“The nice part of being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.” ~George Will
We are assuming schools will be online for the next school year.
Our decision to stick to the plan and have son commit to MIT (even though Vandy is a 3hr drive and they offered him full-tuition merit) reflects our belief that that is still the best long-term plan despite the likely near-term disruptions.
We would be hesitant at this time to commit to an expensive school that we were not sure was in a rock-solid financial position to weather the storm and take care of its community.
Perhaps that is true for most forum posters (students or parents) and the colleges they attend or apply to, but a mainly commuter-based college with no on-campus housing in a less-impacted area may be a different situation and risk level from a residential college with almost every undergraduate in the dorms coming from all over the country and internationally.
Most college students commute to commuter-based colleges from where they lived before college. These colleges may be more likely to reopen in-person or partially* in-person, and, if a virus resurgence occurs, their cost to switching to distance education (and switching back to in-person if the virus resurgence goes away) are likely much less than at residential colleges that have to decide what to do with students living in dorms. At these colleges, students and parents presumably do not feel like they are paying for a premium college experience, so they may be less likely to find switching to distance education due to virus concerns to be as objectionable compared to those on these forums (and some non-traditional students may find distance education to be easier to schedule around work and family obligations).
*For example, distance education for many lectures, but in-person for labs and other class elements that do not work as well with distance education.
“Colleges will be much more conservative in “opening” the campus just like sporting events, theaters, concerts will be much more cautious with limiting or not allowing in-person fans for the foreseeable future.”
Sporting events and similar gatherings will happen pretty quickly once state governors let them, under the conditions set by those states (e.g. no or limited spectators). The venues won’t close of their own accord because financially they can’t afford to. Colleges are similar. I expect that individual states will set rules for their public colleges and those will differ by state. And most private colleges in those states will follow suit, even if their conditions are somewhat different (more OOS and residential students).
We have a state school that is mainly a commuter school downtown. It has 25k students and shares a campus with a community college and another university, so there are another 10,000 students in the same area. Most of the students, faculty and staff take public transportation and the buses and light rail cars are packed. Like Tokyo subway packed.
If urban schools go back to on campus instruction, they may not have the dorm issues but they will still have social distancing issues. They already do a lot to keep the number of people on campus down like having students only attend 2-3 days per week, having classes from very early in the morning to very late at night, having a lot of online courses. They just have a lot of people to serve in a concentrated space.
I continue to think about all of the students that live off campus with leases that start in August. Many parents on this board have said their student is going back to the college town…whether classes are online or in-person.
Depending on the school and proportion of students living off campus that could be a lot of students, and I doubt many will be social distancing.
Look at Miami Ohio…probably 6-8K students live off-campus there.
UIUC, probably close to 20K off-campus, counting grad students. These schools/towns/states won’t be able to keep these students from living in the places they legally have the right to.
I haven’t seen any college with a high proportion of students living off-campus address this issue.
@ucbalumnus Does your commuter student information include 2nd, 3rd & 4th year students that live just off campus in apartments? At my son’s school 31% of the students live on campus while 69% live off campus. The number of students living in off campus apartments far exceeds the total necessary to push students living within 2 miles of campus well about 60%. Do they “commute” to school? Sure, but they are essentially right on top of campus, and from all over the country.
I don’t think there is any way college campuses open in the fall. They won’t be testing people as a condition of attendance because anyone could catch the virus the next day. There won’t be a vaccine. Everyone is concerned about flare ups or a second wave of cases in the fall.
The question is, how many people push for gap years? When schools clamp down on gap years, how many parents simply withdraw their students?
No one has an answer for the colleges that have students from all over the country (and the world). All of this “states will decide” talk makes no sense for so many schools. Will Bowdoin let kids fly into Maine from all over the world in order to get back to class? Will that be something the governor of Maine would decide?
That’s because they can’t. It’s completely out of their control. No apartment complex is going to let people out of their leases either. There are 19MM+ students that attend colleges and universities in the U.S. There will be hundreds of thousands of students heading back to their off campus apartments.
Why do posters think the situation will be any better for reopening in January? Do you think we will have a cure by then? An effective vaccine? Viruses mutate, and even the current flu vaccine is nowhere near fully protective, maybe 75% in a good year. We may not have a fully protective COVID vaccine ever. Mumps has been around for decades, and that vaccine is only 88% effective. Do colleges stay closed indefinitely?
At some point they will have to address the issues that this will force though…is security going to monitor the parties (some schools do this at some off-campus residences), are these students subject to college ‘rules’ if school is online and not residential, will they open any parts of the campus for the off-campus students (food, libraries, etc.), does Title IX still apply, etc. etc.
Colleges will have figured out a plan of action (9 months) to contain the spread of the virus around campus;
The healthcare industry will have identified medicines that better treat patients who get sick;
Herd immunity will have partially set in so less students will be impacted in the future;
A vaccine (or experimental vaccine) just might be available by then, the whole world is working on it;
January gives students and families hope that this is temporary and the colleges want their tuition money. But I could also see colleges close campus in Spring as well and continue online instruction if the above is not figured out by then.
as you point out, there may or may not be better treatments/effective vaccines by January 2021, or maybe not until 2024. Herd immunity can’t develop if everyone is hiding at home; it requires exposure of masses of people. Most experts say the best people to expose are those under 30 with almost zero chance of mortality.
What you are referring to here are typically residential campuses where most students live in the dorm frosh year only (a common pattern for state flagship universities). What I was referring to was colleges where most students live where they lived before going to college (for traditional age students, usually their parents’ residence). Think of your local community college, or the regional non-flagship state university in your area.
The big schools have addressed off campus housing as best they can. Most schools do not control the off campus housing (some have arrangements with landlords or private corporations).
I know at CU where about 75% live off campus students were told to return to their ‘real’ homes if possible. I find it rather ironic that the school then sent out a census reminder to claim Boulder as their permanent home as that’s where they spend most of their time. My friend’s daughter moved home, but it is only about 10 miles away. She still has to pay the rent on the apartment. Most students have signed leases for next year as those living situations go quick and most sign by Nov. for the following school year.
All of this is just speculation and not based on facts…we all are hoping some of these things come to pass.
I do get that there’s a lot of speculation on this and other threads, but we have to take care not to position things that aren’t facts as facts.
The fastest vaccine ever developed took 4 years (mumps). Even if a vaccine shows promise within the next year, the next hurdle is producing billions of doses of the vaccine. It will take years to dose the world, and lots of issues as to how to allocate said vaccine doses.
All of these unknowns and complications make online class the most obvious “safe” choice if colleges can still survive financially that way and if enough students stick with the program and don’t take a break. Starting to wonder if LACs will ever plead their case to their students and flat out say that students continuing their education without a gap might be the only way for their beloved school to survive and/or resemble the college it was six months ago.
@1NJParent well now we are back to the testing issue. Where are these millions of tests? Will people who have the antibodies even be immune and for how long? Would colleges really tell certain students they can return but others cannot? (I doubt that one.)