Last week, fourteen presidents from various colleges around the U.S. virtually met with Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The conversation was about what kind of support college campuses will need in order to safely reopen in the fall. We know that colleges are risk-averse, but they’re also large financial institutions that need money to keep the wheels in motion. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and making decisions about reopening is forcing colleges to factor in issues and outcomes that they have not previously dealt with.

Deciding to close campuses in March and choosing to reopen them in September are two very different decisions, but we can look back at when colleges decided to send students home to shed some light on how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected their operational decisions thus far. Harvard told students to vacate campus by March 15th, nine days before the state of Massachusetts required all non-essential businesses to close. Yale issued its first statement on Covid-19 on March 12th and asked students not to return back to campus post spring break, around the same time that Connecticut started to shut down. And Villanova University announced a transition to online classes on March 16th, weeks ahead of Pennsylvania’s initial April 1st stay at home order.

It was reported by Inside Higher Ed that at the meeting with Pence and DeVos, the presidents of the colleges asked for more widespread testing, which is something that we ~all~ want at this point. Additionally, and more tellingly, they mentioned that being shielded from lawsuits if students get sick would make them more likely to reopen their doors come September.

The question of “what do we know so far” is changing daily, if not hourly. The California State University system does not plan to reopen in the fall and two days ago, Ithaca announced that classes for the academic year will begin on October 5th, 2020. Part of Ithaca’s reasoning behind delaying their start is to “deliver necessary time for all of us to plan, prepare, and thoughtfully align toward a common goal.” Notre Dame, however, has committed to reopening.

Similar to tracking the much-anticipated rescheduled SAT and ACT dates, a daily google search of when colleges will be reopening will likely reveal more, and sometimes confusing and contradictory, information. The fact is that none of us can predict the future, but we can try to help our clients and blog readers plan for it. Much can happen between now and September, and a lot of families must now look at the current landscape and make decisions for the future.

Our advice is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. We empathize with those students who worked diligently throughout high school and are in this precarious situation before the start of their freshman year of college. You should start by asking yourself these questions:

How will I feel if college starts in September? Will I feel safe living on campus?
How will I feel if my college relies on remote learning for an unconfirmed amount of time?
How will I feel if on campus access is limited, or learning is partially remote?
How do I feel about a potential, or confirmed, late start to the academic year?

We’re hoping that once you get in touch with how different scenarios might affect you, it becomes easier to start talking through your options. The reality is that you’re going to have to start making decisions fairly soon, during a time when anything is possible. This is not a decision we expect people to come to easily and without much consideration, which is why we’re suggesting that you start the conversation now. We’ve found going through these hypothetical scenarios is incredibly helpful because right now everything is unknown. You can truly isolate how you feel in any of these instances. Once you’ve assessed your feelings and likely reactions, you’ll probably have a better chance of deciding what’s best.

To answer the question posed in the title: we don’t know if colleges will reopen. No one does. It seems, at best, it’s going to be messy and uncoordinated. Colleges will come out with press releases in the coming weeks and we’ll be tracking them closely. We can try to predict what every college will do, but it seems like the time is better spent helping our clients figure out what they want to do independent of colleges. We suggest you do the same.

If you’d like help navigating the application process during this time, contact us here.