One problem with a crunched calendar without good breaks is academic burn-out. Not all students can take 15-18 hrs back to back to back without mental down time to rejuvenate their motivation/energy.
Not to mention schools that have a Co-op component or majors where undergraduate work experiences are critical to being employable.
I don’t understand the differentiation either. If the classes in the fall are online only, we all feel we get “less” than what we’d pay for, regardless of the type of colleges our kids attend. My S attends a college with an experience that’s second to none measured in every way in our opinion. And we’d still feel that way even if the fall classes are online, judging by how the college have handled the situation since the outbreak. If your kid’s college had small and more interactive classes before, those classes would still be small and more interactive online via Zoom. If your kid had easier access to professors in her/his college, s/he would still have easier access. We aren’t talking about MOOC-type experiences here for these colleges.
University of Maine is one state flagship planning to come back in the fall.
To be fair, Chancellor Malloy of the U Maine system kicked the decision to Governor Mills and the public health departments.
Every school is planning to come back in the Fall, and they are also planning for many other scenarios.
I sorta agree with this. I have one in a Lac now and one in a big ten public. Both kids think this all sucks and their parents do also. What we pay is similar since both OOS.
If colleges did the Jan 2021 to July 2021 thing I wonder if they’d open up the campus in the Fall of 2020 for research.
My sophomore D is planning to apply to PhD programs – she did research last summer. She had a very different type of research experience teed up this summer but it’s been cancelled, of course.
If she’s in school NEXT summer (b4 her senior year) then she’d not be able to do anything then either.
This is not the biggest fish to fry (it’s a pandemic, after all!), but this cohort really will be facing a deficit – it’s not just about resume building. It’s about exploration and experience to help direct what grad programs she applies to.
I guess more students might need to take time off after graduating to get more experience / exposure? Maybe labs would open up for students to do “summer” programs after they graduate? But then when they do apply they are competing with the with students the year(s) behind them for grad school slots.
Letting a small number of students on campus in the Fall 2020 to do research could help, but, honestly, I doubt this will be a priority for faculty or schools given all they are facing.
(Do you guys ever wonder if college administrators read these threads for ideas? Prolly not, lol)
My daughter said she’s glad she’s graduating this semester. She has not liked the online experience at all, even though her professors have made an effort to do as good a job as possible. She said she would skip a semester rather than doing another one online.
Many universities with substantial international student populations still have hundreds of students on campus, and are doing fine. Princeton allowed 500 to remain under hardship exemptions.
I’m on the other side of this issue, to an extent.
I teach at a medium-sized university outside of the U.S. Covid-wise, I’d say we are slightly further along the curve than the states, and with pretty strict stay-at-home measures that are widely accepted.
I’m worried about teaching face-to-face in the fall. I just don’t see how it can happen. As a practical matter, the hallways in classroom buildings are crowded, as are the entrance ways to lecture halls. Incidentally, I usually get a cold the first week the students are back on campus. And returning to dormitories? I don’t think it will happen.
We are certainly preparing for online teaching next fall, although, like many universities world-wide, this decision hasn’t been made yet.
Obviously, the situation has moved quickly, so perhaps things will change equally rapidly over the summer.
But my fear, frankly, is that we are entirely underestimating how much the world has changed. Most discussions are about when things will get back to normal. I don’t think they will. I think the residential college experience will not happen next fall, and possibly not next year. I don’t think Ohio State will be playing in front of a full stadium of fans. I don’t think there will be full bars, or parties (not that these are an essential part of the college experience, but you get the idea).
Of course the Chancellor is not going to go renegade and defer to state government. If you step back and look a this, the majority of schools are going to do everything possible to open campuses back up in the fall. Health and safety will be a part of this, but the big picture is that society and normalcy needs to return to the country. Factor in parents do not want their adult children sitting around their kitchen table for going on a year ‘distance learning’ at steep tuition costs. Factor in these adult children do not want to be home doing this etc…If they can open up High schools with 4k children in them, its a fairly solid bet that your 20 year old is braving it back to campus as well. (there is choice and options to not go)
Not to mention the faculty!
Definitely.
All possible solutions are likely to be sub-optimal for school year 2020/21, and all will have notable disadvantages.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but Georgia Tech says they will not accept any covid-19 related gap year requests this year. I wonder if others will follow suit?
One of the problems with this will be the adjunct/contingent staff. Not sure adjuncts qualify for unemployment, and we sure as heck would not be getting paid.
Classes began at my DD’s college last fall term on September 3 and ended on December 3. That’s 13 weeks even with 5 holidays thrown into the mix. Spring semester schedule was similar, January 27 - April 29 even with spring break and President’s Day.
I know it’s supposed to be 15 weeks, but it doean’t Really work out that way. I think they must count exams as part of the course hours. Her college has a “reading week” between the last day of class and the beginning of exams. I can’t imagine that it counts as part of class hours and could be eliminated in the current emergency conditions.
Although class is not going to be held on Thanksgiving, but it seems to me that some of those holidays are optional. Nonetheless, it seems to me that a semester could be completed in 14 weeks, including a week for exams. Possibly a few days longer.
Consider that the kind of adjusted calendar that you’re describing could also bleed into the following year by starting later in September and continuing into the following January. There was a time decades ago when the fall semester in fact did exactly that.
So we’re talking more like 42 weeks spread over 13 months, January to January, or 56 weeks. Very doable IMO. Might even be able to include a short summer session.
Many schools have defined and/or narrow reasons for gap years. U Maryland is one of those, and they have said they won’t take any covid-19 gap year requests. They actually expect gap year requests to be down, because 75% of them are typically related to religious trips/experiences/missions…and most of those likely won’t be going this school year.
That was also probably a generation ago, when more publics had a lot of capacity to admit lots of students down to the marginally college ready to give them a chance, knowing that many would not succeed, because the few who did succeed added value to the state economy, and failure was cheaper then (not as big a cost to the state or in student debt).
@roycroftmom The same is true at Amherst. They let nearly 200 students stay and they are doing just fine.
They better get the lawyers ready. They will get sued for such an arbitrary stance under the current conditions.