In the context of the Roy paper, it seems that dorm living would fall in the category of “larger gathering,” while simply attending classes on campus is more similar to the k-12 scenario. So, it seems to me that students will only be able to attend classes on campus if they live nearby, either at home or in an apartment. Otherwise, students will likely be online. Roy also discusses restrictions on air travel and interstate travel. How will OOS students go between school and home? Students may not be able to travel freely for a while.
@Sisternight That is similar to my takeaway as well.
If we are in a situation where campuses are open but dorms are not, then I would love to see schools offer flexibility in the transfer requirements, so students could attend classes local to their home for a semester. Maybe just for electives and gen ed classes. Not ideal, but may be better than online.
That may be more difficult for juniors and seniors who would be taking more specialized courses (that need to be taken at a four year college) than for frosh and soph who would be taking more general courses (that are more readily available at community colleges).
Interesting food for thought. My D goes to a selective LAC where 97% of students live on campus and 80% come from OOS. Very hard to think what off campus commuting for in-person classes would look like. Seems like everyone going back and forth to off campus apartments would just increase virus contact with the outside world?
We live in easy driving distance of our excellent state flagship so if they were holding in person classes the idea of her attending there for a semester could have some appeal to me. . . Not sure what she’d think of that compared to online classes from her current college.
Another idea I’ve had is that if her college is online again this fall, my D could get a short-term apartment rental with 3 of her closest friends and they could practice social distancing and do their online classes ‘together.’ She’d prefer that to living at home until Christmas! If it’s just online, they could live anywhere we think is safe – i.e., somewhere that’s not a likely hotspot. Has anyone else considered this?
Edited to add: more I think about it, I have have time seeing in person classes but closed dorms. I think it’d make a lot of students and parents very upset b/c some students would be able to come back and others wouldn’t. Not worth the headaches of folks complaining. Plus, what would first-years do? They almost always live on campus.
The problem with doing a gap year is that most of the usual things kids do during gap year – work, travel, volunteering, internships – likely will remain dramatically curtailed come next fall. It’s not going to be the attractive option that it’s been in the past.
@katliamom That is one way of looking at it. But the alternative is not attractive either for someone who planned NOT to go to school for the year. It’s not ideal either way you look at it. But if I planned on NOT going to school, I wouldn’t want to deal with THIS (online, etc.) kind of school, i would rather follow through with the plan (though not ideal) so I can start school in a much more ideal environment the next year.
Residential students living off-campus and attending in-person classes was (pre-virus) the norm for non-frosh at many state flagship universities.
FYI, my son is still at school in a state with a stay home order. He drove 70 minutes up the major interstate in a truck with out of state plates(from a hot spot no less). He saw three State Police cars during the 140 miles traveled. He was never stopped.
@ucbalumnus – yes, I get that most big publics have mainly first-years on campus. Just saying for my D’s college it’s hard to imagine what everyone living off campus would look like. I wonder if they could turn rooms into singles and then rent some hotels or something off campus and run shuttles back and forth? That’d be a way to decrease density. Very costly, however.
@AlmostThere2018 No way that LACs are going to have class but not dorms. That makes no sense at all. There’s no where for all of those kids to even live off campus. That sounds like super fun for S19 to live in a house with friends in Maine and take his online classes…but we wouldn’t do it. It would be so expensive and he would still be getting just online experience. Maybe if he was a senior we would think about that a little more since he’d be so close to graduation.
And, the more I think about the dorms, that’s the difference between a dorm and an apartment building where people double or triple up? They might still share a bathroom and definitely a kitchen. The only difference is that I guess the school wouldn’t be responsible for figuring out how to quarantine kids who got sick? Lots of people in this world live in giant apartment buildings that are pretty similar to a dorm.
Every recent article written talks about how room and board is big income for colleges. I’m still predicting either school on campus as usual with no big parties or sports events (either in the fall or wait until Jan) or just online all the way.
True, though many upper classmen live off-campus anyway, so could probably attend their normal classes in person. Another challenge would be that not everyone has an option of a local college or university within driving distance. Living in the suburbs of Boston, we have a many, many options within driving distance.
I think some are confusing the economy and K-12 schools “open for business” to mean colleges will be open for in-person classes and residential living. It is not.
The liability for colleges having hundreds of infected students sheltering in place in the dorms will be too great to allow fall in-person instruction. I just don’t see colleges taking that risk. Kids are coming from all over the U.S. and the world to have a residential, in person experience. Once they are infected, it will be the colleges responsibillty to house, feed and treat sick students, they will not be able to send them home. Not to mention older faculty and administration who will not want to be around thousands of students on a daily basis during an epidemic.
I hope I’m wrong but if colleges can get full tuition doing online instruction one more semester, that is the path of least resistance they will likely take and they see that it can work (albeit less than ideal). I don’t see many colleges, if any, doing in-person instruction, nor do I see them bagging fall semester for a January start which would greatly impact summer sessions, internships, jobs, research, etc by trying to get in the “spring” semester over the summer. Colleges are going to push for a online fall and play it by ear. The classes of 2020/2021 will be greatly effected but they will hopefully be back on track for 2021/2022.
I’m selfishly hoping that colleges with large endowments will dip into their “raining day fund” and give families some sort of tuition discount if we have to endure one or maybe two semesters of online instruction this school year. It’s the right thing to do and will garner a lot of good will. Not holding my breath… 
In their first townhall MIT essentially ruled out tuition discount for the remainder of the Spring semester, so I highly doubt they would do it for the next year.
If classes are online in the Fall we are hoping to pocket room and board without finaid reduction (as was the case for the remainder of Spring).
Regardless of whether the dorm normally makes a profit for the college, an empty dorm that still accrues maintenance and capitalization costs is worse than an occupied dorm from a financial standpoint. Same with a dorm that is occupied below its designed capacity (e.g. with single occupancy in rooms intended for double occupancy).
Distance education may be seen as lower value by many students and parents (particularly those who primarily value the experience aspect of college), but it is not necessarily less expensive to the college if it has not already organized itself around a distance education business model (e.g. fewer instructors, larger classes, no or less capital and maintenance costs for classrooms for in-person instruction, etc.). The normally-in-person colleges doing distance education may not need to refill their toilet paper as much in their unused classroom buildings, but they still need to pay the same instructors, and perhaps have greater IT expense.
Replace dorm with cruise ship. Not a good picture.
i don’t think colleges have the responsibility to quarantine a student if he/she has the virus. Schools don’t always quarantine students now if there is an outbreak of the flu, measles, or mumps. They send them home. My daughter had the flu (twice) and school sent out a notice to her professors banning her from campus. She was living off campus (just barely) but they didn’t do anything to help. There was an outbreak of mumps at Syracuse 2 years ago and the school sent those kids home.
My cousin had a breakdown at Bowdoin. They sent her home. They did not deal with it.
““We’ve got to be prepared for 100 percent online and virtual and 100 percent on campus and everything in between,” said University of Massachusetts president Martin Meehan. The UMass system lost more than $100 million this school year due to COVID-19 and the refunding of student room and board fees."
I can see the argument for colleges not refunding tuition for the current semester. However, it would be a hard pill to swallow for no reduction in the fall. Absolutely online learning for some majors is subpar to in person learning.