“The United States Air Force Academy has been mentioned in this thread. Of course, as a military service academy, maintaining a sealed bubble is likely to be more doable than with a typical civilian college.”
And tuition is free, so there’s a lot of motivation as well to follow protocols along with their self-discipline as you noted.
“Of course these boys are going to have relationships with their professors.”
I don’t think you can assume that for larger schools. Maybe for LACS, but what if the class is online, and grades are based on tests without too much faculty or peer interaction (Econ comes to mind). A student will get an extension of course, but it’s not going to be like meeting him or her at office hours like the good old days.
I don’t think we will be in this for the long haul. And I think that makes all of the difference on one’s perspective on this thing. If you think we will have a vaccine or good medicine, why not wait a semester or maybe a year? IMO, it is in the public’s best interest not to have The Great Migration of kids in the Fall. Schools could have some classes on-line, and they could look to how else schools can make up money (bigger summer terms?), get parents to pre-pay so you keep cash flow going in the meantime, etc. On the other hand, if you think this virus is going to stay in it’s current intensity re numbers and severity for several years, then colleges would want to push forward.
As they say, life is what happens while you are making plans. Hope is to have a vaccine in a year or so. May take longer. We may never have one. That the world could really use one doesn’t mean we will necessarily find one that is safe and effective (and taken by enough people).
@theloniusmonk that’s my comment about the students having relationships with their professors this fall. If spring is any indication, S19 will be meeting f2f with all of his professors more than once a week via Zoom and they are very flexible when it comes to finding other times to talk. He had one on one talks with three of his four professors multiple times last spring. I understand it’s maybe a small school thing but some other poster was saying that kids who are taking remote classes might have some issues if they get sick and have a hard time working out the details with their professors if they are too sick to work for a period of time.
The great student migration as an issue? The vast majority of students commute, attend a local college or community college or state university.
I don’t hear a peep about this real, annual great migration and the concerns of illness etc.
“A migrant farmworker is defined as an individual who is required to be absent from a permanent place of residence for the purpose of seeking remunerated employment in agricultural work. “Migrant farmworkers” are also called “migratory agricultural workers” or “mobile workers”. Seasonal farmworkers are individuals who are employed in temporary farmwork but do not move from their permanent residence to seek farmwork; they may also have other sources of employment.
There is an estimated
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@privatebanker – The subject of this thread is college in the fall & CV, and we have been reminded to discuss only that, and not wider societal effects of CV.
@ElonMomMD – Do you think that the Ivies’ sports announcement will matter outside the Ivy League? I say this kindly, but I am not sure that anyone outside of the athletic division follows their teams!
Tuition, R&B fees increase this year is still in effect (about 4%) even with these changes, however each student can take up to two summer classes with R&B for free next year I guess in an attempt to appease the student body?
No off-campus students (60% of the undergrads) will be able to use any on-campus facilities. And the students on-campus will have restricted access to most buildings.
I guess the big question is where is the “breaking point” to determine that it’s just not worth the effort to be on or near campus, doing online classes with very little to no real student body or faculty interaction?
IMO, these overly restrictive measures really diminish the college experience and will be nothing like the pre-pandemic experience a year ago. If I had a rising freshman at H, a gap year would be highly encouraged by this parent (if they are still allowed gap years?).
@CT1417 thanks. I’m aware. Been involved with the thread since the beginning. The point is the multi faceted decision making involved.
It’s easy to point to Ivy League schools as somehow imbued with unique prescience and understanding of the factors. They’re not and it’s where you stand that tends to inform a view.
Resources. Choices. Age. Fears. Personal situation. Geography. Health. It all factors in.
The point is let’s avoid using the unique privilege of attending a travel destination, four year residential college as the normal experience for college and how these decision should be made for all schools.
Decisions are complex. Unique to all situations and parties. Broad and monolithic plans applied to all is flawed.
Also applying this flawed logic to then call the motives of the decision makers into question is elitist. It lacks nuance. It also presupposes character traits that are made up out of whole cloth.
Every school is making the best decision based on all the facts they have available to them.
Families and students have a personal decision to make based on their facts and circumstances.
@socaldad2002 starting to doubt their will be much interaction going on between faculty and students on any campus. I would not bank on it at this point. Colleges can change their tune at any point and just tell the kids that all classes are remote.
@roycroftmom mentioned the false-negative rate of tests. I had no idea how large it was until a friend of mine posted information about it. The Annals of Internal Medicine did a review entitled, “Variation in False-Negative Rate of Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction–Based SARS-CoV-2 Tests by Time Since Exposure” that looked at the effectiveness of testing based on 7 studies. Even in the best-case scenario (being tested on the 8th day of infection, 3 days after symptoms start) you are still seeing a 20% false-negative in PCR tests.
So I agree with @roycroftmom, don’t rely solely on the test. Masks at all times and isolate if you think you have been exposed.
For example, you are a Sophomore and have a year long off-campus apartment and now the college will allow you to come back to campus housing in the spring and pay spring Room & Board plus you have to pay the last 6 months left on your off-campus apartment. I guess you could try to sub-lease out the apartment but the Freshman and Juniors (who would be the logical subletters) will likely be moving back home after the fall semester as they have to move out of the dorms and are going to be taking online classes anyways!
In addition, I don’t know many students (e.g. Sophomores) who after they have been living off-campus with more freedoms, would now want to go live in campus dorms in a more restrictive environment for 4 months?
This policy seems like smoke and mirrors to appear to give equal housing treatment to all undergrads but there is a saying “when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one”.
I asked before but aren’t some tests better than others? Some colleges sound very sure of their testing. These maybe are not the tests given to those driving through a Walgreens.
@socaldad2002 only 6% of Princeton’s undergrads live off campus.
For students at other residential schools that are only having a particular grade for one semester, kids who want to move out of their parents house are likely looking for airbnb’s or vrbos for this first semester. They aren’t signing one year leases.
Guess I wouldn’t expect colleges to sound unsure about any of their plans at this point (other than acknowledging uncertainty in the next couple of months and beyond). We know our plan sucks and won’t work but we are moving forward with it anyway. We have testing that is totally unreliable (will be more accurate to go with opposite of test result) but we are hoping to get better.
As has been commented before, the vast majority of people on this thread have children attending four year residential colleges, so that is why we are all discussing four year residential colleges that our children attend. I comment about Yale b/c my child attends Yale. Any reference to Harvard is b/c the two are more similar than different, say compared to Cornell and Harvard. My question about Harvard selecting 40% density vs. Yale selecting 60% is not questioning their decision-making criteria, but wondering if someone knew if the room configurations drove the decision.
I would also add that the reason Harvard is being discussed today is b/c they released their opening plan today. I am guessing that when your child’s college announced its opening plan, you must have weighed in then?