By Darren Johnson
Campus News
The Harvards and MITs of the world will be fine, whether they are mostly online this fall or not. These schools have prestigious brands and long wait lists. They aren’t going to lose enrollment either way.
But this is bad news for traditional, especially private, colleges that don’t have high demand even in normal times.
Two groups — Junior Achievement and the PMI Educational Foundation — teamed up to survey 1000 graduating high schoolers and found:
- Roughly half (49%) of Class of 2020 graduating seniors say their plans for after high school have changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey by Junior Achievement (JA) and the PMI Educational Foundation (PMIEF).
- Of those whose plans have changed, more than a third (36%) say they will now work, nearly as many (32%) expect to delay their start date for college, and almost a fifth (16%) changed the career path they wish to pursue.
- Forty percent of graduating seniors say they work. Of those who do, nearly half (49%) say they or their families depend on their income for living expenses.
- Four-in-ten (40%) say COVID-19 affected their plans to pay for college.
- More than a third (35%) who are planning to attend college now say they are less excited to go.
- Of those planning to attend college, their biggest concerns are the impact of COVID-19 on classes and academic quality (58%), dorm life (53%), athletics and school-sponsored events (44%), and dining halls (40%).
Read the full release here.
All of this spells bad news for the typical private college that attracts most of its students from outside of the region. These colleges rely heavily on tuition revenue and the added fees collected for housing and other on-campuses amenities. Considering how COVID has skewed supply and demand, and considering how safety protocols will cost campuses even more money, 2020-21 may be the year when a lot of colleges that had been struggling anyway call it quits.
In 2020-21, such colleges may need to:
- Discount tuition even more than usual; perhaps even matching public college tuition. In New York, private colleges may have to offer the SUNY/CUNY rate to remain competitive. Prospective students don’t want to haggle right now — if I were running a small private college, I’d just announce this temporary price change for 2020-21.
- Layoff lots of staff.
- Hire adjuncts to teach whenever possible.
- Perhaps partner with local hotels to house students, so that they can socially distance better.
- Work with local health officials to keep testing students.
- Don’t send students home for Thanksgiving Break; just end the semester there and have the December final exam online.
And so much more will have to change; school plays, sports, cafeterias, student papers, you name it.
The problem is, younger people can’t keep away from each other. For example, in parts of Texas, most new COVID-19 cases are from people under 30 going to bars.
So, the answer to the overall question is complicated. Surely, some colleges that wholly open will see COVID-19 spikes, but, if the students are self-contained on a college campus until Thanksgiving, maybe they will be done with the virus, and immune, before heading home.
Staying home also has issues. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in one of his daily briefings that most COVID cases originate at home, where people are coughing and not wearing masks.
As the virus barely effects younger people, in most cases, there are older people on campus — faculty and staff — and year-round residents in the college towns.
Campus COVID-19 plans should also take into account these people, who also have families at home, and work to protect them.
Faculty and staff could be behind Plexiglas and distanced and students can be heavily discouraged from traveling into the local town. Just stay on campus. Infect each other, not others.
We’re living in odd times, with no easy answers.
Darren Johnson is publisher of Campus News and a former full-time college administrator and instructor.
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