April 16, 2020
The Long Haul
Day 28
Sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll!
These popular majors will no longer be available to college students when they start or return to their studies in the fall. The Bachelor of Arts degree in kegger-party-planning and core-curriculum-courses like exam-week, one-night-stands and tailgating efficiently are likely gone for a year or more.
Sports teams, cash cows that they are, will still attract athletes, coaches, trainers and administrators but they will play to empty stadiums and gymnasiums, the roar of the crowd reduced to a whisper coming from their own bench. Alas cheerleaders, if they exist, will be little more than socially-distanced, digital images; emotionally empty holograms of their high-kicking, game-day-selves. Sports viewing and personal-sports-commentary-courses will still be offered as part of the popular physical education curriculum.
This is not an alternative-reality vision of a distant, dystopian future. It is now. It is certainly the 2020 fall semester and likely spring semester as well. To survive colleges and universities will have to abandon their ivy-covered bricks-and mortar-campuses and move everything they can online.
Except, of course, sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll.
Parents who shell-out $80,000 a year to the nation’s elite private colleges so their offspring can learn the most-efficient and cost-effective way to treat STDs are silently mouthing “thank you” to the epidemiologists in Wuhan that our president believes developed Covid-19 in a lab.
The damage to colleges is real already. And there are big changes on the higher-education horizon.
Many colleges and universities were already competing for students and struggling financially before Covid-19 shut everything down. The virus is expected to sink the low-hanging fruit, schools with small endowments, weak-funding-raising and a high demand for tuition assistance.
The financial free-fall has begun already. Endowments managers are watching in horror as their investments plummet in lock-step with the world economy. Fund raising has slowed to a trickle and many colleges were forced to refund tuition and fees they had already collected for the 2020 spring semester that ended in March when students were all sent home to shelter-in-place.
College is about a lot more than the classroom, coursework, GPAs and shaping bright young minds. This, of course, is what parents believe they are purchasing when they take a second mortgage to make the twice-yearly tuition payments. The children though, and yes they are still kids when they head off to campus at 18, expect college to be much more than that. College without a vibrant social scene that allows young people to search, explore, succeed and fail, all in a relatively safe environment, is high school without friends.
Enrollment in the fall will surely be down, especially among younger students for a number of reasons, not all of them social. For starters, everyone is taking a financial bath and less tuition assistance will be available. Many freshman will make a last-minute decision to take time off though the ability to work for six months and then freely wander the world for the second six that is so popular with gap-year-kids, will not be available. Foreign students enrolling in US schools will fall off precipitously, a big financial drain as most pay full tuition.
Do not expect colleges to just fade away. Higher education is big business, generating $650 billion in revenues in the 2016-17 school year. The New York Times reported this week that there were 4,000 colleges and universities, educating two-million-students in the United States. Congress put $14 billion for higher education and student assistance in the stimulus bill. More government aid will be needed and likely forthcoming.
Not every school will survive. There will be fewer choices. Free tuition assistance, trumpeted by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren at campaign rallies across America has no chance to pass a Congress that is already printing money to keep the economy going. The harsh, near-term-reality is that there will be fewer traditional college and university choices for lower income students. This is yet another example of how Covid-19 has disproportionately infected and affected low-income and minority Americans.
No one can predict exactly how kids will react to the new reality. Will they thrive or just survive or perhaps perish? Isolation is hard on the elderly. Old people die early when they are lonely. Young people do not fare well either when they are isolated from friends and a world filled with promise and possibility. Too many kids already hide in virtual worlds and never find their place in the real one. Online education will push more of them deeper into that distant, lonely world.
Kids need to see, touch, feel, laugh, cry and explore life with each other. In person! In groups! Up close and personal! They need football and basketball and tailgating and collective hangovers. So yes they need:
Sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll.
Be safe
The Long Haul
Day 28
Sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll!
These popular majors will no longer be available to college students when they start or return to their studies in the fall. The Bachelor of Arts degree in kegger-party-planning and core-curriculum-courses like exam-week, one-night-stands and tailgating efficiently are likely gone for a year or more.
Sports teams, cash cows that they are, will still attract athletes, coaches, trainers and administrators but they will play to empty stadiums and gymnasiums, the roar of the crowd reduced to a whisper coming from their own bench. Alas cheerleaders, if they exist, will be little more than socially-distanced, digital images; emotionally empty holograms of their high-kicking, game-day-selves. Sports viewing and personal-sports-commentary-courses will still be offered as part of the popular physical education curriculum.
This is not an alternative-reality vision of a distant, dystopian future. It is now. It is certainly the 2020 fall semester and likely spring semester as well. To survive colleges and universities will have to abandon their ivy-covered bricks-and mortar-campuses and move everything they can online.
Except, of course, sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll.
Parents who shell-out $80,000 a year to the nation’s elite private colleges so their offspring can learn the most-efficient and cost-effective way to treat STDs are silently mouthing “thank you” to the epidemiologists in Wuhan that our president believes developed Covid-19 in a lab.
The damage to colleges is real already. And there are big changes on the higher-education horizon.
Many colleges and universities were already competing for students and struggling financially before Covid-19 shut everything down. The virus is expected to sink the low-hanging fruit, schools with small endowments, weak-funding-raising and a high demand for tuition assistance.
The financial free-fall has begun already. Endowments managers are watching in horror as their investments plummet in lock-step with the world economy. Fund raising has slowed to a trickle and many colleges were forced to refund tuition and fees they had already collected for the 2020 spring semester that ended in March when students were all sent home to shelter-in-place.
College is about a lot more than the classroom, coursework, GPAs and shaping bright young minds. This, of course, is what parents believe they are purchasing when they take a second mortgage to make the twice-yearly tuition payments. The children though, and yes they are still kids when they head off to campus at 18, expect college to be much more than that. College without a vibrant social scene that allows young people to search, explore, succeed and fail, all in a relatively safe environment, is high school without friends.
Enrollment in the fall will surely be down, especially among younger students for a number of reasons, not all of them social. For starters, everyone is taking a financial bath and less tuition assistance will be available. Many freshman will make a last-minute decision to take time off though the ability to work for six months and then freely wander the world for the second six that is so popular with gap-year-kids, will not be available. Foreign students enrolling in US schools will fall off precipitously, a big financial drain as most pay full tuition.
Do not expect colleges to just fade away. Higher education is big business, generating $650 billion in revenues in the 2016-17 school year. The New York Times reported this week that there were 4,000 colleges and universities, educating two-million-students in the United States. Congress put $14 billion for higher education and student assistance in the stimulus bill. More government aid will be needed and likely forthcoming.
Not every school will survive. There will be fewer choices. Free tuition assistance, trumpeted by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren at campaign rallies across America has no chance to pass a Congress that is already printing money to keep the economy going. The harsh, near-term-reality is that there will be fewer traditional college and university choices for lower income students. This is yet another example of how Covid-19 has disproportionately infected and affected low-income and minority Americans.
No one can predict exactly how kids will react to the new reality. Will they thrive or just survive or perhaps perish? Isolation is hard on the elderly. Old people die early when they are lonely. Young people do not fare well either when they are isolated from friends and a world filled with promise and possibility. Too many kids already hide in virtual worlds and never find their place in the real one. Online education will push more of them deeper into that distant, lonely world.
Kids need to see, touch, feel, laugh, cry and explore life with each other. In person! In groups! Up close and personal! They need football and basketball and tailgating and collective hangovers. So yes they need:
Sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll.
Be safe
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