[Mick]

Nothing new in this article, but a good summation:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/upsho...ategy.html

The higher education landscape is now in chaos. Last year, 419 colleges were still accepting applications for the freshman class after the traditional May 1 deadline. This year, the number is 754, suggesting an enormous drop in demand. If campuses can’t open this fall, or students don’t return, the private higher education sector faces a financial asteroid strike. Edmit updated its projections accordingly and published a less specific version of them this month. The numbers suggest many colleges are now at risk.

...

Edmit examined financial trends at 937 private universities and added a conservative estimate of the Covid-19 impact: tuition losses of 10 percent in 2020 and 20 percent in 2021, a 20 percent decline in endowment earnings, and an offsetting 10 percent reduction in spending on salaries. Edmit did not estimate reductions in housing revenue, but colleges face millions of dollars in losses if dorms remain unoccupied.

Those assumptions increased the number of colleges ranked with “Low” financial health — defined as being on track to run out of money within six years — by nearly 50 percent, to 345, more than one-third of all private colleges studied.

BC

I think there's four trends at play here:

1) Cost of college is always sky-high.  In and of itself, it would be enough to make a student and his/her family pause.
2) The digital college experience pales in comparison to the in-person experience.
3) Income in many/most households is unpredictable and possibly not adequate for expensive college.
4) Who knows whither financial aid?

I suspect that many students and their families may opt for a gap year, perhaps far more than colleges anticipate. I know if I was a student, I would insist on a gap year.  If I had to take digital courses, the local juco would suffice just fine.  And I wouldn't want to pay full boat rates for an impersonal experience.  And what will the yields be, even for colleges that opt for the in-person experience?  What percentage of students will actually want to take that risk?  Or the professors and staff, for that matter?

[Mick]

Nothing new in this article, but a good summation:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/upsho...ategy.html

The higher education landscape is now in chaos. Last year, 419 colleges were still accepting applications for the freshman class after the traditional May 1 deadline. This year, the number is 754, suggesting an enormous drop in demand. If campuses can’t open this fall, or students don’t return, the private higher education sector faces a financial asteroid strike. Edmit updated its projections accordingly and published a less specific version of them this month. The numbers suggest many colleges are now at risk.

...

Edmit examined financial trends at 937 private universities and added a conservative estimate of the Covid-19 impact: tuition losses of 10 percent in 2020 and 20 percent in 2021, a 20 percent decline in endowment earnings, and an offsetting 10 percent reduction in spending on salaries. Edmit did not estimate reductions in housing revenue, but colleges face millions of dollars in losses if dorms remain unoccupied.

Those assumptions increased the number of colleges ranked with “Low” financial health — defined as being on track to run out of money within six years — by nearly 50 percent, to 345, more than one-third of all private colleges studied.

BC

I think there's four trends at play here:

1) Cost of college is always sky-high.  In and of itself, it would be enough to make a student and his/her family pause.
2) The digital college experience pales in comparison to the in-person experience.
3) Income in many/most households is unpredictable and possibly not adequate for expensive college.
4) Who knows whither financial aid?

I suspect that many students and their families may opt for a gap year, perhaps far more than colleges anticipate. I know if I was a student, I would insist on a gap year.  If I had to take digital courses, the local juco would suffice just fine.  And I wouldn't want to pay full boat rates for an impersonal experience.  And what will the yields be, even for colleges that opt for the in-person experience?  What percentage of students will actually want to take that risk?  Or the professors and staff, for that matter?