Just like many regions of the world, the education world was blindsided with the pandemic. 100’s of colleges are shutting down campuses, forcing students out of dorms and switching classes over to online.
What is the financial loss to a family that has pretty much already prepaid the Spring semester? Whats the recourse? Early move-out, transportation/travel, housing, lost meal plans etc…
Is a $50-75,000 education worth it when a student is forced to take online class from a remote area?
I guess since I wouldn’t pay $75k/yr for any school to begin with, it’s not really about the money for me. I’m more disappointed because my kid loves being there and is bummed. Really, for us, it’s cutting the semester short about 5 weeks. Certainly not enough to rethink it all.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. For students living on campus and they are being removed from dorms there is a financial loss. The meal plan is a loss.
I’m sure there are other financial issues as well.
Learning is still happening online but NOT with the same attention and detail that a classroom setting would afford, IMO
My range was $50-75k for private college (Not 75k)
@BmacNJ I understood your comment. It seems to me that more than economic it is a strong emotional blow for the students, for example, the seniors may not be able to have a graduation ceremony, the overseas students who had to cancel and return, the high school students who had to cancel theirs campus tours. At one point life changed us, we do not know if this will last us a couple of months or a couple of years and the worst thing caught us all off guard. It is very sad.
@BmacNJ I was discussing the extra meal plan money with my son. He saw a few people buying in excess tonight (they have to be out of dorms by Sunday). I hope they will get credit next semester, not sure. My guess, the admins have meetings about all these details.
At many of the big flagships/state schools, 3/4 of the students live off campus and are in 12 month leases so they won’t be coming home and will have the exact same expenses as they have today. They’ll finish classes online or maybe get to go to campus for labs or art studio courses but nothing else will change (except maybe their jobs will end if they are on campus)
There may be significant economic blows. College seniors may find that their accepted job offers (particularly in vulnerable industries like travel and hospitality) disappearing as employers downsize or go out of business due to severe business downturns. Other college students may find that their summer jobs disappear for the same reason. Those graduating into an economic downturn may have a significantly worse career progression over a decade or more.
High school seniors and current college students may find that the often-disdained distance / online learning format becomes the new normal, and that the luxury of the residential college experience with in-person classes is no longer available.
I’m looking at it from the other end…my husband is a professor, and a tenured one at that. He will have to figure out how to teach remotely, and he has never done that. And, he’s a chem professor…how do you teach chem without labs? How do you replicate all the office hours and remedial help for struggling students (a huge part of his job). And finally, although he’s tenured, if this become a long-term reality, what about job security? He’s in his late fifties, a little late to start a new career. So, yes, as the parent of a high school junior, I wonder mostly about her future college education, but this is something bigger than any of us.
I don’t see how education can happen completely online. engineering, medicine, lab sciences, the arts…so many fields need experiential hands-on training.
Just my 2 cents, I do not see Colleges refunding money, perhaps they credit you for next year, so maybe some sr. may get a refund but as others have said most seniors more than likely live off campus. Where this hurts is the kids who live far away say across the country , most schools have said we are going online for the time being, so do they couch surf with a friend or go home and maybe be forced to fly back again in a month. I feel bad for all the soon to be laid off workers when these schools close. It is a major pain for HS kids looking to pick a college but it is worse if your a SR in college and were counting on on campus interviews, graduation…
I can not blame the colleges they like all of us are doing the best we can with the info as we get it. I doubt we will see the last 2 colleges on my sons list and if that is the case they will be off the list, I can not just send him to a OOS school without seeing it with the prices they are charging.
Perhaps they will look at University of North Dakota’s distance learning engineering program, where labs are completed during accelerated summer sessions on campus (and labs are typically held in small groups). https://engineering.und.edu/current-students/distance.html
If this is over before September, and if I am still around (highly likely), then I will look back at this as an interesting learning experience. For one thing this may teach us that the many things that we assume are always going to be there (food available for sale in the grocery store, health, an Internet that works, our neighbors, a banking system that works, universities that have classes, …) are not necessarily permanent.
Having the last month or two of one semester be moved to be on-line seems like it is a correct response to a serious health emergency.
If this continues into next year’s classes, then at some point I will agree with the original post. If your learning is on-line, then what is the point of paying big bucks for a brick-and-mortar institution?
In our case the one daughter who is still in university has a lot of lab courses. Much of this could not be moved on-line. I do wonder whether universities are making exceptions for students who are getting academic credit for lab work that does not involve a classroom at all.
Whether a “a $50-75,000 education” is ever worth it is a question which probably depends upon what options you have available, how much money you have in the bank, and your priorities.
I’ve always felt that a tremendous amount of the learning and growing that happens in college is about the whole college experience, not just the specific training in various academic disciplines that could happen in remote classrooms. A lot of the learning is social, as well.
My daughter has grown up in a conservative small town In which most families have been here for generations (not ours) and social groups are pretty set in stone. I mean, in her AP Gov class, she was usually only one of two students who would speak up in favor of more progressive ideas (hard for her, as a kind of shy kid).
I’ve been counting on her finally being able to immerse herself in a different kind of place with a diverse group of students from many different backgrounds and to experience the cross-pollination of ideas in discussion-heavy classes, campus activities and conversations with dorm buddies. I want her to experience that there’s a big world out there, very different from this town and that she has a place in it.
So…four more years of her living at home (much as I would enjoy that) doing online classes while working part-time at the mall or flipping burgers in our economically-depressed town where jobs are hard to come by would be giving her a just-as good education? Of course, as a legal adult, she could move to a city to experience something different while going to college remotely but I don’t see my not-terribly-adventurous girl doing that anytime soon. For a lot of 18-year olds, college is a necessary baby-step toward venturing out into the world, gaining skills and
confidence in a somewhat safe and structured environment while maturing and meeting other kinds of people. There’s probably no real future for my D Where she grew up, and living at college is a bridge to that “somewhere else.”
Is the money worth that? Heck yeah, to me it is. If we lived in a big, diverse city, or if my daughter had a bolder personality I might have a different answer.
Inthegarden, I strongly agree. Although my family lives in an east coast, liberal area, two of my children opted to go to college in a different part of the country.
For the majority of college students in the US, the college experience is commuting to the local community college or non-flagship state university (perhaps with some distance / online learning thrown in), rather than the residential college experience that seems to be the assumed one on these forums.
Whether or not it is, it would be more like the norm in the US, rather than the apparent norm in these forums.
To the OP question if its worth it. I say it depends. I stayed home and went one year to a local community college. Went to local blah school like the 3rd state school and put in a myself through college then medical school as friends went to Michigan, Michigan State Harvard, Yale etc.
Lots of us now live in the same neighborhood. Drive very similar cars. Houses in the same neighborhoods and kids literally went to the same private elementary middle schools (not great local choices back then… Now there are in Chicago).
Our kids all going to similar or same OOS known colleges.
Can’t say it made a difference one way or another.
But it will be interesting to see if colleges start to offer less expensive alternatives… Since they will be doing online classes how about offering online classes for a reduced cost? Just like they do for MBA programs. Not ideal but might save lots of students alot of money. Schools don’t have room do to limits? Then offer a virtual classroom and then there are no limits. Yes, I understand this wouldn’t work for certain majors but let’s face it . Kids at the same schools do video conferences in groups for projects already (this is so wrong) but they do. Why not take it to the next level?