I note that Cal State Fullerton has made the rash move to go online in the fall. What is the status for USC? First, they CANNOT delay any decision. Second, how much of a tuition break will be given for online which is a serious downgrade from the on-campus learning experience.
I’m sure USC wants fall classes to be on-campus, but they don’t want to jump the gun and that may be why they are delaying a decision. If they made one today it probably would be that classes are going to be online. As for a tuition break, I don’t really imagine that there would be one. You are getting access to the same professors; the same content. Some professors are just better at it than others. USC has always had some classes that were online only. I took an upper division gerontology class completely online and still was charged normal tuition. I do feel bad for lab-based classes though because in that case, yeah, it is a serious downgrade. It is hard to do most any lab class virtually. For the people who aren’t happy with online, they will likely just have to take a semester off because I don’t see any kind of tuition break really happening.
You cannot take a semester off in Engineering because of the way classes are offered. One would need take off a year. And hit or miss with an instructor’s ability to teach online is unacceptable at $28,000 a semester. I have also seen at least one Professor proclaim via social media he would not be teaching the same online as he feared his intellectual property would be stolen.
I want them to do everything they can do to offer classes on campus so I do not care how long the decision takes. I hope they forge their own path to the right decision and do not just follow the herd. It’s only mid April.
USC and Stanford have been offering fully online graduate engineering programs for years, where lectures are streamed to students. The tuition is the same as for the regular, in-person classes.
San Jose State has also announced it is going to be doing most of its teaching online in the fall, so it looks like lots of schools will be doing this.
UC Berkeley is considering a hybrid teaching model, where large lectures are streamed online, while smaller classes, labs and discussion sessions are conducted in-person with appropriate social distancing guidelines. That may be a model to look at, although I don’t know how the housing situation would play out. Students would still need to be living in the dorms in that situation.
As someone who got PhD from USC Engineering, let me tell you that lectures is about 10% of engineering PhD. You almost don’t care for it. It is all in the face-to-face interaction with your advisor, and with other grad students who are doing PhD next to you. It is the research, the data you collect n the filed, the way you transfer it to your lab. Forget lectures! Graduate school is about work not lectures. It is about publications in peer-reviewed journals, it is about going to conferences with your professor, or without him. It is about presenting your work, face-to-face. What lectures are you talking about? Who cares about lectures in grad school???
How one goes about getting a PhD is very different from getting an undergraduate degree and many Masters degrees.
Sounds like the School of Cinematic Arts is planning in all earnest to educate in person come Fall, but take extra precaution with sanitizing equipment, plan for online large classes, take extra precaution for small in-person style workshopping classes, etc. I really applaud them for thinking it through per major. Schools can easily stagger move-in dates, take temperatures, and equip areas with hand sanitizer.