Crowded Classrooms and COVID

[the_geneticist]

At my place, I can well believe that individual faculty would be in charge of the decisions related to hybrid/online/different physical arrangement of the classrooms. "Reinvent the wheel" is practically the motto of my place.  Of course, someone would notice halfway through the semester that there was no campus-wide policy, and then they would mandate that everyone report on how they had been keeping their students safe, using a clunky and ill-suited online report form that would go down many times in the middle of entering the many pages of pointless data before a hasty deadline.

We will have that too!  Plus some contradictory, last minutes emails from different deans/upper admin/etc.

[dr_codex]

At my place, I can well believe that individual faculty would be in charge of the decisions related to hybrid/online/different physical arrangement of the classrooms. "Reinvent the wheel" is practically the motto of my place.  Of course, someone would notice halfway through the semester that there was no campus-wide policy, and then they would mandate that everyone report on how they had been keeping their students safe, using a clunky and ill-suited online report form that would go down many times in the middle of entering the many pages of pointless data before a hasty deadline.

We will have that too!  Plus some contradictory, last minutes emails from different deans/upper admin/etc.

Us, too. Sigh.

[Parasaurolophus]

The latest word here is that fall applications are down significantly, but that it's possible it's just that the students who would normally turn us down later in the process haven't bothered to apply, so we shouldn't worry yet.

Sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Meanwhile, summer classes are severely overloaded, there's no way to add more sections, and even if we could add more sections, the university won't authorize existing instructors to teach more sections (we're capped at 8 a year each). But the university is a little desperate to add more summer sections in the hope that doing so will lead to some retention for the fall.

[mythbuster]

Summer enrollment is also robust at my campus.  This is a surprise for us, as many predicted a drop as students felt they couldn't afford the classes. Instead, it appears they all feel they have extra time.
    So far Fall enrollment is on track, but we are all holding our breath on that until freshman registration starts in July.

[Caracal]

Summer enrollment is also robust at my campus.  This is a surprise for us, as many predicted a drop as students felt they couldn't afford the classes. Instead, it appears they all feel they have extra time.
    So far Fall enrollment is on track, but we are all holding our breath on that until freshman registration starts in July.

I've never really thought the prediction that most students aren't going to be able to afford tuition really makes sense. Enrollment is counter-cyclical.  To be clear, this is going to hit small, private, non elite liberal arts schools very hard and I can definitely see their enrollments plummeting. However, tuition at the large regional state school I teach at is 3500 a semester. The huge gap in earnings between those with a college degree and those without still remains. Most of the students at my school already pay tuition with student loans, probably that percentage is going to go up, but they aren't simply going to decide they can't afford it. For most of them that would be a bizarre decision, especially when the opportunity cost of attending college is way down.

[FishProf]

I am curious to see what happens to Nursing application/enrollments.  I wonder how many "I want to help people" students might see what the front-line is enduring and go "NOPE".

Or they may run toward the fire.  We shall see.