I don’t’ know what others are saying, but my position is that they know exactly what EVERY other school also knows, but they are the only ones who have reason to believe that they can act accordingly based on this knowledge without going broke.
Just glancing through the various engineering departments at MIT, a disproportionate amount of professors attended MIT as an undergrad (and many got their masters and/or PhD there as well).
So yes, MIT has a significant amount of professors who attended some of the top colleges in the U.S. if not the world. It’s a very smart group of professors many who attended top colleges and graduate schools early in their careers.
"@Rivet2000 wrote:
Mind experiment:
Let’s say there is a (fictional) school with the following attributes;
- plenty of money on hand
- brand strength such that no students would reconsider attending
How would they plan for fall 2020? Perhaps they would go 100% online and wait for resolution of the pandemic? So the closer any school is to this fictional school the more I think they would limit on campus attendance. A few come to mind."
While my D’s school is ‘opening’, it’s looking and sounding more and more like the school you described above. I am now at odds with my D over this because she hears ‘we can come back to campus’ and wants so badly for a sense of normalcy that she doesn’t read what’s really being said…
All students need to re-register for housing and it will be drastically different for a campus that had 85% of undergrads live on campus…at this point my D is just hoping not to get kicked off campus to hotel/apartments because with all of the other restrictions (i.e. no visitor access to dorms, building access limited, in-dining severely limited, can’t leave town for the semester, students permitted to secure their own housing required to comply with on campus housing guidelines for masks and social distance, etc.). All students need to reregister for all classes and won’t have their schedules until a few days before moving back to school. Classes will be 100% online or with face to face components, but, per school Q & A: ‘Those face-to-face components will never be required; every course will be delivered such that it can be completed entirely online by students who need or choose to do so.No student needs to go any face to face component’. This makes me think the school is not going to be focused on making the Face to Face a priority…which is really the only reason I was willing to pay the R&B for the semester.
D’s school added a FAQ to its website saying it has not yet determined what tuition, room and board would be for the semester, but it would let us know. Um, I thought we were done with that variable when we got the requisite ‘tuition will increase 4%’ notice pre-covid. Has anyone had tuition, room & board increases announced at their schools in the past month that are over and above what may have been announced pre-Covid? This concerns me.
School has announced it will let anyone back out of their housing contracts up until right before the semester starts, and that students who stay off campus this semester will be allowed to return next semester.
CU actually had permission from the State Legislature to raise tuition and decided not to. They think they can come in at budget or absorb the losses this year. No promises for 2021-22.
My D20 is an incoming freshman at UCLA. It’s not just Los Angeles students denied housing, it’s students throughout California. I’m in a couple of Facebook groups and many CA residents were not offered housing, even those in Northern California. We live in Orange County, a minimum of a 50 minute drive without traffic. With classes online only for D20, she will be living at home. Even if she received a housing offer, she would rather live at home with classes online. And I’m not willing to pay the high price for a single under the circumstances. Disappointing, but fingers crossed for a return to normal in 2021-2022.
UCLA published how they prioritized housing offers. Seems many OOS freshmen received offers based on responses on FB.
“ Decisions regarding initial housing offers will take the following into consideration:
First- through fourth-year students who are housing eligible Pell grant recipients
Students with an institutional need to be on campus (which includes, but is not limited to, veterans, former foster youth and student-athletes)
Distance from campus for first year students
Third- and fourth-year housing eligible students who must be on campus to take courses or participate in other activities that can only be offered on site
After considering the above, if space remains, priority will be given to:
Remaining first year students
Remaining housing eligible returning students”
Yes, brilliance isn’t confined to the halls of academia. But if there isn’t some high concentration of brilliant minds in academia, why do we send our kids to colleges (instead of apprenticing with an electrician, for example)?
^Some parents and students, at some schools, are looking for credentialing, networking opportunities, finishing school polish, and/ or four more years to enjoy life with peers before assuming adult responsibilities.
In some cases, I’m not sure how much the academic part of the college educational experience is the priority.
Not prioritizing the academic component may be justified, but it must certainly impact reaction to covid fall college options.
I do believe peers provide an intellectual component to the campus experience for those interested in such things.
Because there are many many people who do not want to be an electrician, builder, furniture maker, artist, farmer, jeweler, or master mechanic, so they need to attend college. I’m not aware of any engineering apprentices.
Because there are people like me with poor spatial sense and weak motor coordination.
I’m not sure what brilliance even means. Sometimes it’s pretty subjective. . In academia, some professors are regarded as world authorities in their field of study, usually by others in the same field.
Back around 6/6 on this thread, there was discussion about choosing colleges and how important professors are in that process. Some thought no one chooses the college for the professors, though elite colleges were assumed to have elite faculty. (Really, really hope I’m not mischaracterizing that discussion),
Later on there were suggestions from others it should be relatively simple to replace faculty too ill to teach.
It’s not clear to me some families even believe “brilliant” professors a campus positive.
The thread is about school in the fall and pandemic impact. One impact, imo, is thinking hard about the mission of a university. How much do “brilliant” professors really matter in the post covid university?
There has always been this debate about whether colleges are places for the development of one’s mind or for the training of one’s future profession. Either way, the main purpose of a college education is to instill higher level knowledge and improve one’s analytical and critical thinking skills. It seems to me that these missions can’t be accomplished without brilliant or at least bright minds. A college education won’t improve one’s dexterity, unfortunately.
There have been lots of essays lately saying when the dust settles we’ll have lost all those so-called middle tier colleges and universities. HYPwhatever will survive.
I keep trying to imagine what that looks like for my grandchildren.
Middle tier? The real risk is the low tier privates (not CC). Rightfully so, if they can’t produce a business and educational model that supports their tuition rates.
I think it’s something of a straw-man argument to say things like “there are brilliant people everywhere! And all kinds of ways of being brilliant!” (No one ever argued against that. No one would ever argue against that.)
I get it that on CC, saying good things about 'Bama or College of Charleston (both excellent universities that my children considered, and used here as examples of non-HYPSM places) - is viewed as charming and pleasant. But saying good things about you-know-where is considered in poor taste.
That’s why I rarely discuss you-know-where on CC unless it’s directly relevant to the matter at hand.
I would posit that hearing elitism where there isn’t any, or holding the view that noblesse oblige means you don’t say what you like about HYPSM, says more about what the listener thinks is “elite” than what the speaker was actually saying.
@Rivet2000 wrote:
Not sure it is a genuine thought experiment if you already have a subset in mind (e.g., HYPMS.) But, okay, I’ll allow you your premise, on condition that we both understand its true value is to spark further conversation. 
While I agree with you as to the main purpose of a college education, what happens if/when most applicants and their families don’t?
I guess that sort of education then becomes available to only a very few. Though, of course, there will always be autodidacts.
Doesn’t it mean far fewer mid to low tier privates, and those being replaced (to the extent that is necessary with fewer 18 year olds and potentially more online universities) by public universities who won’t be allowed by the state to fail?
Yes state budgets will be tight in the next few years, but my prediction is that there will be increasing pressure on publics to up their game academically and in other ways in those states where higher income parents have traditionally preferred private colleges.
That will probably be encouraged by tilting the ratings in favor of things that publics do well (eg admitting Pell grants students has already been more heavily weighted and there are limits to how much most privates can afford to compete there).
I totally relate to this. We do not know Bowdoin’s plan yet but I think some of the above things will apply. S19 wants to go back. If kids are in dorms, he’s going. Our priority is getting f2f classes so we will see what they say about that. We can’t get a grip around what else about campus life will be lost. If he can live with his friends and they can be “family”, that will help a lot. Even if they are just in the same dorm, that would help. But, one, even planning f2f could change at any point and, two, we won’t know the housing situation until after the leave of absence deadline has passed. So, it boils down to this - I guess all students going back to any campus should prepare for the worst and hope for the best. S19 isn’t willing to take a break and be a semester or a year behind his friends.
As for tuition, there are schools that have kept tuition flat and that would be a big incentive to go back to school in the fall as well. Schools like Pomona and CMC that are in the same vein as Bowdoin aren’t raising tuition. We have no news about that yet.
Maybe the kids in the NE schools should bring a couple of pairs of long underwear and warm socks since socializing with friends outside might be the only way to go this fall. S19 actually likes the idea of coming home after Thanksgiving and staying home through most of Jan. I hope Bowdoin does something like that. Maine is gorgeous but not so much during those weeks since it gets dark at 4:00!
My D20 is an incoming freshman at UCLA. It’s not just Los Angeles students denied housing, it’s students throughout California. I’m in a couple of Facebook groups and many CA residents were not offered housing, even those in Northern California. We live in Orange County, a minimum of a 50 minute drive without traffic. With classes online only for D20, she will be living at home. Even if she received a housing offer, she would rather live at home with classes online. And I’m not willing to pay the high price for a single under the circumstances. Disappointing, but fingers crossed for a return to normal in 2021-2022.
UCLA published how they prioritized housing offers. Seems many OOS freshmen received offers based on responses on FB.
“ Decisions regarding initial housing offers will take the following into consideration:
First- through fourth-year students who are housing eligible Pell grant recipients
Students with an institutional need to be on campus (which includes, but is not limited to, veterans, former foster youth and student-athletes)
Distance from campus for first year students
Third- and fourth-year housing eligible students who must be on campus to take courses or participate in other activities that can only be offered on site
After considering the above, if space remains, priority will be given to:
Remaining first year students
Remaining housing eligible returning students”
[/quote]
Sometimes I wish there was an ‘I’m sorry’ button. That said, if classes are going to be online anyway, I would rather save the room & board cost of Westwood!
This doesn’t look good for fall sports. As well, I’m assuming these men are living together in some group-like situation, so it doesn’t look good for dorms, either. I’m curious to know more about how transmission occurred and how strict they were with distancing, masks, etc.