College this fall--parents' perspective

[Hibush]

The research tends to show that people who end up going to a name-brand institution usually don't save money by getting their general education credits met at a community college or via dual credits because of transfer loss.  Even AP credit is becoming less common at the elite institutions now that "everyone" has it, not just those coming from the top of the top high schools.  AP courses and test scores still indicate that one is prepared for the name-brand education, but it's not an overall cost savings to the college bill.

One reason to not take transfer credit is the name-brand institution is relying heavily on its networking and socialization functions to have nearly everyone graduate in a timely manner and be a successful alum.  The education itself is only part of the equation.  Building the relationships with one's fellow students and acquiring the mindsets, mannerisms, and behaviors that one associates with that brand is important both to the graduates so they meet expectations of those out in the world and to the university's brand as people experience it.

Too many disappointed employers by not getting the type of person they expect and the university's name is no longer nearly as valuable on a diploma.

Those same social reasons are cited by students and parents for why taking a gap year and doing something else is a better use of time/resources than dropping down a couple tiers to focus on the education more cheaply.  An accredited nursing/social work/education/engineering program is probably fine from nearly anywhere.  However, when you're banking on the social network and/or the brand-name, then a gap year is pretty reasonable as a trade-off.

Well done walking the line where this could be seen as satire or dead serious advice, and be both very effectively.

On the serious side, the socialization that is so critical in the first semester is not going to be done effectively online. The value proposition will change. The first semester on campus will be different from the first semester of college.

[pgher]

On the serious side, the socialization that is so critical in the first semester is not going to be done effectively online. The value proposition will change. The first semester on campus will be different from the first semester of college.

Exactly. I don't know about this particular college, but most have some sort of activities during the days or week leading up to the start of the semester for incoming freshmen. I don't know how that could be replicated, nor the less formal networking that happens in the weeks and months to follow.

[Caracal]

Here is another thing to worry about.   Suppose the schools pretend that life is going back to normal and students move into dormitories in August.  Then the second wave of the virus hits in October and students are then asked to vacate their rooms within a week.  How long can this game be played without wreaking havoc on students and family budgets?

It isn't likely to be the same situation. The hope is that you have systems in place to detect local outbreaks and try to bring them under control before they spread everywhere. If schools reopened, I'm not sure it would even make sense to send students home if there was an outbreak in the local area. It seems like the last thing you would want to do from a public health perspective is take a bunch of kids from an area where there were a bunch of cases, put them on planes and disperse them around the country.

[spork]

Most undergraduates attend college within 50 miles of home. They aren't getting on planes. Many live with parents or other family members while taking classes on campus, live independently from family members in accommodations close to campus, or drive to their parents' home on weekends.

[Caracal]

Most undergraduates attend college within 50 miles of home. They aren't getting on planes. Many live with parents or other family members while taking classes on campus, live independently from family members in accommodations close to campus, or drive to their parents' home on weekends.

Fair points. I was mostly just addressing the previous post as it related to pgher's kids' situation.

[pgher]

Here is another thing to worry about.   Suppose the schools pretend that life is going back to normal and students move into dormitories in August.  Then the second wave of the virus hits in October and students are then asked to vacate their rooms within a week.  How long can this game be played without wreaking havoc on students and family budgets?

It isn't likely to be the same situation. The hope is that you have systems in place to detect local outbreaks and try to bring them under control before they spread everywhere. If schools reopened, I'm not sure it would even make sense to send students home if there was an outbreak in the local area. It seems like the last thing you would want to do from a public health perspective is take a bunch of kids from an area where there were a bunch of cases, put them on planes and disperse them around the country.

Right--when Kid 1's school shut down, they sent people from a locus of some disease activity (including at least one professor) to the farthest points on the globe. Didn't make any sense to me, but I'm glad to have my kid safe at home, for now.

I guess this is the sort of thing I worry about. Suppose both kids go off to college. Both campuses close at various times, though of course not in sync. Kid 2 is going to school someplace where I have friends who could provide refuge, but Kid 1 is not.

Kid 1 is trying to figure out what to do this summer. My advice was whatever it is, plan for it to last until January.

[kaysixteen]

Like it or not, the quality of the Ivy courses is not comparable to any CC's. 

And, like it or not, this pandemic has been a disaster for American education , especially k12.  Many kids will essentially need to repeat this year, once schools open back up, or risk becoming a lost generation.

[Caracal]

Like it or not, the quality of the Ivy courses is not comparable to any CC's. 

And, like it or not, this pandemic has been a disaster for American education , especially k12.  Many kids will essentially need to repeat this year, once schools open back up, or risk becoming a lost generation.

That's an extremely silly take. Do you actually believe that education works like this? There's a ton of repetition and relearning of skills all the time.

[RatGuy]

Here is another thing to worry about.   Suppose the schools pretend that life is going back to normal and students move into dormitories in August.  Then the second wave of the virus hits in October and students are then asked to vacate their rooms within a week.  How long can this game be played without wreaking havoc on students and family budgets?

We are a large public university with many out-of-state students. We recruit from lots of private and prep schools by touting our college experience. My chair has told us to proceed as if the above were the case -- for fall classes, plan for F2F classes, but make sure all assignments can go online when we inevitably have to close campus again to another round of quarantines.

[polly_mer]

Like it or not, the quality of the Ivy courses is not comparable to any CC's. 

And, like it or not, this pandemic has been a disaster for American education , especially k12.  Many kids will essentially need to repeat this year, once schools open back up, or risk becoming a lost generation.

That's an extremely silly take. Do you actually believe that education works like this? There's a ton of repetition and relearning of skills all the time.

Repetition is extremely important for learning.  Missing a couple months of repetition now that we've finally gotten to the new stuff means that the fall needs to start from roughly January instead of being able to reinforce what is typically taught in April and May.

I have a sixth grader and I am sighing very heavily about the fact that they aren't learning new material this semester in any classes.  Repetition is important, but we also need to get new material so we can start on the repetition on that to have it sink in.

Some areas of knowledge are cumulative so that missing repetition now means having to make it up later.  That's not the case in, say, literature in the same way that it is in, say, math or foreign language.  One can learn math and foreign languages at any age, but they are easier when one is younger and they require substantial practice to remain proficient. 

Skipping practice for whatever reason puts one at risk of doing something else instead and not remaining at a useful enough proficiency to resume easily instead of starting over, which is harder and much more frustrating.

Go ask your math colleagues about what happens over just the summer between high school and college, let alone students who take off several years with no practice to keep their skills fresh.

[Caracal]

We are a large public university with many out-of-state students. We recruit from lots of private and prep schools by touting our college experience. My chair has told us to proceed as if the above were the case -- for fall classes, plan for F2F classes, but make sure all assignments can go online when we inevitably have to close campus again to another round of quarantines.

I get the sense that lots of people are dealing with the uncertainty of all of this by locking in on pessimistic scenarios. It isn't going to help and is just another way of pretending we understand what will happen. Sure, preparing to the extent we can is good. If we go back in the Fall, and I'm teaching in person classes, I'll certainly think about ways to design courses so they could be switched online if necessary. But, there's just no way to know if there will be a second wave, because we are in the midst of the first wave.

[Caracal]

Some areas of knowledge are cumulative so that missing repetition now means having to make it up later.  That's not the case in, say, literature in the same way that it is in, say, math or foreign language.  One can learn math and foreign languages at any age, but they are easier when one is younger and they require substantial practice to remain proficient. 

Skipping practice for whatever reason puts one at risk of doing something else instead and not remaining at a useful enough proficiency to resume easily instead of starting over, which is harder and much more frustrating.

Sure, it isn't ideal. And like all bad things I'm sure it will mostly just exacerbate existing inequalities.  I was just disputing the idea that there's going to have a nationwide educational disaster because of a few months of acute disruption. In miniature, disruptions happen all the time. Families move, kids change schools, people have illnesses. Repetition is important for individual learning, but I strongly suspect we also do it because educational systems need some elasticity. You can't have seventh grade math come to a screeching halt because it turned out Dustin who was in California last year didn't learn how to solve simple equations for X because he was learning Geometry instead. *

*I have no idea if that is a good example or a terrible example

[marshwiggle]

Sure, it isn't ideal. And like all bad things I'm sure it will mostly just exacerbate existing inequalities.  I was just disputing the idea that there's going to have a nationwide educational disaster because of a few months of acute disruption. In miniature, disruptions happen all the time.

Not knowing how individual areas will deal with this, this is a bit of a guess, but:

Classes were normal up until about mid-March pretty much everywhere that I know of.  The month of June for a lot of high schools (in Canada anyway) is mostly devoted to exams, which will probably be online in some format now. In elementary schools, the last week (or sometimes more) is parties, field trips, etc. (i.e. as little teaching as possible.)

So if the online efforts mostly consolidated things underway in March, then it's really about April/May that would have been lost, so about 2 months out of 10. (That's if NOTHING new got covered in any substantial way.)

Problematic? Yes, but it shouldn't come close to needing to repeat a year. (Of course, the students who were struggling already will have it worse, but that's always the case.)

Families move, kids change schools, people have illnesses. Repetition is important for individual learning, but I strongly suspect we also do it because educational systems need some elasticity. You can't have seventh grade math come to a screeching halt because it turned out Dustin who was in California last year didn't learn how to solve simple equations for X because he was learning Geometry instead. *

*I have no idea if that is a good example or a terrible example

The principle is a good one; since all areas don't cover topics in exactly the same order, then students transferring (especially during the year) will have to make up some, and it's not the end of the world. At least in this situation, all of the students in a class will have the same gaps.

[polly_mer]

like all bad things I'm sure it will mostly just exacerbate existing inequalities.

Sure, but that's the big problem that worries K-12 teachers in the online discussions I'm reading.  Missing the final quarter in one grade along with other big upheavals may be the final straw for some students and their families.  I'm seeing a fair number of discussions worried very much about the discrepancies between the students who just had some extra summer vacation and those who may have been almost completely derailed for the next several years.

The kid who was keeping up in the good enough old district who moves to a good enough new district will probably be OK, even with multiple moves over the whole K-12.

However, there is concern in many areas because students who are in bad enough schools or fragile enough home situations just derail some point and never catch up.  One of the key factors for life success in education books I've been reading is stability and access to sufficient resources that one acquires certain mindsets along with some specific skills.  Spending enough time in precarious situations where investing in the future is obviously a losing strategy tends to be a huge problem later in life when the losing strategy is focusing purely on the immediate need like eating tomorrow and having rent by the end of the week.  Some research indicates that moving from a failing school system to a good school system has far fewer benefits to the individual student if it occurs after about third grade.

The algebra versus geometry example is not appropriate here because, as a system, we don't care about individual students at all.

At least in this situation, all of the students in a class will have the same gaps.

But it's not, if schools are doing as our local schools are doing so that students are supposed to be doing some work every day via remote methods. The problem is exactly what happens when we plan to move the entire second semester of sixth grade math to the first semester of seventh grade math and still deal with the fact that we have 30% of the class plowed through individual study enough to be ready to skip to algebra II (i.e, now they don't belong at all with their age cohort, but only for math), 20% of the class really needs to repeat all of sixth grade math (but only math, not the whole of sixth grade), and we were already stretching the limits on how many teachers we had in middle school because we've had a population boom and can't get math/science/language teachers to come this far out into the boonies.

Again, for the subjects that are truly cumulative and must be followed in a mostly prescribed order to be able to learn, the gap between
the haves (those who could access all the material, have support at home to keep learning, and is otherwise a pretty boring, early summer vacation)

and

the have nots (some combination of limited access to the materials, no academic support at home, real worries about food/rent/medicine/utilities/basic survival)

will widen and possibly not just a little bit.

Even if we just move the one semester, now we have students at key junctions who will be off-schedule by most of a semester for the rest of their time in school.  That's not just getting back to normal by fall 2021 and will cause ripples for which the systems need to plan for several years.  Every big shutdown we have will create a new ripple in that system.  Eventually, from a systems viewpoint, one does focus on the majority of the students who could still succeed and sigh heavily as the other students get shafted because it's not a good use of resources to spread them too thin to address literally every individual student's unique needs.

[pgher]

like all bad things I'm sure it will mostly just exacerbate existing inequalities.

Sure, but that's the big problem that worries K-12 teachers in the online discussions I'm reading.  Missing the final quarter in one grade along with other big upheavals may be the final straw for some students and their families.  I'm seeing a fair number of discussions worried very much about the discrepancies between the students who just had some extra summer vacation and those who may have been almost completely derailed for the next several years.

The kid who was keeping up in the good enough old district who moves to a good enough new district will probably be OK, even with multiple moves over the whole K-12.

However, there is concern in many areas because students who are in bad enough schools or fragile enough home situations just derail some point and never catch up.  One of the key factors for life success in education books I've been reading is stability and access to sufficient resources that one acquires certain mindsets along with some specific skills.  Spending enough time in precarious situations where investing in the future is obviously a losing strategy tends to be a huge problem later in life when the losing strategy is focusing purely on the immediate need like eating tomorrow and having rent by the end of the week.  Some research indicates that moving from a failing school system to a good school system has far fewer benefits to the individual student if it occurs after about third grade.

The algebra versus geometry example is not appropriate here because, as a system, we don't care about individual students at all.

At least in this situation, all of the students in a class will have the same gaps.

But it's not, if schools are doing as our local schools are doing so that students are supposed to be doing some work every day via remote methods. The problem is exactly what happens when we plan to move the entire second semester of sixth grade math to the first semester of seventh grade math and still deal with the fact that we have 30% of the class plowed through individual study enough to be ready to skip to algebra II (i.e, now they don't belong at all with their age cohort, but only for math), 20% of the class really needs to repeat all of sixth grade math (but only math, not the whole of sixth grade), and we were already stretching the limits on how many teachers we had in middle school because we've had a population boom and can't get math/science/language teachers to come this far out into the boonies.

Again, for the subjects that are truly cumulative and must be followed in a mostly prescribed order to be able to learn, the gap between
the haves (those who could access all the material, have support at home to keep learning, and is otherwise a pretty boring, early summer vacation)

and

the have nots (some combination of limited access to the materials, no academic support at home, real worries about food/rent/medicine/utilities/basic survival)

will widen and possibly not just a little bit.

Even if we just move the one semester, now we have students at key junctions who will be off-schedule by most of a semester for the rest of their time in school.  That's not just getting back to normal by fall 2021 and will cause ripples for which the systems need to plan for several years.  Every big shutdown we have will create a new ripple in that system.  Eventually, from a systems viewpoint, one does focus on the majority of the students who could still succeed and sigh heavily as the other students get shafted because it's not a good use of resources to spread them too thin to address literally every individual student's unique needs.

As some anecdata, Kid 2 is doing just fine (projecting straight A's), but has a friend-of-a-friend who has all D's and an F. He's the kind of kid who needs external motivation and structure, but he isn't getting it.