(04-01-2020 01:11 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-01-2020 12:18 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-01-2020 08:45 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-01-2020 08:12 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  I think drops in enrollment in the fall and beyond are probably the biggest threat to G5 and lower divisions that rely heavily on student fees and general fund transfers.

Yes, if Fall classes cannot be held "face to face", which is much more likely than many like to admit, this is likely to hit enrollment everywhere significantly, as many students will simply not want to do college online.

This could be an existential threat to many schools, there will likely be layoffs and furloughs of even tenured faculty, so athletics will be hit very hard if this happens. This would hit hard even at major P5 schools, and even worse at those down the pecking order in terms of resources.

And "resources" may not necessarily correspond with "P" and "G". For example, a school like Rice, with a $5 Billion endowment, could cover any Covid-related deficits in the Fall, academic and athletic, by dipping in to that. Also, its elite reputation means it is less likely that students will elect to drop out or not enroll, making the enrollment hit lighter.

In contrast, a state school with usually a much larger athletic budget, but a mediocre academic reputation, small endowment and a heavy reliance on ongoing high enrollment to pay for a big operations infrastructure could have to make deep cuts immediately.

Private colleges are *more* likely to see a big enrollment drop if they are online-only in the fall. (Students paying out of state tuition at public colleges might be in the same situation as private college students.)

You're not getting the elite private university experience you paid $$$ for if classes are online-only and you're just sitting in your parents' home taking courses via a computer. Given that, if a student's expensive private university is online-only in the fall, why wouldn't they save the hefty tuition payment by taking the semester off or taking online courses from a much less expensive college? They can still go back to their private university, and get their degree from that school, in a semester or two after the social distancing measures have been lifted.

At a public university, students paying in-state tuition won't save as much by searching for inexpensive online alternatives, and they are more likely to just take online classes from the college at which they are already enrolled.

Maybe, maybe not. Transfer credits could be a touchy issue. I would think a kid would want to remain connected to the elite private. I'm not talking about middling privates with high tuition, but Rice and Stanford types. Kids will grumble, but they're not going to drop away from Stanford, IMO.

And since I work at a State U i hope you are right, but I doubt it. I think all-online will cut enrollment significantly, many F2F students will simply not want to enroll online.

We shall see.

Students are not very connected to their elite private university when they're sitting in their parents' home taking courses via a computer instead of strolling under the shady trees alongside the campus buildings that look like 1970s Taco Bell locations.

You may be right that private universities will turn the screws on their students by making it extremely difficult to transfer credits from other colleges during this time. Seems like that would be a poor way to treat your future alumni, though.