for those of you in higher education

[debthaven]

I work at two private universities in France. My friend who works at one of my universities and also a public university has been warned by the public university that school may still be online here in Sept. 

So I looked at the US news, and apparently US universities are also thinking they may be solely online in Sept too. 

Any thoughts/info from those of you who work in higher ed? 

Thanks. 

[Tennesseer]

Not a teacher in higher ed. But regarding higher ed...

College Board cancels June SAT tests and floats an ‘unlikely’ scenario: College admission exams at home

The spring wave of SAT cancellations continued Wednesday as the College Board announced it will scrap the college admissions test scheduled for June 6 nationwide because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now comes what the testing organization calls an “unlikely” scenario: the prospect that the high-stakes SAT could be administered online, and at home, this fall.

The public health crisis that shuttered schools from coast to coast in March has taken an extraordinary toll on the education system, including testing for 11th-grade students who are thinking about college.

Without venues for students to gather en masse under the eyes of testing proctors, the College Board this spring has canceled SAT sessions for an estimated 1 million high school juniors who would have been taking it for the first time.

Significant disruptions have also hit the rival ACT test. The next ACT national session is scheduled for June 13, but whether it will proceed remains unclear.

College Board officials said they want to alleviate student anxieties.

“Our first principle with the SAT and all our work must be to keep families and students safe,” College Board chief executive David Coleman said in a statement. “The second principle is to make the SAT as widely available as possible for students who wish to test, regardless of the economic or public health circumstances.”

Coleman said the College Board will expand normal testing in the fall, if the public health emergency eases and schools reopen. That includes a new Saturday session in September as well as more school-day testing in states and districts that have contracts with the College Board.

Comple article here: College Board cancels June SAT tests and floats an ‘unlikely’ scenario: College admission exams at home

May be behind a paywall for some.

[oped]

I've been reading about this. And honestly thinking about it... I'm not sure how we send hordes of young adults to live in close quarters and then let them all back out again periodically? 

I'm very interested as a parent of 2 college students. 

[giramomma]

I think it depends widely on the state/local level.. I go to school online out of Utah. I'm pretty sure they are planning on resuming face-to face, on campus courses starting in June.

Where I work, I'm not sure. For sure we are shut down for the rest of spring and summer.

The costs are enormous and cannot go on.

Our university system has lost 170 million from being shut down the rest of spring.

My university has lost 100 million. The university is shut down through summer, with summer courses going online. I'm guessing that's going to be another 100 million. Lots of face-to-face outreach happens during the summer..

My department alone is likely looking at half million dollar loss. That's being optimistic.

I live in a state where lawmakers are absolutely NOT friendly to education. Higher ed. K-12. Doesn't matter. There's no money for increased Covid-19 testing. There's no money for roads. There's not going to be hundreds of millions to pump into our university system.

I'll be furloughed. Furloughing workers will help, but it won't be enough. Honestly, I expect that some of our smaller campuses will close. These are the campuses that have already cut majors and programs to make ends meet from previous cuts.

[haapai]

Not working in higher ed either, but the local state U has taken the unusual step of announcing that they will not be raising tuition for the fall semester.  I did not read farther, so I cannot talk about whether they are expecting to be able to have normal in-person classes or even have the dorms open. 

I'm thinking that the powers that be are scared out of their minds, very cognizant of how their product has become somewhat of a luxury, and broadcasting the happiest news that they can possibly disseminate without getting sued. 

I don't think that this is a good time to be working for a post-secondary educational institution in any capacity.  The signs suggest that they are hunkering down. 

[giramomma]

Here's a nice opinion piece:

madison.com/wsj/opinion/column/sheldon-h-jacobson-and-janet-a-jokela-second-wave-of-coronavirus-infections-could-hit-big/article_5aeb3afc-8249-56b8-9afe-a0924848a0b6.html#tracking-source=home-trending

Which is why I think it's going to be local. I think the states that are pushing to open, early, like Texas, and likely WI (not the gov, but the rest of the lawmakers), will have a worse second wave, simply because testing capabilities are irrelevant to the process of opening up. Which means..we'll be doing the SIP crap again, in 5 months.

I think states that are looking to do things the right way will be able to have their universities open.

[oped]

But will they make students only go to local schools? No crossing borders?

How about international students?

[giramomma]

Apr 19, 2020 18:30:18 GMT -5 oped said:

But will they make students only go to local schools? No crossing borders?

How about international students?

If they couldn't stop students from going to spring break and bringing back Covid-19, I'm pretty sure they can't make students go to local schools. Students are adults, and well, we seem to have a low tolerance being told to limit where we go, as adults.

Plus, I think it would be a logistical nightmare for colleges. What if the university doesn't have enough space? What if it doesn't have the major? The process of figuring out transfer credits for everyone would be a huge headache...and remember....there will be furloughs and layoffs. Folks in the registrar's office will likely be the first to go...Not the professor bringing in a few million in research grants...

[oped]

So then what does it matter if one state is doing it wrong and one is doing it right... if we let this huge body pass from state to state etc?

I think the peeing section of the pool applies. I don’t see how some do and some don’t very easily? I could very well be wrong.

Who is liable if a school has an outbreak?

[debthaven]

Thanks Tennessee but I'm more interested in September. 

Thanks everyone. 

[giramomma]

Apr 19, 2020 19:26:33 GMT -5 oped said:

So then what does it matter if one state is doing it wrong and one is doing it right... if we let this huge body pass from state to state etc?

I think the peeing section of the pool applies. I don’t see how some do and some don’t very easily? I could very well be wrong.

Who is liable if a school has an outbreak?

Apparently no one? You know the "not me" ghost on family circus? I think he's liable.

Seriously, though. The whole blame thing is like at my house when DH goes grocery shopping and like the next day the best snacks are gone. We have some evidence of wrong doing...but unless we implement extreme surveillance measures, we won't know for sure who ate them.

So, we shrug our shoulders and move on, because the effort of finding out exactly who ate them and when, isn't worth it. I mean, if it's DS, DH and I certainly aren't keeping a teenagers bedtime and then waking up for work at 5 or 6 am.

After what I saw on my campus, I think there's a good amount of college kids that simply don't care. I don't know why that is. I certainly wouldn't behave in such away that literally shut down the university that I attend and attribute to the best years of my life.

It worries me how entitled folks are getting...and how folks don't care about consequences anymore.

[garion2003]

I work at a large University - I heard  that there is preliminary discussion about the fall semester being entirely online.

[giramomma]

Apr 19, 2020 18:12:04 GMT -5 haapai said:

I don't think that this is a good time to be working for a post-secondary educational institution in any capacity.  The signs suggest that they are hunkering down. 

Again, that depends. I'm in online education. I'm busier than I was this time last year. They are actively looking to expand, not contract online courses. I also work in STEM.

It also wouldn't make sense to fire me to save a 60K salary, but then lose 10X that amount in net income. Two people cannot do the work of 6-7. We're all doing the work of two people, as it is right now.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2020 7:45:04 GMT -5 giramomma said:

It worries me how entitled folks are getting...and how folks don't care about consequences anymore.

There are consequences to not opening the schools this Fall too. 

[oped]

Apr 20, 2020 8:05:11 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

Apr 20, 2020 7:45:04 GMT -5 giramomma said:

It worries me how entitled folks are getting...and how folks don't care about consequences anymore.

There are consequences to not opening the schools this Fall too. 

Agreed it will be a balancing act.

What do you see as the biggest consequence of not opening on campus classes?

[oped]

Gira, I understand what you are saying... but your husband isn’t going to sue your son... people are already suing Liberty for deciding to reopen...

I wonder if offering options of online remote would counter liability issues?

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2020 8:17:07 GMT -5 oped said:

Apr 20, 2020 8:05:11 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

There are consequences to not opening the schools this Fall too. 

Agreed it will be a balancing act.

What do you see as the biggest consequence of not opening on campus classes?

The economic fallout mostly.  The large schools and those with big endowments will be able to weather it, but I wonder how many smaller ones will?  All the people that work the colleges what will they do?  Is the government going to keep handing out this free money that they're pulling out of nowhere?  If classes are just online a lot of students are going to defer, what will that mean for the class of 21-22?

We're going with whatever happens.  If school is online he's going to do that, but we're not paying mega bucks to do so either, I can see where people who are paying a lot in tuition would rather just take the semester/year off.  If Fall semester is delayed until January (another idea I've been hearing thrown about), then I guess it is what it is, but if they offer on campus classes with a "sign this Covid liability waiver",  I'm pretty sure DS would be all over that.

[GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl]

Apr 20, 2020 8:17:07 GMT -5 oped said:

Apr 20, 2020 8:05:11 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

There are consequences to not opening the schools this Fall too. 

Agreed it will be a balancing act.

What do you see as the biggest consequence of not opening on campus classes?

I’m on a 100k member FB page for parents of kids in college. The whole Fall in-person/online question gets asked 5 times per day. The consensus seems to be that current upper-class men will tough it out although not happily. In-coming freshmen, however, are considering everything from staying home and going to a local community college to taking a gap year. The gap year then frightens the parents of current high school juniors who fear there won’t be enough freshman spots for the Fall of 2021 because all of this year’s freshmen will push off enrolling until then. And if this year’s freshman class does take a gap year, what do they do? There are no jobs, no internships, we can’t travel. Then there is the loud angry group that is outraged that their kiddo’s school didn’t refund tuition and how everyone is getting totally screwed (yeah, because colleges intentionally brought this virus in to screw YOUR kid).

There is no one easy answer. Add to that the fact that the current quality of online instruction is a very mixed bag: some courses and some professors are not amenable to online instruction. Oy. ODS has a year to go. He is online now, and hating it. He will be online for 2 courses this summer and hating it. Would he get more out of going back to campus in the Fall? Absolutely. But, sadly I think that decision will be made piecemeal by each state and each school and we will see another wave. His school is in Maryland, and the Maryland Governor has been all about locking down and flattening the curve from the get-go. But higher education is the largest employer in the state of Maryland. How long can he ignore that fact?

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

he large schools and those with big endowments will be able to weather it, but I wonder how many smaller ones will? All the people that work the colleges what will they do? Is the government going to keep handing out this free money that they're pulling out of nowhere?




The University of Nebraska is one of the biggest employers in the state.   The state has already slashed their budget to the quick.   International students make up a huge chunk of their budget now so if they aren't allowed on campus then add on you can't have any out of state students (which would include those from my county in Iowa) they're done for.

Some of the professors who are pulling in big grant money will likely stay on because they are already keeping the lights on.   A salary freeze and hiring freeze was already underway when I left in 2018,  next step is laying people off.

UNMC supplies a decent chunk of the nurses, doctors, pharmacists and lab support people in not only Nebraska but large parts of the midwest.   They do a huge amount of non-profit work in the rural areas and reservations.   A lot of the students are funneled directly into Nebraska Medicine itself.

I would imagine, and I can't blame them at all, that after this there will be a large amount of medical professionals deciding to retire.  We need people to replace them.   There are things that like it or not don't translate well to online learning for those types of schools.

No easy answers for sure.   

[giramomma]

Apr 20, 2020 8:05:11 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

Apr 20, 2020 7:45:04 GMT -5 giramomma said:

It worries me how entitled folks are getting...and how folks don't care about consequences anymore.

There are consequences to not opening the schools this Fall too. 

Yes. But the students aren't going to absorb the hundreds of millions in revenue losses.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2020 8:50:54 GMT -5 GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl said:

There is no one easy answer. Add to that the fact that the current quality of online instruction is a very mixed bag: some courses and some professors are not amenable to online instruction. Oy. ODS has a year to go. He is online now, and hating it.

I don't know how they could possibly teach upper division lab courses well through online instruction.  For first years I think a lot of the gen eds and probably the math classes would be fine, but DS is supposed to take physics, biology and Chem all with labs freshman year. 

[GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl]

Apr 20, 2020 9:10:22 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

Apr 20, 2020 8:50:54 GMT -5 GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl said:

There is no one easy answer. Add to that the fact that the current quality of online instruction is a very mixed bag: some courses and some professors are not amenable to online instruction. Oy. ODS has a year to go. He is online now, and hating it.

I don't know how they could possibly teach upper division lab courses well through online instruction.  For first years I think a lot of the gen eds and probably the math classes would be fine, but DS is supposed to take physics, biology and Chem all with labs freshman year. 

Both DSs have lab courses this semester. The professor videos him or herself doing the lab. Not the same thing at all. With 3 weeks still to go in the semester, YDS’s Professor just did her final lab saying she didn’t think they were effective.

[giramomma]

Apr 20, 2020 8:39:58 GMT -5 oped said:

I wonder if offering options of online remote would counter liability issues?

Our dean is pushing for online courses for undergrads anyway. So that kids that are doing co-ops/internships can still graduate in 4 years. It's hard to do a face-to-face class when you are working full time four hours away from school.

I was thinking about this more...I think if there is more of a push to online, there's going to be a huge crisis in what it means to effectively teach college students. Even though we have a ton of research that proves lecturing at students is NOT the best way to teach and the best way for our students to learn, profs. still do that, because...that's how education has always been.

The minority of professors actually teach well in away that promotes long-term learning.

In my experience, non-tenured faculty tend to be the better teachers online..tenured faculty are still married to the lecture module of teaching.

Of course, that's a problem. Our dean cannot exactly fire tenured professors if they teach poorly. There is no reward for those that teach well.

So, we'll see how that all shakes out.

Who knows, maybe competency-based degrees will get more traction. One of my program directors is wading into the world of stack able credentials. We'll see what kind of traction this gets moving forward.

[giramomma]

Apr 20, 2020 9:18:45 GMT -5 GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl said:

Both DSs have lab courses this semester. The professor videos him or herself doing the lab. Not the same thing at all. With 3 weeks still to go in the semester, YDS’s Professor just did her final lab saying she didn’t think they were effective.

No, not the same thing at all.

But, it takes time to develop good online courses. What you are experience is trying to learn at a distance. That's different than online learning.

It takes 4-6 months to develop and deploy one really good online course. Going through the course design process to lay out course objectives, assessments, and identifying resources to support learning is far different than slapping a few recording on the web and calling it done.

I can also promise you, face-to-face instructors don't plan their in person courses like we ask them to do for the online environment.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2020 9:09:06 GMT -5 giramomma said:

Apr 20, 2020 8:05:11 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

There are consequences to not opening the schools this Fall too. 

Yes. But the students aren't going to absorb the hundreds of millions in revenue losses.

But if they don't go it will be worse.  They will lose all the room and board and probably a lot of students as well.  So many are talking not going if it's online. 

[giramomma]

Apr 20, 2020 9:31:12 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

Apr 20, 2020 9:09:06 GMT -5 giramomma said:

Yes. But the students aren't going to absorb the hundreds of millions in revenue losses.

But if they don't go it will be worse.  They will lose all the room and board and probably a lot of students as well.  So many are talking not going if it's online. 

It depends on the university.

At my campus, there's enough dorm space for 1/4 of the student population, at best. And it's mostly geared towards freshman. Sure, that is losing some students, but I don't quantify 25% as alot . Now, if Juniors living off campus have decided to forgo their college education because it's face-to-face courses or nothing...I don't have a lot of empathy for that decision.

[oped]

I pay a ton for son's school. Only part of which is so he can take classes. The rest is for the out of class networking and program options available at the school.  Online, not paying philly housing is a nice perk. But I'm not sure the loss of the other resources makes tuition worthwhile if this is all online?  Its a balance on the parent end too... 

I will say Drexel is light years ahead of RIT in terms of using their tech to make things more accessible and ready online.  It may seem surprising because they are both tech/co-op schools, but I've found at almost every step Drexel has been better organized and runs their tech for the college better than RIT, and didn't really expect to find that.

[oped]

I live near Bucknell... all but 200 kids live in college housing. 

These differences mean different things for different schools... but I wonder how much the answers can be different given the movement of students. 

I'm so glad I'm not making these decisions. 

Maybe we have treatment options before fall... 

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2020 9:53:51 GMT -5 giramomma said:

Apr 20, 2020 9:31:12 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

But if they don't go it will be worse.  They will lose all the room and board and probably a lot of students as well.  So many are talking not going if it's online. 

It depends on the university.

At my campus, there's enough dorm space for 1/4 of the student population, at best. And it's mostly geared towards freshman. Sure, that is losing some students, but I don't quantify 25% as alot . Now, if Juniors living off campus have decided to forgo their college education because it's face-to-face courses or nothing...I don't have a lot of empathy for that decision.

I'm actually hearing that a lot more upperclassmen are thinking about foregoing than freshman.  After going through spring semester online they're not willing to pay the tuition to do it again this Fall. 

Now, we're not paying much.  After scholarships and grants if DS attends online, the cost will be minimal, so he may as well.  But for people paying a lot in tuition...especially those paying OOS tuition.  I could see where it would be really hard to stomach online.  There's so much more to being in person than just what is offered in the class. 

[GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl]

There is also the issue of millions of unemployed parents who can no longer help pay college costs or qualify for Parent Plus loans...