s no detectable virus in your nose. What happened to your blood vessels? Kidneys? Brain? You don’t know. Well, here comes your kid home from college with a fresh strain of the virus to which you have only partial immunity. Why would you risk this so that your student could stroll across a leafy campus with a professor? A student said goodbye to me today and said he hoped he’d see me on campus. I gotta tell you, if that stroll across campus means his dad has a heart attack, I’m not interested.
The problem, of course, is that we don’t know. There’s just so much we don’t know about this virus and what it does. And science, even with money poured on it, is slow, and life is incredibly complex. So all you can do is ask what you’re willing to gamble someone’s life on — the life of someone you love — till we do know better. My guess is “sun-dappled campus and late-night study breaks” is not quite that important to you, in the end. Important, but not that important.
Eventually, societally, I’m guessing we’ll settle on arranging ourselves so that we can open and close relatively easily. For now — for a while — school will be online, and nearby, if you can fix it. And when we get the hospitalization and death rates down for real, with numbers minimally fiddled, school is near enough that students go out a little. Get some of that experience as an enrichment. And then we close down again, but because school’s been online the whole time, there isn’t interruption. It could go on a long time that way, or we could get lucky, and maybe it’s just another year or so. But it will be a different experience. Because what’s happening now is serious. You have to understand: we’re just wading into this. It’s only been a few months. We haven’t even hit the 5K mark in a marathon.
So, @suzyQ7 — I’d say let go of the expectations. I’ve been telling distraught students who don’t know which end is up anymore that they’re not crazy, they’re living through a serious thing, probably with no practice, and that the objective is for us to get to the other side in one piece. Between here and there it could be a pretty good mess. So anything they accomplish on top of getting through: that’s a bonus, and they should go a little easy on themselves. Keep going, sure, but be a little forgiving of themselves, and stay in touch.
YES to everything tuckethannock wrote, above, unfortunately.
Exactly. We all want things to go back to the way they were. But that is not going to happen by fall 2021. And if we don’t have at least a decent COVID treatment (like Tamiflu for flu) within the next year, 2021-2022 might not be much different. I would like to think we will have such a treatment, and before the summer is over at that, but in spite of all the earnest efforts of scientists around the globe, that may not happen. As a species, the most successful individuals are those who can adapt and move forward, working with one another and helping each other in the new normal.
Edited to add -
@tuckethannock , I read your post after writing the above. A hundred times yes to everything you said. Sadly, it’s a new world now.