Foreign enrollment will be hurt in the short term. Most people will prefer to risk getting COVID19 in their home country. It is not trivial that it can be costly to get treated in the USA. The way the USA seems to struggle with how to combat the virus also impacts the USA's image as an education, science and medicine leader. Long term the USA may still be OK because it is much harder for foreigners to thrive economically in a lot of other countries.
Domestic enrollment will have several forces. Students will almost certainly opt for schools closer to home in case schools close or they get COVID19. Given high probability of more "Zoom University" sessions, people probably will opt for lower discounted tuition options. One enrollment downside will be created by parent unemployment. A number of 18 year-olds will need to stay home to help earn money for the family to pay the mortgage or rent. It may be harder for a 50 year-old parent-flight attendant to get a new career than the 18 year-old. There is an enrollment upside in play too, the current 4th year seniors from affluent families. I can only guess a lot of seniors are discovering they lost their job offers in the last few weeks. It might be better to hide in a school getting a minor, a second major or a masters degree than be unemployed for a year.
Sports - Here student-athletes will be different than profession athletes. An athlete on a pro contract generally is required to honor that contract. Student-athletes don't really have the same obligations and schools can't sign 10 day contracts to fill gaps. Worse the student-athletes live on campus, so any event brings the chance for community spread. Would you be worried as a student if the cross country athlete down the hall had a bit of a cough after a multi-school meet at Ann Arbor, MI? Imagine for a moment that one athlete at one of the dozen or so teams at the event tested positive for COVID19 the week after the meet. Tracing would quickly spread to thousands of students at dozens of schools across the USA. Yikes
The college players can't be isolated for the season like Dr. Fauci has proposed for pro-sports because they are students. Most schools don't care about soccer, cross country, field hockey, volleyball or water polo. So look for those sports to just get cancelled for 2020 just like the winter and fall sports. Maybe schools will try to use the Spring training period as an excuse to have a Spring schedule of games in 2021.
I would guess the alternative would be for schools to issue bonds to pay for various expenses if they lack revenue because of COVID19. Presumably most schools could issue the bonds at very favorable rates. A bit like war bonds, I am sure your average Alabama resident would quickly fork over $1000 for a bond if it was meant to save Bama football.
Student loans - My guess is eventually some chunk of money will be given to those that got college loans for higher education in 2020. The justification for forgiving those loans will be all over the place, but I think there will be enough pressure to forgive those loans. There will be loads of defaults doing it the other way. The government still would need to provide money to the lenders but the difference would be a group of young adults with ruined credit that would likely kill their income earning potential for a decade a more.
All things I am guessing schools are working on already.
FWIW - I feel so sorry for the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2024.
The Class of 2020 will enter the worst job market, potentially in the more than a century. Ugh.
The Class of 2024 might start their time at colleges without ever stepping foot on that colleges' campus. Virtual Freshmen Orientation sounds like an awful experience. If I had a child set to be a member of the Class of 2024, I would definitely encourage my child to explore Gap Year opportunities.
Domestic enrollment will have several forces. Students will almost certainly opt for schools closer to home in case schools close or they get COVID19. Given high probability of more "Zoom University" sessions, people probably will opt for lower discounted tuition options. One enrollment downside will be created by parent unemployment. A number of 18 year-olds will need to stay home to help earn money for the family to pay the mortgage or rent. It may be harder for a 50 year-old parent-flight attendant to get a new career than the 18 year-old. There is an enrollment upside in play too, the current 4th year seniors from affluent families. I can only guess a lot of seniors are discovering they lost their job offers in the last few weeks. It might be better to hide in a school getting a minor, a second major or a masters degree than be unemployed for a year.
Sports - Here student-athletes will be different than profession athletes. An athlete on a pro contract generally is required to honor that contract. Student-athletes don't really have the same obligations and schools can't sign 10 day contracts to fill gaps. Worse the student-athletes live on campus, so any event brings the chance for community spread. Would you be worried as a student if the cross country athlete down the hall had a bit of a cough after a multi-school meet at Ann Arbor, MI? Imagine for a moment that one athlete at one of the dozen or so teams at the event tested positive for COVID19 the week after the meet. Tracing would quickly spread to thousands of students at dozens of schools across the USA. Yikes
The college players can't be isolated for the season like Dr. Fauci has proposed for pro-sports because they are students. Most schools don't care about soccer, cross country, field hockey, volleyball or water polo. So look for those sports to just get cancelled for 2020 just like the winter and fall sports. Maybe schools will try to use the Spring training period as an excuse to have a Spring schedule of games in 2021.
I would guess the alternative would be for schools to issue bonds to pay for various expenses if they lack revenue because of COVID19. Presumably most schools could issue the bonds at very favorable rates. A bit like war bonds, I am sure your average Alabama resident would quickly fork over $1000 for a bond if it was meant to save Bama football.
Student loans - My guess is eventually some chunk of money will be given to those that got college loans for higher education in 2020. The justification for forgiving those loans will be all over the place, but I think there will be enough pressure to forgive those loans. There will be loads of defaults doing it the other way. The government still would need to provide money to the lenders but the difference would be a group of young adults with ruined credit that would likely kill their income earning potential for a decade a more.
All things I am guessing schools are working on already.
FWIW - I feel so sorry for the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2024.
The Class of 2020 will enter the worst job market, potentially in the more than a century. Ugh.
The Class of 2024 might start their time at colleges without ever stepping foot on that colleges' campus. Virtual Freshmen Orientation sounds like an awful experience. If I had a child set to be a member of the Class of 2024, I would definitely encourage my child to explore Gap Year opportunities.