Right now my DS is down to three colleges to choose from, our state flagship, a college in Philly and a college 9 hours away. If his first choice said freshman do online and everyone else will be back on campus, or if they say your from NJ you do online and the kids form Utah feel free to come and live on campus that school will not be getting my money for the next four years. You could make a argument freshman first bc the school has the most to lose money wise, from 4 years of tuition vs less for upperclass man. I think it will be online for the fall and back on campus for spring semester. Colleges are in abad spot money wise if campus is not open in the fall, and right now the people with the least skin in the game are high school seniors still making decisions, towards what college to attend, and I am sure there will be plenty of schools that will not really know how many freshmen they are gonna have until the tuition bills start coming in. the dorms are the major problem, schools can stagger classes by doing weekends, night, reducing Christmas break in order to have more classes with fewer kids, maybe schools do not really want kids going home from Christmas and spring break if the virus is still going strong.
@Rivet2000 I think it is more likely a “gradual return” “done in phases” and “the approach may be different for different aspects of undergraduate education and for graduate programs” could mean that they will have a staggered move-in and they will have more hybridized learning. But that’s just my take on it.
@ChemAM I agree and it will be different for different schools as local conditions dictate.
@NJdad07090 I’m sure all this weighs on HS seniors making final decisions and perhaps the question of having to take a first semester online is especially hard. I guess if all the schools are equal in all other regards (academics, financial stability, etc) I’d go with the one where my freshman could attend in person from the beginning.
The MIT statement is basically saying “we want to get more information before making a decision”, which is probably what every college is trying to do, regardless of whether it is saying anything publicly. Of course, the colleges (and everyone else) are probably wishing for something like either (a) an effective vaccine, or (b) a treatment that greatly reduces the likelihood of serious effects (need for hospitalization, long term damage, or death), but these are very unlikely to be available in time for the colleges to decide what to do for the fall semester or quarter.
The likely scenario is just that there will be more infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. If we are lucky, large scale testing will reveal how many more unknown infections and deaths there are, but that does not seem too likely either. Which means that they will have to make poorly informed decisions, because there is not enough information to make well informed decisions.
The community colleges and commuter universities have a less difficult problem in that they do not have to worry so much about dorms or very many students from all over the country or world. They still have to consider how to handle social distancing in classrooms and the like, but they have fewer of the dorm-related issues to deal with if they have to switch between in-person and distance education. However, one problem that they are likely to see more of than the colleges this forum focuses on is that more of their students will be financially-limited, and may not have good ways at home to do distance education (e.g. old slow computers, if they have computers, and/or slow or no network connection).
@NJdad07090 the problem is that your child will have to commit to a college before the college will tell you if their learning is online or not. I don’t see colleges making any decision until mid June at the earliest.
If you are choosing between 3 colleges, you might try to determine which one is the most financially solvent that will be able to weather this pandemic storm. Poorly funded private and public colleges may be especially vulnerable to additional revenue losses.
I would think mid June /July so people can make airfare plans…or not…
How does one determine if a college is poorly funded/especially vulnerable? Do we look to just endowments? Or? Just looking for suggestions as to any resources we can consult on this topic that perhaps we haven’t yet considered.
I’m assuming that none of my daughter’s choices will convene a normal freshman orientation or semester in August. Even if young people don’t die from this disease, a number still get sick or pass it on to others. Over the summer, we will hear more about Covid’s long term effects among survivors. Already, I’ve seen articles about reduced pulmonary function. The more these after-effects become known, the less inclined colleges presidents will be to open their campuses.
And speaking as an academic, I agree that some (many?) schools won’t be able to weather the ensuing financial storm. A friend of mine at a state flagship is already grappling with a sizable salary reduction. I imagine more will follow, along with freezes and furloughs. It’s going to be a rocky road for a good couple of years - for many schools including ones that are frequently discussed on CC.
@ucbalumnus A lot of the elite colleges are committed to having a significant portion of low-income students in their student body, whom are also likely to suffer from the same problems you describe for commuter colleges in the event that distance learning continues.
Obviously one should try to avoid schools that are on the verge of insolvency. However, the correlation between how well a school has responded to the crisis so far and its endowment size has been far from 100%.
Thank you! I’ve seen that one. I was wondering if there might be any others – Forbes seems to just gloss over public colleges.
If anyone here has any other suggestions as to how to assess – different resources – would love to hear.
If you search on " financial report" you should (may) be able to get financial info.
If they are going to play they need to coordinate schedules with the other schools, but at this point no one is sure they are going to play. CU, in the same league as Stanford, has only said that if there is no on-campus school there will be no sports, i.e., they will not bring athletes back just to play.
@socaldad2002 - I am planning on the fall being online, if I am wrong I will be happy, my main point is if a college than decides online for freshman and every else is good to go on campus , I would have a very hard time paying tuition to that school for 4 years, same if they opened and said kids from metro NY are not welcome but kids from Texas are. the easy choice is the state flagship ( Rutgers) over a billion dollar endowment and 45 minutes away. But the easy choice may not be the best choice. We have narrowed down our list and got rid of schools that were across the country that I could not get in my car and get him if needed or where we felt uneasy with their aid package being there all 4 years vs the COA.
If my kid were a high school senior this year, and their school allowed a gap year, I’d have them take a gap year. The likelihood of an uninterrupted Freshman year is SO much higher in Fall 2021.
I wonder if some majors will get priority for in person classes. My children are not in these majors, but it does make sense.
What would the kid do during the gap year? Work at a grocery store?
nline instruction and she doesn’t want to start her college ‘career’ that way?
You could check College Raptor for endowments/capita. You can also look at the common data set for any school and scroll down to section H2A–Number of Enrolled Students Awarded Non-need-based Scholarships and Grants. That shows you how much money colleges are spending to ‘attract’ students.
For state universities, I would see if you can determine how much of the school’s annual budget is funded by the state. I would also look up the percentage of international students, to see how much of an enrollment hit a school will take when international first year students are not allowed into the US to enroll next year. (I suppose they could opt to enroll for E-learning, but the time difference makes that very unappealing.)
Simply googling the school’s name and the info you want to find is often the easiest way. Or some clever person here may know a source that lists all of this info.