What is College Without The Campus?

No one knows what the university experience will look like in the fall, but millions of college students are having to decide this month whether it will be worth the price tag.

The mythical American curtain-raiser to adulthood, the four (or so) years of finding yourself freedom and higher learning, is having a reckoning.

May 1, the date when most colleges ask that the students to whom they’ve offered admission declare their intentions for the fall, has come and gone with many students (and their parents) unsure of what they should do. Facing the prospect of mass deferrals, many schools are granting families extra mull time because nobody, not the schools, not the families, not public-health experts or politicians, knows whether it will be safe or wise (or legal) to be on campus in September.

The financial wreckage from that uncertainty could be massive. Already, the University of Michigan anticipates losses of $400 million to $1 billion this year across its three campuses. California’s university system suffered $558 million in costs due to the coronavirus in March alone. Meanwhile, the number of students pursuing a college degree could be the smallest in two decades. According to an April survey of 1,100 high-school seniors and current college students by SimpsonScarborough, which specializes in higher-education research, domestic undergraduate enrollment for four-year institutions could decline by 20 percent. One out of ten high-school seniors report that they no longer plan to attend a four-year institution. A quarter of current college students say they wouldn’t return or it is “too soon to tell,” and 12 percent of high-school seniors are thinking they’ll take a gap year, as opposed to the normal 3 percent. And this is still with the possibility of campuses being open in the fall; if college remains purely an online pursuit come September, those numbers will almost definitely grow.