Have any colleges described their plans if COVID-19 makes it not possible to reopen in September?

[Anonymous]

My son is a HS senior currently making decisions about where to attend in the fall. I was wondering if any parents of currently-enrolled students have seen any plans from their child's school for what will happen if they are not able to reopen in the fall. Ideally I'd like to avoid paying $57k per year for online classes.

I'm mainly interested in the colleges' contingency planning here. For me the only semi-firm upper bound on length of the epidemic is the timeframe for vaccine development, which is usually reported as 12-18 months.

Many other things could happen to shorten the economic shutdown -- discovery of an effective antiviral, or unchecked spread that infects the majority of the population in the coming months, or reduction so effective that we can return to contact tracing and containment -- but if we only manage to slow the spread, we will have the problem of it being hard to stop the isolation without speeding it back up again.

Thanks, and hope all of your college students are staying safe.

[Anonymous]

You wouldn't be paying the $57k per year for online classes, but for the signal value of the degree...But I agree, a plan is needed, especially as there is fear of a second wave in the fall.

[Anonymous]

I have a HS senior and we have same question. For now, will pay the deposit when he makes a decision. If school doesn't open in the fall - I am hoping schools will delay new students to spring or whenever schools open in real life -- or if not, won't pay that money for 4 years - we can always re-evaluate. For now, my kid will pick what he would do if there was no virus (although secretly i am hoping he will choose a closer option - just in case something changes and it isn't hard to get back).

[Anonymous]

Same. I wish they would just give all the profs sabbaticals for the fall and not even consider trying until 2021.

[Anonymous]

They haven made decisions about summer sessions. I think those will be forthcoming in the next few weeks. But fall decisions are several months away.

[Anonymous]

I have one college student at home doing work and I'll tell you, I'm not sure if it is because this all came about so suddenly or what, but the educational she's receiving now is NOT worth even 1/4th of what we paid.

I have another one going into college this fall and we have the same questions/thoughts.

My hope is that the professors will have more time to adapt and produce better quality lectures. Right now, the prerecorded ones she's been viewing are terrible. The live Zoom classes are not much better. Lots of background noise and students goofing off in general.

I took online college classes nearly 15 years ago when getting a second degree that were better quality than what she's gotten for $76k!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have one college student at home doing work and I'll tell you, I'm not sure if it is because this all came about so suddenly or what, but the educational she's receiving now is NOT worth even 1/4th of what we paid.

I have another one going into college this fall and we have the same questions/thoughts.

My hope is that the professors will have more time to adapt and produce better quality lectures. Right now, the prerecorded ones she's been viewing are terrible. The live Zoom classes are not much better. Lots of background noise and students goofing off in general.

I took online college classes nearly 15 years ago when getting a second degree that were better quality than what she's gotten for $76k!

It's one thing to design a class to be on-line--a team of tech people do it, work with a template etc and roll it out --often with a bunch of adjunct instructors who are experienced in being good on-line teachers but not experts in their field and whose primary function is to teach that class. Professors who were working at institutions where they are primarily valued for their expertise, their mentoring, their face-to-face instruction, their design and running of programs, their research labs (which also mentor students) had to roll this out on quick demand as they are also simultaneously adapting to mentoring their grad students, complying with all the changing federal rules on their research labs and data which had to be secured, adapting programs and policies to comply with FERPA, disability acts, make university decisions quickly about academic policies grading(a lot of actions have to be voted on by faculty groups) . What you are experiencing is not on-line teaching but rather emergency response teaching.

[Anonymous]

Ugh. I'm really praying colleges can safely reopen for the fall .

[Anonymous]

I know Georgetown is already telling us to plan to teach online in the fall just in case.