College parents...fall semester?

[LuvOrlando]

One of my kids wants to visit friends off campus this weekend for a small birthday thing (5pp) so even though we are remote this is def a wild card, parents can try but can't FORCE 20 somethings to stay put but it is undeniably dangerous. Trying to think up more things to say and new ways to say it.

Just looked at Worldometer and at the moment this particular county county has a number that has jumped so high it's making up nearly half this states numbers, yikes. Anyone else seeing this in their student's school county?

 

[JimMIA]

Just looked at Worldometer and at the moment this particular county county has a number that has jumped so high it's making up nearly half this states numbers, yikes. Anyone else seeing this in their student's school county?

What county/state?

You will sometimes see sudden spikes in new cases, and most of those I've seen has been caused by some lab having a big dump of test results in one day. Here in Florida, Quest Diagnostics dumped 75,000 test results in one day! A lot of those test results were 4-5 months old, and they included 7,600+ new cases.

So often, those spikes don't really represent anything but incompetence by people managing the labs.

 

[LuvOrlando]

What county/state?

You will sometimes see sudden spikes in new cases, and most of those I've seen has been caused by some lab having a big dump of test results in one day. Here in Florida, Quest Diagnostics dumped 75,000 test results in one day! A lot of those test results were 4-5 months old, and they included 7,600+ new cases.

So often, those spikes don't really represent anything but incompetence by people managing the labs.

PA, Centre County

 

[JimMIA]

PA, Centre County

Ah, so Penn State...right? I would check and see what the explanation is for the sudden surge. It could be college kids, or it could be some reporting glitch like we had.

 

[soccerdad72]

A study was just released estimating that undergrad enrollment is down about 2.5%. The study didn't survey all schools, but a large sampling of them.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/...fall-amid-covid-19-coronavirus-115338060.html
One stat I found surprising, given all the discussion about having kids taking time off from their universities is that community colleges saw the largest decline in enrollment overall, to the tune of around 7.5%. I would have thought community colleges would see a spike in enrollment.

 

[aprilgail]

My daughter went back for a week then decided to go virtual due to the amount of rules they keep adding there and she has been in CT at her boyfriends for the past month, I think she is going back next week to Boston for a bit. At her school they were even checking the off campus kids apartments to make sure no company there- she lives with 3 other kids. 2 are not even students so how is she supposed to tell them they can't have friends over. I believe she is staying in Boston for Oct then in early Nov she is going to Key West with some friends for a week (she is actually loving the virtual thing because she can "go to class" anywhere LOL)- she has to come back and stay in CT at her boyfriends for 2 weeks after key west though before she comes home because I have a 91 year old at home and she cant be bringing covid into the house! At her school right now this is the "dashboard" 71 out of 142,376 tests is pretty good.
Tests Completed
142,376
Negative Tests
142,305
Positive Tests
71
Students:
64
Faculty/Staff:
6
Contract Employees:
1

 

[mom2rtk]

A study was just released estimating that undergrad enrollment is down about 2.5%. The study didn't survey all schools, but a large sampling of them.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/...fall-amid-covid-19-coronavirus-115338060.html
One stat I found surprising, given all the discussion about having kids taking time off from their universities is that community colleges saw the largest decline in enrollment overall, to the tune of around 7.5%. I would have thought community colleges would see a spike in enrollment.

That really surprises me. I would have thought CC enrollment would be up.

Mizzou (our state's 30K enrollment flagship campus) is actually up between 3 and 4% this year. I assume because more kids decided to stay closer to home.

 

[Colleen27]

One stat I found surprising, given all the discussion about having kids taking time off from their universities is that community colleges saw the largest decline in enrollment overall, to the tune of around 7.5%. I would have thought community colleges would see a spike in enrollment.

A lot of the "market" for community college is students that don't do well with online learning, as well as students in trade programs that can't effectively be taught online. The figure I saw for our local CC is that more than a third of the student body is in a trades program and 20% are in some sort of remedial or academic support program. And those are programs that are the most difficult to translate to distance learning.

 

[bjscheel]

That really surprises me. I would have thought CC enrollment would be up.

Mizzou (our state's 30K enrollment flagship campus) is actually up between 3 and 4% this year. I assume because more kids decided to stay closer to home.

DD's Missouri school is also up 2.3%, record enrollment.

 

[PollyannaMom]

The cc numbers surprised me too. I thought a lot of kids whose schools stayed virtual would do cc instead to save money, but the stuff about it being harder to translate to virtual makes sense too.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Many everyday families might need their semi-adult children to get jobs and pitch in for the families survival or might even need them to leave school to care for siblings, its common in some socioeconomic situations. I've also heard about quite a few students taking a gap year.

 

[okeydokey]

Grad School enrollment is up at my University. Not unusual at all when times are tough financially.

 

[Colleen27]

So spring isn't looking good... Presidents of U Mich, MSU and Wayne all project spring to be fully virtual, with U Mich saying that vaccination will be essential to resuming in-person learning. Which strikes me as more than just a little ridiculous considering they brought students back to the dorms (for the $$$) and resumed Big 10 football (for the $$$). Apparently the only thing about college too dangerous to do during a pandemic is educating students.

 

[lilypgirl]

Just wanted to check in and see how it is going for everyone. Currently my daughter has all but 1 class in person. The one that is online would be an online class regardless of Covid. Restrictions are lessening everyday and besides the mask and social distancing inside buildings it is starting to look like a normal campus again. Greek life activities are taking place and so are many of the other normal campus spring activities. Their positive cases has been dropping weekly even after their big celebration after the National championship. I honestly think their decision to reopen in Fall and have students on campus with restrictions has led to this success .

 

[Southernmiss]

2 of ours are still hybrid, some classes online, some in person with distancing and masks. Covid is still in their area. One of them had it this month- mild case,probably contracted it at work in the service industry.

Other student is all on zoom, with medical field rotations in person. He's had both vaccines due to his work in a hospital

Next fall, all classes will be in person with planning for most activities to resume.

The school is planning for on campus vaccinations once they are available to them.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

I really feel lucky. Youngest decided to go local cause she made honors program. They have been remote all year and though she missed a special area for honor students to study, and a small trip. The honor program has some regular group meetings so at least she is mingling slightly.

Oldest just graduated and luckily found a nice job. She is not a super go getter but I really stressed for her to try hard to find something and she really heavily shopped out her resume. Many of her friends are still looking or went back to grad school.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

I really feel lucky. Youngest decided to go local cause she made honors program. They have been remote all year and though she missed a special area for honor students to study, and a small trip. The honor program has some regular group meetings so at least she is mingling slightly.

Oldest just graduated last year and luckily found a nice job. She is not a super go getter but I really stressed for her to try hard to find something and she really heavily shopped out her resume. Many of her friends are still looking or gave up and went back to grad school in Jan.

 

[mom2rtk]

DD has one day of one class in person this semester. Really hoping for everything back in person in the fall. School says they are planning in person, but only time will tell if that's for real or just a way to get kids committed to going there. I'm cautiously optimistic for her.

 

[JimMIA]

DD has not had one second of in-person instruction (or advising, or tutoring, or anything else) in three semesters.

She did Summer B 2020 from home, so that was her choice. She had three in-person courses in her "shopping cart" for Fall and the night before actual registration opened, the university switched all of them to online. (This was after making a big fuss about how they were going to maximize in-person for Fall.) This term there was never an in-person option.

She's had very good profs with one exception. Thanks to that clown, she will have to take a course again. We tried to take it this term, but he was the only prof available. We're going to take it at a local state u if we can't get it in-person with a decent prof for Summer.

Class offerings for Summer 2021 go up tomorrow and we'll make her summer decision based on what they offer. We have to pay for dorm anyway because we're on an annual dorm contract, but if there are no in-person classes we'll just eat the dorm and keep her home. She's also only going to be taking courses that count toward her requirements. If they're not offered, she will just take the summer off.

Her university has done a very good job IMHO with managing the testing, contact tracing and other aspects of Covid. But certainly not with academics. Even the good profs are "phoning it in" by posting one video/powerpoint per week and assigning homework instead of teaching. She has a 3.5+ GPA and it's going up this term, but I'm not sure she's actually learning much.

We still like the school, but we're going to be very disappointed if this continues beyond Summer.

 

[bjscheel]

DD19 had about half and half for fall semester between in-person, online, hybrid. They had the big spike (189 reported cases) two weeks into school and a smaller bump in November, when all our state/their state were having their biggest numbers.

Since returning in January, the reported cases have been single digit. DD is 100% in person. I imagine a lot of the big gen eds are still online but she is mostly taking smaller classes.

The school is not doing regular testing but I do not believe it is running rampant with unreported cases either. None of her friends have had it, except one who had it while home at Christmas.

She is off campus but I don't think they had horrible restrictions for the dorms either. I'm very happy with how her experience has been.