
US universities announcing online Fall 2020 - mjn
https://www.kmjn.org/notes/online_fall2020.html
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reddog
The _average_ cost of tuition (not room, board, books, travel, living
expenses) for private colleges is about $35K/year. At the more expensive
private colleges it's twice that.

Are people really going to pay that much for 15 hours of Zoom lectures a week?
I doubt it. The primary reason parents are willing to pay that much is not for
the education (with some exceptions) but for the credentials, the networking,
and putting their kids into a cohort of successful, like-minded individuals
from which they can choose an acceptable mate. And of course to get that 18
year old bundle of hormones and poor judgement out of the house but still in a
relatively safe environment.

~~~
johnnyo
They might, because it keeps them in the cohort for next year.

I don’t think a lot of Harvard kids are going to drop out and head to state
school, and Harvard knows it.

~~~
bgorman
Right, but is Harvard going to deny students from deferring admission for a
year? I would assume the number of students attempting to defer this year is
10x what it normally.

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megiddo
Unless your four-year is paid for, community college for core curriculum is a
better and better deal every year.

~~~
dx87
It depends a lot on the community college. My wife has taught at community
colleges and 4 year universities, and she said that the students who
transferred from community colleges were frequently very unprepared for a 4
year university. Like, they would struggle to write more than 1 page and have
no idea what citations are.

~~~
Hongwei
I think the parent comment is implying that college diplomas are better at
helping people get a job and earn a living.

Writing 1+ page essays and MLA citation formatting is work that seems to only
exist in academia. It wouldn't surprise me if community college educated
people transferring to university programs needed a refresher on that stuff.

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HarryHirsch
_Writing 1+ page essays and MLA citation formatting is work that seems to only
exist in academia._

Proper written communication and literature searching skills are demanded
everywhere in the workplace. Doesn't everyone dread getting muddled, poorly
formatted emails because you have to guess the meaning or write back and forth
several times to find out what's going on?

I don't get the pervasive hostility to education and academia in this forum.
Granted, much of high school and regional college is piss-poor, but instead of
writing off all of university as useless one should demand proper performance.

~~~
jdhn
>Proper written communication and literature searching skills are demanded
everywhere in the workplace.

Proper written communication, absolutely. However, you can argue that people
don't need 4 years of writing essays in order to comprise emails or
PowerPoints. As for literature searching, what does that mean in a normal
office environment context?

~~~
HarryHirsch
My students have to write lab protocols. In General Chemistry class they were
filling in worksheets (seriously, are they paying tuition to fill in
worksheets?), now they get to write 8 - 10 pages for each organic lab about
the context, what they did and what is all means. The initial attempts are
universally lousy, but they do improve. One hopes that the improved writing
skills carry over to other kinds of written communication. It's just sad that
expectations in the first semesters are set so low, it's really a tyranny of
low expectation.

Footnoting means to put stuff into proper context. Of course you need
literature searching skills to put stuff into proper context, and you need to
know where to find documentation for your field of work.

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mjfl
In my opinion it would be crazy to pay $50k of tuition for a few zoom lectures
per week, and I think a lot of colleges are aware of this. In response, many
of them seem to be doing a "hybrid" approach, where undergrads are allowed to
come on campus, but all instruction will be online (Harvard for example). This
seems to defeat the purpose of not having in person classes in the first
place. I think it shows how much of a pickle they are in.

~~~
creaghpatr
Safer for the professors though.

~~~
Avicebron
Safer in a health sense, but I fear once Academia realizes that lectures can
be recorded and supplemented with some office hours for questions. The life of
an academic will become tenuous..teaching in real time over Zoom is only a
short order of magnitude above a well structured pre-recorded lecture series.
At least in my experience.

~~~
vkou
Universities have figured this out a long time ago, and have been cutting all
sorts of corners in instruction (Despite the growth in tuition.)

The life of an academic is tenuous already, and a lot of instruction is done
by poorly-paid, untenured sessionals. Tenured positions are in 2020, rare as
hen's teeth.

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lazyjeff
Since this topic has been a bit click-baitey recently, I was expecting yet
another busy page with ads and popups and stock photos of students. It was so
refreshing to see just a list of universities with text.

~~~
mjn
Thanks! I started collecting the announcements as part of discussions we're
having in my department about the fall semester, and thought I might as well
stick the list up on my blog.

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Loughla
Two things:

a) There is no way this list is even slightly close to comprehensive.

b) What is the purpose of this?

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georgeecollins
I have a child who is entering his senior high school year. This is very
interesting to me in terms of thinking about which schools to apply to. I know
this is not for 2021, but I think everyone realizes what happens in Fall of
2020 will have repercussions in Fall 2021. Does that make sense? I can
elaborate.

Also, I agree this is not close to comprehensive, but the best I have seen. If
someone here can keep a more comprehensive status I promise you many parents
would pay something for access to that status.

~~~
perpetualpatzer
> Also, I agree this is not close to comprehensive, but the best I have seen.
> If someone here can keep a more comprehensive status I promise you many
> parents would pay something for access to that status.

For those interested, two more exhaustive sources[0][1], one of which is
linked in the footnotes of OP.

[0] [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-
Colleges-...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-
Colleges-/248626) [1]
[https://collegecrisis.shinyapps.io/dashboard/](https://collegecrisis.shinyapps.io/dashboard/)

~~~
georgeecollins
Thank you!

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gringoDan
Universities are hurting for revenue and will be remote for the near future. A
benefit to this: right now presents a unique opportunity to get a Masters or a
post-bacc.

You can take classes without needing to move/commute to campus. Furthermore,
given a work from home environment and a more flexible schedule, many people
will be able to make it work without needing to quit their full-time job.

If I ran a struggling university right now I'd lean into this and still be
open to applications for the fall semester. This could attract a lot of
working professionals like me.

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dhosek
It's interesting that while Pomona, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna and Scripps have
all committed to online, Harvey Mudd College is still planning to be on-campus
[https://www.hmc.edu/coronavirus-
information/2020/07/16/updat...](https://www.hmc.edu/coronavirus-
information/2020/07/16/update-on-hmc-fall-2020-enrollment/)

They have 540 out of 812 students planning to live on campus. I somehow don't
see this working out.

~~~
mjn
The Claremont McKenna announcement says that they don't think LA County is
going to let them hold in-person classes, so they didn't really have a choice.
Unless they're misreading hints from officials, seems like Harvey Mudd isn't
going to have in-person classes either. Less clear about dorms; those might be
allowed to open for students taking online courses (the model Harvard is
using).

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jb775
How long until credentials get phished and all university material is dumped
online for free.

One of the rare opportunities where hacking could do good for humanity as a
whole.

~~~
vkou
You can already get a world-class education for nearly-free, if you're willing
to devote thousands of hours of your time into it.

Very few people take advantage of it - because the credential is more
important than the knowledge.

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dhosek
It's also the structure that a formal class affords that makes it more
effective. This is part of the appeal of book clubs (yes, part of it is, for
some people, the opportunity to hang out with people and drink wine and eat
cheese): some externally imposed structure makes it easier to commit to
learning something. Paying for an opportunity also tends to make people more
likely to honor their commitment.

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wdb
Do they give you tuition discount as foreign student when it's all online?

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yasoob
The ones I know of (mine included) aren't giving any discount. They only waive
the room and board but you have to pay everything else....

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elliekelly
Why don’t the students do a bit of collective bargaining? Reduced tuition or
you all take the semester off.

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randomdata
If the amount to be paid is agreeable for the services expected to rendered,
why would you want to take a stand?

If the amount to be paid is not agreeable for the services expected to be
rendered, why would you want to utilize said services?

There does not seem to be any reason for a group to take a stand. It is either
worth it or it isn't. If it is, everyone is happy. If it isn't, there is no
loss in not seeing the transaction take place.

~~~
sushshshsh
An in person education is maybe worth $30,000 a year, but should it not be
worth $20,000 if the instruction delivered online?

Hard to say. We would need to look at the level of profit the college is
making from this new arrangement.

~~~
randomdata
If it delivers the same value to the student, shouldn't it still be worth
$30,000? The input costs are irrelevant.

If it is only worth $20,000 now, which may very well be true, value has been
lost. So, what value is lost? I imagine it will be a lot harder to make new
friends and find new lovers when you spend your time at home on a computer
instead of mingling at school.

Were people previously paying $10,000 per year (to stick with your numbers) to
make friends and find lovers?

~~~
sushshshsh
Students don't precisely control the ability to vote with their feet and drive
market pricing for a college degree though, right? Virtually all institutions
cluster around some specific yearly price, especially those schools that are
competitive to enter. Additionally, since students (buyers) can obtain large
loans to attend school, they are able to make relatively irrational market
decisions such as paying $30,000 per year for tuition.

The thing you said about paying for what a thing is worth ($30,000) instead of
what it costs to produce that thing ($20,000) is correct. If I buy a car like
that, theoretically I'm able to walk away from the deal if I don't feel like
it's worth $30,000, and the seller might eventually lower his price to $20,000
if he never finds a buyer at his desired price.

But I think with colleges, the presence of loans and zeitgeist irrationally
motivate people to buy something for $30,000, and then if they do happen to
pay off their loans they assume that they got $30,000 of worth out of it...
But I think that isn't true, since most employers aren't treating a bachelor's
degree very seriously these days.

~~~
randomdata
I'm not sure it makes any difference if the perception of value is irrational
or not. It remains, for a student to want to spend $30,000 on school, they
have to have a belief that it is worth $30,000 to them. If tuition was instead
$300,000, a lot more people would balk at the idea.

The outstanding question remains on whether or not the perception of value has
declined with these announcements. If so, what perceived value has been lost
in that transition? Presumably the education is still being provided.

~~~
sushshshsh
How do we measure that it is really worth $30,000? You are saying it's worth
it because someone wants to pay it. Maybe that's true, but TSLA stock has been
worth anything from $200 to $1400 in the past few years. The actual worth to
the bagholder in the event of the bubble popping is negative.

For your other point, yes, at an apples to apples comparison, the receipt of
college credit and education/knowledge should remain the same. But the cost to
produce it should be lower. And I'm arguing that the cost savings will not be
passed on to the student, because there is no market mechanism that allows
them to negotiate the price of their education.

~~~
randomdata
_> How do we measure that it is really worth $30,000?_

It is not a question of what it is really worth (which is rather meaningless
as nothing has some kind of absolute worth that is written into the cosmos),
only what people see it as worth and are willing to pay.

 _> Maybe that's true, but TSLA stock has been worth anything from $200 to
$1400 in the past few years._

Of course. The perception of value of a given thing is naturally going to
change from person to person and from moment to moment. In this case we're
talking about moment to moment. Because it was worth $30,000 to someone last
year does not necessarily mean it is worth $30,000 to them today, as their
knowledge has changed.

But, if the perception of value has declined, the question is: What has
changed?

 _> But the cost to produce it should be lower_

Even if it were free to produce, if it is worth $30,000, then it would be
logical to charge $30,000. Input costs are irrelevant. To emphasize that
point, it could cost $30,000 to produce, but if people only want to pay
$20,000 you can't charge $30,000. You're going to lose money. People lose
money producing things _all the time_. Input costs are irrelevant.

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emptyparadise
What a terribly dark time to be an international student in the United States.

~~~
jb775
There's worse things in life.

~~~
throwaway713
That always reminds me of this:
[https://i.redd.it/wwje449jjge21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/wwje449jjge21.jpg)

