Posted by Adam Koplik, Staff Writer
Aidan McCrory, Featured Photo
The coronavirus pandemic has shut down the entire world. There’s no other way to put it. 100,000 Americans have lost their lives, and infections are in the millions worldwide. While those losses are the most tragic, the consequences of COVID-19’s outbreak are present throughout our institutions. One of which is higher education. So, what does the coronavirus mean for the future, and present, of college?
The week of March 11 was the time when the pandemic struck home with most Americans. It was also the last week of school in most states, and most colleges sent their kids home. Since, colleges have been trying to figure out coming back.
“The reopening of college and university campuses in the fall should be a national priority,” said Brown University President, Christina Paxson, in an op-ed for the New York Times. “Institutions should develop public health plans now that build on three basic elements of controlling the spread of infection: test, trace, and separate.”
Colleges need to do everything they can to come back to school, in-person. However, in the end, the safety of their students needs to be priority one. While necessary, online schooling was a failed experiment for many students. The possibility of having to make thousands of dollars in tuition to get an online education is not something that appeals to many.
Grace Nicoletti, a senior at New Paltz High School, decided to delay her enrollment at Manhattan College in favor of spending her freshman year taking classes at SUNY Ulster.
“If I’m going to be spending thousands of dollars to start school online, it would be smarter to save money, stay home, and get my Gen Eds done for a lot cheaper online but at the community college,” Nicoletti explained. “It doesn’t make sense not to get what I’m paying for.”
Nicoletti doesn’t think she’s alone in this decision,“I think right now lots of families are struggling financially and people are going to become more aware of their own family’s situations.” She continued, “This is going to make many kids realize that spending thousands of dollars just for the ‘college experience’ is 100% not worth it.”
That exact decision is why Paxson thinks colleges have no choice but to come back in the fall. So many schools need each year’s endowment to survive. If kids elect to not go to school in favor of online schooling, which is a financially sensible choice, it could bring many schools to the brink of survival.
“This loss, only a part of which might be recouped through online courses, would be catastrophic, especially for the many institutions that were in precarious financial positions before the pandemic,” Paxson said. “It’s not a question of whether institutions will be forced to permanently close, it’s how many.”
March and April are two of the busiest months in terms of college visits. Colleges were unable to welcome students to their campuses. The visit is critical in terms of actually pitching a school to students, and universities had to try to figure out alternatives not just to pitch themselves to this year’s senior class, but to next year’s junior class if tours are still not allowed.
“We are making every attempt to populate our website with as much helpful material as possible. Luckily, many of our accepted students were able to make it to campus before everything being closed down,” said Ithaca College admissions counselor, Graeme Corrigan. “In addition to that, our amazing team and campus partners were able to transform our Accepted Students Weekend into a fully virtual Ithaca Week. Students were able to take part in a vast assortment of webinars, Q&As, and information sessions from offices all over campus. In short, we have been trying to give them all the tools so that our accepted students can make an informed decision on whether they can picture themselves at IC or not.”
This decision from Ithaca was one of many ways that colleges throughout the country are trying to pitch themselves to students who were still deciding on their acceptance. Hundreds of schools are now holding virtual information sessions to try to connect with students and describe their university. Also, some schools, including Davidson College, are allowed incoming seniors to defer their fall tuition and enter the university in the spring.
Isabelle Gingold, a senior at New Paltz High School, has ideas of her own for pitching students, saying, “The best way a school can pitch themselves to kids virtually is to have students who have already studied at that university connect with potential incoming students, this way kids who were thinking about applying or enrolling can hear about the way life is path those schools.”
Not only has the pandemic brought about how kids will be accepted, but also the potential for systemic change in the way college admissions work. The infamous SAT and ACT have been a staple of applying to college for decades. Nevertheless, in the past few years, following years of criticism about the fairness of the test, more and more schools have been turning away from the tests, electing to go test-optional. In test-optional admissions, kids may send their standardized test scores if they believe it helps their chances, but students won’t be penalized for not sending them. The virus has sped up this shift exponentially.
By canceling some of the most popular SAT dates for juniors, kids’ chances to take the all-important tests are dwindling. Despite the College Board announcing new planned dates in the summer and fall for kids to take the test, an overwhelming number of colleges in the nation, including Ivy League Columbia University, have elected the test-optional path.
The flaws of the SAT were summed up by Nicoletti, who said the test “does not test your knowledge; it tests how well you can take tests and understand their tricks.” A perfect summary of very flawed tests. Studying for the SAT is much less than studying for the everyday test. It’s just about memorizing the test itself. Besides, statistics show that there is a direct correlation between family income and SAT score, with wealthier families being able to afford private tutoring and education that more impoverished families don’t have access to.
Top schools like Brown University and Harvard University both, at the time of this writing, are continuing to require the SAT, but understand the diminishing opportunities, and won’t punish students who “only take the test once.” Also, many schools throughout the nation announced they would not penalize students who don’t send SAT Subject Test or AP scores. With the online AP tests drawing criticism and the subject tests being canceled and now being flawed due to students not finishing extensive curriculums, these are more fair decisions from schools.
We don’t know what the future of the coronavirus will bring. However, we know that for the rest of our lives, the timelines will be split into two: Pre-corona and post. College admissions are just one of the dozens of systemic changes that will be made in our society by the pandemic.
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