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A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

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Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#21

Post by klodolph »

baggy_trough wrote: post #18
nradov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers are worthless if they can't communicate effectively and don't understand the context of their work.

Humanities departments emit some of the most cryptic texts around. They should be worrying about that before trying to help engineers.

Tu quouque doesn’t make an argument.

Gutting humanities in favor of “practical” degrees is short-sighted in the extreme. The problem with humanities is not that it doesn’t provide value to the community, the problem is that it is difficult to monetize skills in the humanities.

There is a pathology that larger organizations often develop where they start investing only in ideas that where they can measure the impact on the time scale of a performance review cycle. For example, any project where the results can’t be measured in one or two quarters might be dead on arrival, depending on what company you work for.

The same kind of short-term, narrow-minded thinking is what makes people dismiss humanities.

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#22

Post by logarhythmic »

downerending wrote: post #5

I feel bad for the colleges. But anyone in their right mind that's going to college to learn things will take a gap year. Those going to college just for the paper are well advised to keep going. The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure. You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!

The issue is that it's not possible for the vast majority of students to just "pause" their lives and wait until this all blows over

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#23

Post by cassiet »

malandrew wrote: post #10
derrick_jensen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe virtual learning will be widely used long-term. I might be biased, coming from a mostly engineering school, but there is a lot of vital lab equipment needed for the curriculum, not to mention that social networking and connections are essential to most careers going forward, and I don't see that transferring over in the same way

I’d be happy if this was the beginning of the end for humanities departments that have become overtly political. More resources should be shifted to more utilitarian degrees like engineering and hard sciences.

What a useless world that would create.

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#24

Post by zingar »

I work for a student lender (for postgrad degrees only), we're scrambling to handle all the classes that are being postponed, or telling their students not to fly and they'll start online (since we lend to international students, the date they are in country matters a lot).

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#25

Post by alec_kendall »

I moved back home after my university moved my classes to online (mid-march). I’m now paying rent on an apartment I don’t need and have a lease for next school year that I might not use. Even if in-person classes start again, I’ll have to worry about being screwed again next spring. The only other option I could think of was subleasing but unfortunately I signed my lease in January.

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#26

Post by skwb »

I highly suspect that many large public universities will make large lectures online and cap in person enrollment for discussion/seminar/lab. You can probably easily ramp up hiring for these since they're mostly grad students, and frankly grad students are cheap (I say this as one).

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#27

Post by Alkhwarizmi »

downerending wrote: post #5

I feel bad for the colleges. But anyone in their right mind that's going to college to learn things will take a gap year. Those going to college just for the paper are well advised to keep going. The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure. You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!

Taking a gap year isn’t specially viable for parent students, or even transfer students mainly due to the fact of age discrimination in grad schools and or job markets, ergo the sooner we can graduate the better off we are as prospective grad students and also job candidates. (Am a pure math student who’s on average 2 years older than my peers in classroom)

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#28

Post by Alkhwarizmi »

alec_kendall wrote: post #25

I moved back home after my university moved my classes to online (mid-march). I’m now paying rent on an apartment I don’t need and have a lease for next school year that I might not use. Even if in-person classes start again, I’ll have to worry about being screwed again next spring. The only other option I could think of was subleasing but unfortunately I signed my lease in January.

Same issue but I’ve considered contacting the landlord to renegotiate lease terms or take it to civil court if they refuse to help us during these extra unusual circumstances.

Re: A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

#30

Post by rjtobin »

tsumnia wrote: post #20

The List, because wall: Beloit College Boston University Brown University California Baptist University California State University at Fullerton Chapman University Centre College Christopher Newport University Claremont Colleges Clemson University Cornell University Drury University East Tennessee State University Emory University George Mason University George Washington University Harvard University Haverford Colle…

The list by itself is of limited use, since each college on the list has made different announcements. I’d say the summary is most have vaguely worded statements leaving open the possibility of either remote learning, in-person learning or some combination of the two.
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