29 ms·

Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year

350 points by jbegley 6y ago

num3ric 6y ago
Wise decision, but this renders the cost of education (in US universities) even more unjustifiable.
- wpasc 6y ago
  Agreed entirely, but the cost of a US college degree is often more about the credential level signaling and showing that you were tenacious enough to win the college entrance competition than it is about acquiring skills.
  - itg 6y ago
    Also about networking and friendships formed during college which will be harder when it’s entirely online.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Genuine question as I haven’t been to college (yet?): is this actually a thing? I’ve also heard it doesn’t help with that.
      - asdff 6y ago
        Everything I have in life is from networking effects in college, from landing my first research position in undergrad. Grades don't matter, I was an average student. Networking effect is everything in life, in any field. Maximize your ability to network.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Agree that one should maximize networking, but college is not required to do so. Find like minded people where ever you are, always be seeking opportunities (learning, revenue generating, and all others) and avoid credentials and their associated costs. Be able to get the work done, learn how to when you can’t, and be enjoyable to work with, that’s most of what a job is.
        adamcharnock 6y ago
        This is my experience too. I haven't exactly avoided credentials as a principle (I have a BEng), but I totally agree with "Be able to get the work done and enjoyable to work with". Do a good job, be secure in your abilities, have empathy for others. I'm a freelancer of 13 years with a lot of happy clients and – before I started living off-grid – I'd earn a month's rent in half a day. Now I don't have rent or mortgage. Sure, I haven't climbed any corporate ladder, but I hope that in a decent company you can be those things and also do well.
        Frost1x 6y ago
        >Networking effect is everything in life, in any field. Maximize your ability to network. Networking isn't everything but it's definitely the lion's share. Anyone who paints the world as a meritocracy is disillusioned, but it helps to have merit to fall back on. There are many who get through life and succeed financially almost entirely through networking and situation.
        jkaptur 6y ago
        I'd add some nuance to that - in my experience, networking is a multiplicative (not additive) effect to your actual skills. You can get a letter of recommendation from a Nobel Prize winner, but even then it has to say something other than "Liz Lemon numbers among my employees", you know?
        mrep 6y ago
        Interesting. Did you go to an Ivy league, cause I went to a state school and I haven't used networking for anything ever. Granted, I've only worked at GAFAM and they hire tons of people so that could be part of it.
        asdff 6y ago
        I went to a state school, albeit R1 which has a lot more funding and therefore opportunities, but I believe every state flagship is R1 anyway. Actually this in state school was cheaper than some other in state schools that were considered party schools/easier academically. Were you recruited at a career fair? fangs always had a big presence at our biannual fairs and people I knew seemed to have no issues finding internships coast to coast.
        mrep 6y ago
        I went to purdue so we had absolutely massive career fairs and I got my first CS internship at GAFAM through one. After that, it hasn't been hard getting interviews at the other ones.
        panopticon 6y ago
        I went to a state school, and my entire professional career is due to the friends I made there. College was a very rough time for me, and I wasn't getting many interviews with my resume (really poor GPA, no internships, no extracurriculars, etc). A friend hooked me up with a job at a startup and landing interviews since has been no problem. This isn't a glamorous story where my network made me a millionaire, but my life would be much worse having not made those friends back then.
        mrep 6y ago
        Internships definitely help (GAFAM uses them like extended interviews for full time offers). I also think it helps that my gpa was ok (3.05) and the school i went to (purdue) was highly ranked enough and big enough that we had entire recruiting teams come out to our career fairs which is where I got my first internship. Some companies even sent out employees for an entire week to our campus to do interviews for internship and new grad hiring.
      - bradlys 6y ago
        > Genuine question as I haven’t been to college (yet?): is this actually a thing? I’ve also heard it doesn’t help with that. As someone who DIDN'T network in college and compares to peers who did - it is utterly devastating. It is hugely influential. Admittedly, your networking won't matter as much if there isn't high movement from the school to your work region... In my case, I went to a school where most of the student body had no intentions of leaving the region. I was also in an extremely anti-social department that was overly competitive.
      - adamcharnock 6y ago
        Speaking as a UK university grad (14 years ago), this was absolutely not a thing for me. I made some friends, but went into web development at a small company rather than a large grad training scheme. I spent a year there and I have been self-employed ever since. I think precisely none of my career development has been due to my university-related network. But perhaps it is different at US colleges (or for others in the UK). I personally couldn't wait to put academia behind me and get into the real world. I now live off-grid in Central Portugal. I have clients I still work for, and I get referrals to new clients too. I'm also starting a wireless ISP here, which is great for networking and meeting people :-)
      - asutekku 6y ago
        You can learn almost everything you can learn in university outside of it. The true value are the people you’ll meet that share the same interests as you do. Life is hell a lot of easier if you know the right / enough people.
      - vvpan 6y ago
        My connections helped me little. If I just worked during that time I think I would have been way farther up on the hard metrics of career progress. Not to say that I didn't get anything out of college. The campus radio stations introduced me to people who have had a tremendous amount of influence on me.
      - Meekro 6y ago
        All 9 members of the Supreme Court went to either Harvard or Yale. I'd say that yes, signaling matters.
        otoburb 6y ago
        The UK is not much different -- a majority of senior High Court barristers[1] and UK Supreme Court justices[2] are Oxbridge[3] educated. [1] https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/new-high-court-judges-all-oxbridge-barristers/5101147.article https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/new-high-court-judges-all-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_of_the_Supreme_Court_o... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge
        vonmoltke 6y ago
        8/9 went to law school at Harvard or Yale (the Notorious R.B.G. went to Columbia Law). For undergrad, 3 went to Princeton, 1 to Columbia (not RBG, interestingly), 1 to Harvard, 1 to Yale, 1 to Cornell, 1 to Stanford, and 1 to Holy Cross. That's evidence that signaling matters in a law degree, but the larger context of this discussion is of an undergraduate degree and I don't think the signalling is as strong there.
        ativzzz 6y ago
        So 8 of them went to elite/prestigious undergraduate schools (don't know about Holy Cross). Looks like a pretty strong signal to me.
        Meekro 6y ago
        I agree regarding undergrad mattering less than law school, but as long as we're splitting hairs about RBG, let's split them correctly! =) She and her husband both went to Harvard Law, though the husband started and graduated one year earlier. He then got a job at a New York law firm and RBG transferred to Columbia to stay near him. She completed her third year at Columbia and received their law degree. Harvard Law actually has a rule (adopted later) where you can complete your third year elsewhere and still receive a Harvard degree. They offered this degree to RBG, who refused it[1]. So technically you're right that she's a Columbia Law grad, though it's not a stretch to call her a Harvard Law grad as well. [1] http://www.wikicu.com/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg http://www.wikicu.com/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg
      - TuringNYC 6y ago
        Yes, 1000% -- but it depends on your college and specialty. Harvard/Yale for Law/Government/Policy - yes Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/CMU for venture funded startups - yes Cornell for Hotel Management / Veterinary Sciences - yes Georgetown/Princeton for Diplomacy/Government/Fed/Policy - yes Georgetown for venture funded startups - questionable Stanford for journalism - probably neutral Most US unis for Investment Banking - * not a chance * Most US unis for Strategy Consulting Top-3 - not a chance
      - jacobsenscott 6y ago
        I think for the 99% university contacts are not a useful "network". What good are a bunch of entry level employees to you? By the time anyone you've graduated with is in a position to help you out you've already been working for at least 10 years, and your more recent professional network is where the value will be. So unless you are in the Skull and Bones and your frat bro's uncle is an executive at Goldman Sachs, and that uncle was a frat bro with your Dad who's an executive at Morgan Stanly, no. But, a college education is still a valuable thing for getting a job. Depending on what classes you take anyway.
      - erosenbe0 6y ago
        Sure. Read bios to research career trajectories. For example, read the bios of billionaires of who made a lot their money via renumeration. Cheryl Sandberg, for example. Steve Ballmer. Made their connections in college.
      - pizza 6y ago
        In most cases, you participate in the world through other people. How much you use your connections is up to you, but such connections allow you to traverse quickly and deeply through the space of opportunities.
      - affyboi 6y ago
        Yes, it's absolutely a thing. I don't know how experiences vary, but Alex Azar, the current secretary of health and human services, former president of Eli Lilly, was an alumni of my frat. I've also hit up random alums at various companies who have given me referrals, there are a lot of friends of friends who are in pretty good positions, such as founder/CEO/partner at various companies and VCs that will be willing to chat with you if you happen to know someone they're connected to that can vouch for you. I was actually interviewing with a company, and I found out the CEO was an alum of my school, and we had a lot of fun talking about college.
      - Balgair 6y ago
        I depends on the school, but networking matter a lot. I'm not saying that it should, but it really seems to. Outside of ambition, the people matter too. I know a lot of marriages that started in college. I've met a lot of my best friends there too. Some of my professors changed my life, and not in a textbook way, but in a human way. I made a lot of mistakes there, and I know a lot of people did too. But it was college, you're kinda supposed to make mistakes and grow from them. Take the wrong major, kiss the wrong person, say the wrong thing, etc. I'm not saying that you can't have those experiences elsewhere. Most people do. But the structure of the place makes it a lot easier to meet other people your age, fall in love, fall out of love, have your opinions challenged, listen to some great/terrible music, imbibe too much of the wrong thing, get help on classwork, etc. You can still not opt into it, of course. And you can do that almost anywhere too. But it's a lot easier. Virtual classrooms aren't going to replace that. Honestly, until we get a vaccine, that's all kinda on hold. Sorry class of 2020 :(
    - winter_blue 6y ago
      > Also about networking and friendships formed during college I've never been as lonely as I had been during my first few years of college. I had no friends basically. People always got up and left the classrooms after classes were over -- no one hung around to socialize. I was depressed and extremely lonely, and rarely talked to any human beings, and mostly spent my free time on my laptop filled with an ocean of sadness. In my later years in college, I did make some friends, a few of which (like around 3 or 4 friends) have turned into life-long friends. And I'm extremely happy about those. But people seriously need to stop selling/touting college as some great social place. It emphatically was not during my first two years). The "social aspect" absolutely does not justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on college. You can find friends through events on meetup, or joining a social group (like a club that teaches to code, or a writer's group, or a music/singing group, or a church/religious group, etc). There are plenty of groups like this that are open to anyone in most major metropolises in the US. I've also made online, on Reddit and other sites. People randomly start chatting with me after seeing one of my comments. You absolutely don't need to and shouldn't spend hundreds of thousands just for the social aspect of college.
  - giarc 6y ago
    I tend to agree but online courses allows school to admit more people. Therefore the value of that limited resource should go down, along with the price. Although Harvard hasn't announced an increase in first year admittance, I suspect if this is succesful they will start to increase enrollment and therefore should bring the cost down.
    - tdumitrescu 6y ago
      Not without increasing capacity of professors, TAs, and administrators, and then the facilities to support all that new staff. Campus facilities for students is only one part of the cost structure.
      - shuckles 6y ago
        Stanford's all-online CS106A ("Code in Place") in the Spring quarter was organized in about two weeks and fairly successfully scaled all aspects of instruction to ~1000 online learners.
        asdff 6y ago
        Curious how they scaled. Just threw money/TAs at it? The limiting factor in my department with expanded online offerings is the number of people willing and able to sacrifice currently strictly limited on campus research hours to TA. There are a finite number of students that a given TA can handle, and it quickly can be an overwhelming amount of work responding to emails and grading.
  - snarf21 6y ago
    Just like the job interview screening game.
  - staycoolboy 6y ago
    Wow, that's wickedly cynical. I don't know how I would have learned how to become an RF engineer if it weren't for a four year BSEE that focused heavily on DiffEq, Complex Math, Fields & Waves, and Discrete Systems... and access to patient and friendly (mostly) professors for help during open office hours, which were a necessity (for me, anyway). I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to teach this to myself with YouTube videos. But maybe you've had better luck?
    - anoonmoose 6y ago
      Some fields are exceptions to this rule. Those fields represent a small fraction of all degrees awarded per year. Yours (and mine) are part of that exception.
    - p1esk 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure many people would be able to learn it much faster if they didn't have to sit through countless boring lectures: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/
      - sushisource 6y ago
        That is really amazing, but I'd just like to point out how amusing it is that he looks really tired in the thumbnail of that video.
        p1esk 6y ago
        Yeah, it’s almost like if he was partying all night :)
    - Kaveren 6y ago
      > RF engineer if it weren't for a four year BSEE that focused heavily on DiffEq, Complex Math, Fields & Waves, and Discrete Systems You can learn all of this by yourself. > I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to teach this to myself with YouTube videos. YouTube videos suck for serious learning of non-visual activities. Written resources, particularly books, are optimal. People like to pretend that it's hard to figure out what you need to learn, but just taking a look at syllabuses and assigned readings and what the "best" books in the field are will get you plenty far. > access to patient and friendly (mostly) professors For many majors you can find decent help online, but often crossreferencing between different books will provide just as good results as talking to a professor. Lectures are extremely inefficient. The hardest part is not being able to find answer manuals, particularly with graduate-level books. Usually you can find alternatives.
  - catawbasam 6y ago
    If that was it, they could just copy their acceptance letters and start applying for jobs.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    That is extremely contrary to my experience. I could code a little bit before college but I learned more math, abstraction, theory of computation. I have never encountered anyone from my school professionally, but it was a modest state school. I did a ton of programming and that always mattered the most when I interviewed for jobs - what could I do and demonstrate right then. I have to ask, were you in engineering, where your connections mattered?
- fullshark 6y ago
  The cost is incredibly justifiable, it's just you are paying for access to future opportunities not an education.
  - tinyhouse 6y ago
    No it's not. Knowledge should provide access to future opportunities, not prestige. The system is the problem.
    - asdff 6y ago
      With any knowledge worker job posting, there are hundreds of perfectly qualified candidates, maybe thousands. The knowledge taught at Harvard is already disseminated. You don't learn anything different with an undergraduate degree at Harvard than you would with a degree at directional state. The difference is now you know professor X, who lets you work on his super cool project Y, then employer Z sees you did project Y with well known professor X, who wrote a letter with nothing but high praise of your intimate accomplishments on project Y and why you are therefore extremely qualified, and you get a great job. To break the system would be to snap your fingers and will more knowledge worker jobs into existence to meet the oversupply of qualified candidates, but given our free market society and increasing disfavor of public engineering and public research, that just isn't ever going to happen. So you try and play the game as it is the best you can, and apply to schools like Harvard with faculty who can push your life forward.
    - fullshark 6y ago
      In a world of imperfect information, how do you prove to a stranger that you are knowledgable, in less than a full day of interaction? That remains the problem, and credentials/prestige remain our best way of dealing with it. In other fields you develop portfolios (e.g. github repos) perhaps that's what education will evolve to, developing a student work portfolio to prove you are knowledgable.
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    It's not (or at least, doesn't have to be) a binary question; it's a sliding scale of ROI.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  I would think the majority of non-rich Harvard students don't pay much. For undergraduate studies if you want to attract the best students you have to offer very generous scholarships. Otherwise they would lose students to other top schools. This is true for all schools, but the rich schools like Harvard have the funding to actually do it. I've met a couple of students who paid full tuition at Harvard, but both came from very wealthy families so it wasn't an issue. Schools know in advance the financial situation of applicants and plan accordingly.
  - affyboi 6y ago
    The Ivies tend to have pretty generous aid since they have massive endowments
- asdff 6y ago
  I'm sure no small number of people will defer next year. Looking back at college me, I would lean on the side of not signing my college town lease, deferring for the year, and living with my parents in my hometown for a year along with the rest of my local friends (many of which have in fact escaped NYC and other cities rents and returned to their parents home for this work from home period). Maybe you could work on something on github for your resume during this gap, but I'm anticipating given the absolute chaos this pandemic has caused worldwide, employers aren't going to care if you've failed to secure an internship in a time when no one is hiring, or that you preferred to take more engaging in person coursework rather than watch live action youtube lectures for exorbitant fees.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - vincentmarle 6y ago
    On the other hand, if there are a lot of students deferring, there is a huge line behind them willing (and able!) to get into Harvard. Harvard and other elite institutions will not suffer for students for quite a while.
    - asdff 6y ago
      If you want to take a year off you can come right back the next year if you've already been admitted. I'm not sure what incoming freshman are thinking, but for current students, why the hell would you not take a year off?
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Well, some can't afford it. If anything, I'd think the choice of incoming freshman is even clearer assuming they can defer--including financial arrangements. I'm sure they could find something better to do than severely compromised campus activities that might revert to full-on remote a month into the fall term.
- amiga_500 6y ago
  The price isn't set on the cost to deliver, at all. It's based on ability to pay, which is based on available credit, which is based on whatever bankers can get away with saying lifetime earnings will be.
- centimeter 6y ago
  > Wise decision For whom? We're going to save ~0 QALY with this decision, but we're going to derail a lot of people's life plans and probably contribute to a lot of deaths of despair.
hpoe 6y ago
So here's a question how are they going to prevent people from sharing the online courses? Like is there anything that stops someone from sharing or restreaming their classes? I mean given what the value of a Harvard education is considered I would think there would be a lot of people interested in getting access to these courses.
- bmmayer1 6y ago
  I think most people would say the value of a Harvard education is in the name on your degree, not the content of the courses. That said, there's a quote from Good Will Hunting that seems appropriate here: "You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."
  - qntty 6y ago
    Most of the value is the friends you make and the informal relationships you develop with professors and other people at the university. For someone who already has friends to talk about academic things with, and who doesn't need the structure of a curriculum, Will is right.
- dublinben 6y ago
  Harvard already provides many of their courses for free on EdX[0], so anyone who wants to access them already can. The lectures themselves are only a small part of the value of a Harvard education, so they don't seem concerned about "piracy" of their courses. [0] https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx
  - murgindrag 6y ago
    They're not free. That was a lie. Right now, most edX courses have switched to models where homework (the key value of the courses) is paid. A lot of people supported edX with time and money, including much of the early team and course contributors, based on this lie. Coursera was at least honest about it. Aside from that, most Harvard online courses have amazing production value (fully staffed video teams), and preciously little learning value. That's reflected in the hiring too. How many Harvard professors care about teaching-and-learning, much less online. I predict ASU, SNHU, Georgia Tech, and other schools which try to do online well will eventually eat Harvard's lunch unless something changes. With "eventually" being 50-100 years, since that's how long university reputations last :) That's lots of time for even a Harvard to change.
ralmidani 6y ago
My understanding is a lot of universities are playing bait-and-switch, announcing unrealistic plans to reopen in the Fall in order to get deposits/tuition, but secretly knowing they'll be 'forced' to move everything online again. I admire Harvard's transparency, although having a multi-billion-dollar endowment does make this decision easier for them than it would be for struggling institutions. FWIW, I personally think distance learning is underrated, although I have been doing it for years so I've had time to become accustomed to it. I can understand why some students (including my wife) do not like it, and may never like it. From a strategic perspective, I can see universities like Harvard strengthening their brand by opening up more of their classes to the general public (and maybe even giving credit for a bigger chunk of them via the Extension School). This might hurt a lot of the smaller institutions and lead to consolidation, but I'm undecided on whether that would be a bad thing.
- AgloeDreams 6y ago
  It's Harvard. It doesn't matter how they accounted it, they have not changed the Tuition cost with this announcement so it's the same money and they are not hurting for students.
  - thspimpolds 6y ago
    The average student at Harvard doesn't pay even close to actual tuition, most of the endowment is earmarked for student aid. If I remember right, something like under 90k earned by the student's family, they pay nothing. I haven't worked there in 2 years, so the math is a bit fuzzy but the concepts are accurate.
    - huac 6y ago
      while most students do pay much less than sticker price, saying 'most of the endowment is earmarked for student aid' feels misleading. in fy2019 harvard spent $193M on student aid (https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harvard_financial_report.pdf https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harvard_fin...) -- compared to a $5.2B operating expense spend and a $41B endowment size.
mahaganapati 6y ago
I'm confused why there is still so much fear and abnormal life in the US when the US CDC says the mortality rate is miniscule, e.g. [1]. We're not completely back to normal yet in Vietnam, but a lot closer. [1] https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-implies-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-below-0-3/ https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-imp...
- paxys 6y ago
  1. There isn't much trust in what the government is saying at the moment, especially since their communication is usually mismanaged, incorrect or contradictory. For example, some states have passed laws/orders blocking the public release of COVID data. 2. People are also afraid of simply getting COVID, not just dying from it. It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people.
  - hartator 6y ago
    > It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people. Can you point to a study showing that?
    - celticninja 6y ago
      Not OP but a quick Google search found this. I have also read plenty of articles of a similar nature. It doesn't take much work to find a reputable source for this type of information. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
      - djsumdog 6y ago
        Nothing in this suggest any permanent damage > Even after the disease has passed, lung injury may result in breathing difficulties that might take months to improve. You know what that's called? Pneumonia! All pneumonias cause that type of injury and take months to recover from.
otoburb 6y ago
I hope they and other universities increase vision insurance/benefits. From experience, staying glued to a Zoom screen for over >6hrs a day for an extended period of time places tremendous strain on the eyes.
ryanSrich 6y ago
Imagine paying the fee for a Harvard MBA and missing out on arguably the most valuable aspect of it - nepotism and networking.
- hartator 6y ago
  This. You can also learn everything taught there and better by just buying and reading the books.
  - falcor84 6y ago
    Beyond nepotism, there's a lot of actual learning experiences you can gain from your peers by debating them in case study lessons, working with them on projects and participating in simulations etc.
    - wegs 6y ago
      Plenty of other schools in the area offer better, more rigorous instruction. If that were central to the value offering, no one would go to HBS.
    - ideals 6y ago
      Could you gain the same experience by finding people like that in an online community and debating case studies among them? Doesn't that happen in an informal way on a lot of subreddits and even here?
      - otoburb 6y ago
        I think determined individuals could, but it's much harder without ready access to pre-designed course material (e.g. case studies) and a learned facilitator, ideally one who has a mix of hard won industry experience, academic/research rigour and is a great teacher to boot. This doesn't come close to describing every single professor, but I imagine (albeit without any sources to back this up right now) that the ratio of such unicorn professors is higher at Tier 1 univerities vs. non-Tier 1. Perhaps with a larger supply of determined students willing to tackle this on their own, this is the year where a larger number of focused case-study groups could be formed and sustained online.
amiga_500 6y ago
So they are not deluding themselves about how transmissible covid is, nor how serious it is. Meanwhile the rest get told to get back to the office.
pwthornton 6y ago
Having taught a semester online, I think you can do really good teaching online, but you need a few things: 1) Small class sizes. Mine was under 15. Otherwise, very little discussion happens 2) A lot of work & learning assigned outside of class 3) Time each class for sub-groups I do think they will have to adjust the tuition. It is hard to justify paying 60k or whatever Harvard charges for online education. It is objectively much, much cheaper to deliver. Schools will need to invest in a lot more online tools and training, however. I don't understand how larger class sizes will happen, unless they are going completely lecture. The other thing I did with my small class was set up a Slack channel. I was available daily to chat about whatever and give feedback and work through concepts. I spent a tremendous amount of time chatting with students on Zoom and Slack inbetween classes when I taught online last semester. The idea that good online teaching is just like some free MOOC is not reality-based. It needs to be very hands-on.
- screye 6y ago
  My friend just did a full course load remote summer semester it was significantly more taxing. Group study is harder. Keeping attention in class is harder. Having your eyes stuck to a screen the whole day is harder. > The idea that good online teaching is just like some free MOOC is not reality-based. It needs to be very hands-on. Kudos to you. From what I've seen, online courses continue to be MOOC-esque or even worse. At least MOOCs have mature systems in place that facilitate learning through their system, however inefficient.
- ksml 6y ago
  I had a very similar experience teaching a class of 23, including the Slack, which students found very helpful. I was also a student in a class of 60 and quality of discussion suffered, although I'm not sure it's 100% because of the online format (I think the instructors could have done a better job facilitating discussion)
vmchale 6y ago
Consequences of an utterly inept pandemic response.
- nick_kline 6y ago
  What would be a good strategy? I think this makes sense for students and for professors, think of vulnerable people, the cost of going there and then the later canceling.
DebtDeflation 6y ago
If I'm reading this correctly, all incoming Freshman will spend Fall semester living on campus and all graduating Seniors will do likewise for Spring semester, however all courses will be online only. I can't imagine doing online coursework from the dorm and I'm not sure what kind of safety is being gained by just avoiding the classroom while social interactions continue.
code4tee 6y ago
COVID-19 will likely be a watershed moment for higher education in the US. Many colleges and universities will likely never return to what they had before. There will be immense pressure to rethink how the whole system works and the cost structures therein. At many schools the cost increases over the last few decades have very little to do with increasing the quality of education and a lot to do with unnecessary expenses and ever growing administrative bloat. It’s going to be hard for schools to justify their cost when they’re running essentially an online school and that’s the first step towards the whole house of cards falling apart. Expect to see a lot of changes in the coming years. It will be painful but for the best in the long term in getting schools back to basics of providing education. Schools like Harvard will be fine but outside the top tier it’s about to get real ugly.
- mrlala 6y ago
  Feel sorry for the students right now having to face all this.. but it's for the best overall. College needs to be massively re-imagined in this country. The costs are so out of control it's insane. As a parent with 2 younger kids, trying to save to help them with college some seems monumental.
- flatline 6y ago
  > unnecessary expenses and every growing administrative bloat This is a problem, and yet, I’m unsure how “unnecessary” that administrative overhead really is. If you went to college in the 70s you didn’t have all that. But college wasn’t a requirement, it was an entitlement (loosely speaking) and the people who attended largely reflected this - they were entitled, privileged. Even at a public school they were from comfortably middle class homes, white, etc. If you were poor, non-white, you were largely excluded. If you had mental health problems, you were on your own. In fact if you had any sort of special need you were on your own, there was no support from the school - they were academic institutions! So much of the work over the last 50 years has been to bridge these gaps. College is now practically a requirement for a comfortable middle class existence in the US. So we try to make sure everyone can go, even graduate, and this is the result. I still view schools as being pretty lean on staffing, for what they provide. All these problems with schools are symptoms of a larger societal issue in my mind.
augustt 6y ago
Finally, now the rest of us can wait for our administrations to copy them (at least MIT has been following their every move).
- perpetualpatzer 6y ago
  MIT announced roughly the same plan 2 weeks earlier. [0] https://covid19.mit.edu/initial-decisions-about-fall-at-mit https://covid19.mit.edu/initial-decisions-about-fall-at-mit
annoyingnoob 6y ago
I would hope that Harvard students could adapt pretty easily. The public school my kids go to will only be open 2 days per week next year, mostly for tech support. That is a real travesty for the kids, especially with Mom and Dad going to work, the kids will be one their own often trying to get it done. I'll be spending my evenings playing teacher after a full day of work. I refuse to let me kids fall behind, its obvious that the government won't do anything but send kids home and hope for the best. The kids need the classroom and need to be social. Not looking for my family to get covid but we need to do more to educate the next generation.
ManBlanket 6y ago
Aren't healthy young adults for the most part isolated to a single area sort of a decent path toward herd immunity while minimizing the death rate of Covid-19? Wait, but Harvard, they're rich. I forgot it was poor and minorities charged with face risks for white upper class. Oh, sorry I meant, "essential" people.
- soganess 6y ago
  Don't the professors who are not always healthy young people also deserve to not get sick? (My mom instructs chemistry at a university and she almost 65)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Aren't healthy young adults for the most part isolated to a single area sort of a decent path toward herd immunity while minimizing the death rate of Covid-19? No, there’s no such thing. “Herd immunity by infection” is a failure endgame, not a success goal, and the people involved in in-person instructivo aren’t categorically young (especially not the instructors) or healthy, much less exclusively in the intersection of those two sets.
paxys 6y ago
It's crazy how much the entire country is outraged over Harvard's tuition during COVID. Maybe worry about getting in first? Or even better, focus your anger on your state university system's funding and tuition costs. The majority of Harvard students receive financial aid anyways, and a fifth of them pay nothing. Whether online classes are worth it or not remains to be seen, but it's not a decision the country's masses have to make.
wycy 6y ago
> plans to bring up to 40% of our undergraduates to campus, including all first-year students, for the fall semester. Assuming that we maintain 40% density in the spring semester, we would again bring back one class, and our priority at this time is to bring seniors to campus I'm not sure what exactly is achieved by having 40% density if that decreased density isn't evenly distributed. Unless I'm misreading, the incoming Freshman classes will all be at 100% density.
- itslennysfault 6y ago
  I think it's pretty transparent that it's just because they need the Freshman class to pay that first year tuition so they're hooked. After their first semester on campus they're much more likely to deal with remote learning for the remainder.
  - ksml 6y ago
    I think you make it sound more ill intentioned than it is. Freshman year is crucial to forming new connections, finding organizations to join, and adapting to a new environment. It's not just about "dealing with remote learning"; it's also very much about meeting new people face-to-face and making friends they can lean on over Zoom for the semesters to come.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      Unfortunately, much of the social substrate that builds freshman bonding is facilitated by older students, from dorm events and parties to students groups and office hours.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        not at Harvard
- ksml 6y ago
  Why would the density need to be distributed across classes? I think the idea is to have fewer people in the dorms, so that e.g. no one shares a room, to reduce potential for spread of disease.
modzu 6y ago
looking back at all of the things i most appreciated about going to university, classes are near the bottom of the list. you cant put a price on the relationships you form, the labs, the teams and companies that you spin off, the hands on activities with tools and technology and artifacts you could never access otherwise, even simply being away somewhere you didnt grow up. you dont just put that on the internet anymore than you can expect cybersex to yield offspring
Digory 6y ago
Athletics are going to be reeling. No announcement yet, but this effectively kills football, no?
legitster 6y ago
I recently talked to someone who worked in higher ed administration, and they said that Covid may sink hundreds of smaller private colleges across the country that have quietly been on the financial brink this whole time. So they are all focused on keeping as much revenue coming in as possible. On the other side of all of this, I am imagining a world where higher education is not nearly as important as we pretend it is now.
aphextron 6y ago
I love seeing all of these random meaningless "safe limit" numbers with regards to reopening things. Yeah, 40%, that sounds good right? Sure why not! Is this based on anything at all but an arbitrary bureaucratic decision? Nope!
- kolbe 6y ago
  Well, it was going to be a minimum 25% to allow all the first-year students in, because Harvard saw that they were going to defer in droves if they couldn't go on-campus.
kolbe 6y ago
You want to know why people are having difficulty trusting science? Because the institutions that guide science in the United States seem to frequently come to self-serving decisions. In this case, Harvard is not allowing all first years to come to campus because it's safer; they're doing it because first years are more likely to defer if they couldn't go to campus. If scientists want people to listen to them, start helping them. Don't lie about mask efficiency, because you want the masks for yourselves. Don't make other people lose their jobs, while continuing to collect your own paycheck. Don't admonish protests as being unsafe when they're conservative, but bless them when they're liberal.
gringoDan 6y ago
I left college for a semester, then re-enrolled and graduated. It's incredibly easy to do. If I were a current Harvard student, I'd drop out for the next year. Take some community college courses, work, travel (in a COVID-responsible way...maybe road trips only). This is a unique opportunity to get off of the well-trodden path and far preferable to sitting in front of a computer in your parents' house for a year. There is a huge safety net once you've gotten into an Ivy or other top school. Best case scenario, you start a business and no longer need Harvard, a la Zuckerberg or Gates. Worst case scenario, you graduate broke at 23 (with some great stories), rather than broke at 22 (without the stories). The value of a college degree is: 1) Signaling/exclusivity (the diploma) 2) The connections you make 3) The subject matter that you learn 4) The social environment – all of the benefits of adulthood with none of the responsibilities Distance learning only hits #3 on that list. Harvard can get away with charging full tuition for its classes because...it's Harvard. So it also hits #1. But the majority of schools are in for a rude awakening when they realize that students were paying for the social environment and aren't willing to, in the words of Good Will Hunting, "Waste $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."
- opportune 6y ago
  Unless you urgently need to start a business right now, I don’t see how this has a higher expected value compared to doing the same after you graduate.
  - gringoDan 6y ago
    It doesn't have higher expected value and I wouldn't necessarily advise going down this path in normal times. But calculating the expected value only takes into account the diploma and learning subject matter, none of the other benefits. The decision right now is between a) paying full price for a watered-down college experience (graduating earlier) and b) gaining some life experience and potentially getting "the full" college experience in a year or two for the same price (albeit with the drawback of a later graduation date).
  - albntomat0 6y ago
fullstop 6y ago
Archive link since the site is hammered: https://archive.is/ACRGl https://archive.is/ACRGl
slugiscool99 6y ago
Here's Cornell's email to students if anyone was curious: https://www.scribd.com/document/468208772/Cornell-Mail-Plans-to-Reactivate-Ithaca-Campus-for-Fall-Semester https://www.scribd.com/document/468208772/Cornell-Mail-Plans...
ilyas121 6y ago
Probably the first MA college that I've seen to say only freshman coming back. Mine, (WPI) still has been telling every undergrad that everything is only optionally online, and that they would just convert triples to doubles and the usual covid guidelines. Freshman-only seems to me more realistic although disheartening to hear as a rising senior.
- MiroF 6y ago
  > Freshman-only seems to me more realistic although disheartening to hear as a rising senior. I think that most schools will do most everything they can to ensure that the senior class still has a senior spring.
zekrioca 6y ago
It would be good to emphasize this applies to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
foodigger 6y ago
I doubt you would contribute more if you went to Harvard but this is probably a bro-post, so rock on
pjdemers 6y ago
I have two children in college. One college announced a similar plan, half of students on campus at a time. If the plan is followed through, then, the class of 2022 will spend 17 straight months on campus, from January 2021 until graduation in May 2022. The college held an online question and answer for parents. The question of burn out for the class of 2022 came up. The school president's answer was: That's a problem we would love to have. Basically, the school thinks there will be several more complete shutdowns over the next few years.
omot 6y ago
I personally think the value of a Harvard education is not necessarily what you learn, but who you meet. That's why it's critical for majority of the student body to be in close proximity to one another. I wonder if they could crack the challenges of building rapport between students remotely.
sriram_sun 6y ago
The brand must go on.
rurban 6y ago
Preferring seniors to attend the campus and all you fees to stay at home and learn remote is illogical. Seniors can finalize their exams much easier from home than juniors who do need the campus and direct contact with many. Seniors only need their advisor. But I never thought that Harvard can think logically.
- MiroF 6y ago
  This will be Senior's last impression of the school before they become alumni (and donors).
chanmad29 6y ago
With the new ICE Directive, I wonder how much of “this is the right thing to do” will change. From a physical well being perspective, remote is right. But with International student visa statuses at risk, the onus is now on Harvard to enable in person classes for those at risk?
- the_svd_doctor 6y ago
  It seems so. If they want to have international students attending (from the US), it cannot be 100% online.
fireflux_ 6y ago
Apparently ICE won't let international students stay in the US in an "online only" school [0]. Makes me realize that as convenient as it is to be able to get education online, having fast internet speed is a privilege. [0]: https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1280207487573069827 https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/12802074875730698...
- the_svd_doctor 6y ago
  You're correct. Original press release is https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during?fbclid=IwAR1q6W8g6uikfadS8eZDZI8ocer-Pv-mxEg5RWGZIwmb6lCu58KRklAgoL8 https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...
gz5 6y ago
So first year students can live on campus in the fall semester but not attend classes in person. I understand all classes having an online option, but am surprised they aren't mixed modality so the students on campus can be in person. Is it more difficult/expensive to make a classroom safe than the rest of the campus? Or professors have pushed back on mixed modality (due to health and/or logistics concerns)? Or something else?
the_svd_doctor 6y ago
Interestingly, DHS just decided today that international students cannot maintain their legal status with a 100% online education https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during?fbclid=IwAR1q6W8g6uikfadS8eZDZI8ocer-Pv-mxEg5RWGZIwmb6lCu58KRklAgoL8 https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...
- koheripbal 6y ago
  It's hard to argue with that.
  - bransonf 6y ago
    Well, there are some consequences we must consider. Foreign student populations contribute a great deal of money to Universities. It is typical at many private institutions that foreign students pay 100% sticker price. If that institution goes full online, many international students may be unwilling to give up their immigration status and transfer. Likewise, institutions with large immigrant cohorts may be pressured to remain in-person to retain these financials (compounded by the fact that they are financially struggling as is). Similarly, access to broadband is often taken for granted in the United States. You cannot guarantee in other countries that you will have sufficient access to fast and free (as in unrestricted) internet access. At which point, you simply cannot remain enrolled at your current institution. (Essentially you would get deported, and lose a year of your education) The social issue of immigration aside, I think in economic terms this could be pressuring universities, and in perhaps the wrong way.
  - the_svd_doctor 6y ago
    Well it means if Harvard goes through and is 100% online it won’t be able to have international students attending from the US. So it is essentially forcing universities to have at least a hybrid schedule (universities won’t pass on the nice 100% sticker price tuition paid by internationals).
yingw787 6y ago
I remember one inspiring story from a few years ago, a student who did janitor work to pay family bills before going to Harvard: https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from-janitor-to-harvard/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from-janitor-to-harvard/in... Hope colleges can prioritize students from underprivileged backgrounds. They might even be safer on campus.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
> “ Tuition will remain as announced for the 2020-21 academic year.” jfc
crb002 6y ago
The only barrier is making cafeterias safe with acrylic barriers and decentralizing them. Masking works.
TeeMassive 6y ago
Now that most courses can be taught online I've always wondered why not more companies would offer certified examination. I mean, you follow a course, you get graded in a certified grading facility; what else remains to justify those absurd tuition fees?
matthewfcarlson 6y ago
I've been attending online courses this semester (I'm a part-time masters student) and it has been interesting comparing them to my on-campus courses. At first, I was glad to not have to make the trip down there after work since the buses don't run often enough in the evening and it can be easy to be stuck waiting in the cold. But as time went on, I began to be frustrated. I'm paying frankly exorbitant amounts of money and getting basically, a live Udemy course with 20-40 other people at the same time. Previously, a lot of the value was the interaction with the professor and my peers. While I do think virtual education, done right, is indeed highly undervalued but also rarely done well. I don't think I should be paying the same amount for a frankly worse product. I'm curious to see how universities adapt to this in the future.
LatteLazy 6y ago
With more companies going to WFH and distributed models (even before coronavirus), I think its important for people to learn the skills needed. So I don't see why more (high) schools and universities don't do WFH at least some of the time. Obviously there is more to university than logging in and watching a video lecture etc. But given the new normal, airs not a bad thing to have to do that sometimes...
mvkel 6y ago
This move will unveil the commoditization of education. The value any school provides is campus connection. These campuses become part of a student’s identity, and drive strong loyalty for life. What happens when they’re no longer on campus? How does that connection happen?

350 points by jbegley 6y ago

num3ric 6y ago

Wise decision, but this renders the cost of education (in US universities) even more unjustifiable.

wpasc 6y ago
Agreed entirely, but the cost of a US college degree is often more about the credential level signaling and showing that you were tenacious enough to win the college entrance competition than it is about acquiring skills.
- itg 6y ago
  Also about networking and friendships formed during college which will be harder when it’s entirely online.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Genuine question as I haven’t been to college (yet?): is this actually a thing? I’ve also heard it doesn’t help with that.
    - asdff 6y ago
      Everything I have in life is from networking effects in college, from landing my first research position in undergrad. Grades don't matter, I was an average student. Networking effect is everything in life, in any field. Maximize your ability to network.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Agree that one should maximize networking, but college is not required to do so. Find like minded people where ever you are, always be seeking opportunities (learning, revenue generating, and all others) and avoid credentials and their associated costs. Be able to get the work done, learn how to when you can’t, and be enjoyable to work with, that’s most of what a job is.
        adamcharnock 6y ago
        This is my experience too. I haven't exactly avoided credentials as a principle (I have a BEng), but I totally agree with "Be able to get the work done and enjoyable to work with". Do a good job, be secure in your abilities, have empathy for others. I'm a freelancer of 13 years with a lot of happy clients and – before I started living off-grid – I'd earn a month's rent in half a day. Now I don't have rent or mortgage. Sure, I haven't climbed any corporate ladder, but I hope that in a decent company you can be those things and also do well.
      - Frost1x 6y ago
        >Networking effect is everything in life, in any field. Maximize your ability to network. Networking isn't everything but it's definitely the lion's share. Anyone who paints the world as a meritocracy is disillusioned, but it helps to have merit to fall back on. There are many who get through life and succeed financially almost entirely through networking and situation.
      - jkaptur 6y ago
        I'd add some nuance to that - in my experience, networking is a multiplicative (not additive) effect to your actual skills. You can get a letter of recommendation from a Nobel Prize winner, but even then it has to say something other than "Liz Lemon numbers among my employees", you know?
      - mrep 6y ago
        Interesting. Did you go to an Ivy league, cause I went to a state school and I haven't used networking for anything ever. Granted, I've only worked at GAFAM and they hire tons of people so that could be part of it.
        asdff 6y ago
        I went to a state school, albeit R1 which has a lot more funding and therefore opportunities, but I believe every state flagship is R1 anyway. Actually this in state school was cheaper than some other in state schools that were considered party schools/easier academically. Were you recruited at a career fair? fangs always had a big presence at our biannual fairs and people I knew seemed to have no issues finding internships coast to coast.
        mrep 6y ago
        I went to purdue so we had absolutely massive career fairs and I got my first CS internship at GAFAM through one. After that, it hasn't been hard getting interviews at the other ones.
        panopticon 6y ago
        I went to a state school, and my entire professional career is due to the friends I made there. College was a very rough time for me, and I wasn't getting many interviews with my resume (really poor GPA, no internships, no extracurriculars, etc). A friend hooked me up with a job at a startup and landing interviews since has been no problem. This isn't a glamorous story where my network made me a millionaire, but my life would be much worse having not made those friends back then.
        mrep 6y ago
        Internships definitely help (GAFAM uses them like extended interviews for full time offers). I also think it helps that my gpa was ok (3.05) and the school i went to (purdue) was highly ranked enough and big enough that we had entire recruiting teams come out to our career fairs which is where I got my first internship. Some companies even sent out employees for an entire week to our campus to do interviews for internship and new grad hiring.
    - bradlys 6y ago
      > Genuine question as I haven’t been to college (yet?): is this actually a thing? I’ve also heard it doesn’t help with that. As someone who DIDN'T network in college and compares to peers who did - it is utterly devastating. It is hugely influential. Admittedly, your networking won't matter as much if there isn't high movement from the school to your work region... In my case, I went to a school where most of the student body had no intentions of leaving the region. I was also in an extremely anti-social department that was overly competitive.
    - adamcharnock 6y ago
      Speaking as a UK university grad (14 years ago), this was absolutely not a thing for me. I made some friends, but went into web development at a small company rather than a large grad training scheme. I spent a year there and I have been self-employed ever since. I think precisely none of my career development has been due to my university-related network. But perhaps it is different at US colleges (or for others in the UK). I personally couldn't wait to put academia behind me and get into the real world. I now live off-grid in Central Portugal. I have clients I still work for, and I get referrals to new clients too. I'm also starting a wireless ISP here, which is great for networking and meeting people :-)
    - asutekku 6y ago
      You can learn almost everything you can learn in university outside of it. The true value are the people you’ll meet that share the same interests as you do. Life is hell a lot of easier if you know the right / enough people.
    - vvpan 6y ago
      My connections helped me little. If I just worked during that time I think I would have been way farther up on the hard metrics of career progress. Not to say that I didn't get anything out of college. The campus radio stations introduced me to people who have had a tremendous amount of influence on me.
    - Meekro 6y ago
      All 9 members of the Supreme Court went to either Harvard or Yale. I'd say that yes, signaling matters.
      - otoburb 6y ago
        The UK is not much different -- a majority of senior High Court barristers[1] and UK Supreme Court justices[2] are Oxbridge[3] educated. [1] https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/new-high-court-judges-all-oxbridge-barristers/5101147.article https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/new-high-court-judges-all-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_of_the_Supreme_Court_o... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge
      - vonmoltke 6y ago
        8/9 went to law school at Harvard or Yale (the Notorious R.B.G. went to Columbia Law). For undergrad, 3 went to Princeton, 1 to Columbia (not RBG, interestingly), 1 to Harvard, 1 to Yale, 1 to Cornell, 1 to Stanford, and 1 to Holy Cross. That's evidence that signaling matters in a law degree, but the larger context of this discussion is of an undergraduate degree and I don't think the signalling is as strong there.
        ativzzz 6y ago
        So 8 of them went to elite/prestigious undergraduate schools (don't know about Holy Cross). Looks like a pretty strong signal to me.
        Meekro 6y ago
        I agree regarding undergrad mattering less than law school, but as long as we're splitting hairs about RBG, let's split them correctly! =) She and her husband both went to Harvard Law, though the husband started and graduated one year earlier. He then got a job at a New York law firm and RBG transferred to Columbia to stay near him. She completed her third year at Columbia and received their law degree. Harvard Law actually has a rule (adopted later) where you can complete your third year elsewhere and still receive a Harvard degree. They offered this degree to RBG, who refused it[1]. So technically you're right that she's a Columbia Law grad, though it's not a stretch to call her a Harvard Law grad as well. [1] http://www.wikicu.com/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg http://www.wikicu.com/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg
    - TuringNYC 6y ago
      Yes, 1000% -- but it depends on your college and specialty. Harvard/Yale for Law/Government/Policy - yes Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/CMU for venture funded startups - yes Cornell for Hotel Management / Veterinary Sciences - yes Georgetown/Princeton for Diplomacy/Government/Fed/Policy - yes Georgetown for venture funded startups - questionable Stanford for journalism - probably neutral Most US unis for Investment Banking - * not a chance * Most US unis for Strategy Consulting Top-3 - not a chance
    - jacobsenscott 6y ago
      I think for the 99% university contacts are not a useful "network". What good are a bunch of entry level employees to you? By the time anyone you've graduated with is in a position to help you out you've already been working for at least 10 years, and your more recent professional network is where the value will be. So unless you are in the Skull and Bones and your frat bro's uncle is an executive at Goldman Sachs, and that uncle was a frat bro with your Dad who's an executive at Morgan Stanly, no. But, a college education is still a valuable thing for getting a job. Depending on what classes you take anyway.
    - erosenbe0 6y ago
      Sure. Read bios to research career trajectories. For example, read the bios of billionaires of who made a lot their money via renumeration. Cheryl Sandberg, for example. Steve Ballmer. Made their connections in college.
    - pizza 6y ago
      In most cases, you participate in the world through other people. How much you use your connections is up to you, but such connections allow you to traverse quickly and deeply through the space of opportunities.
    - affyboi 6y ago
      Yes, it's absolutely a thing. I don't know how experiences vary, but Alex Azar, the current secretary of health and human services, former president of Eli Lilly, was an alumni of my frat. I've also hit up random alums at various companies who have given me referrals, there are a lot of friends of friends who are in pretty good positions, such as founder/CEO/partner at various companies and VCs that will be willing to chat with you if you happen to know someone they're connected to that can vouch for you. I was actually interviewing with a company, and I found out the CEO was an alum of my school, and we had a lot of fun talking about college.
    - Balgair 6y ago
      I depends on the school, but networking matter a lot. I'm not saying that it should, but it really seems to. Outside of ambition, the people matter too. I know a lot of marriages that started in college. I've met a lot of my best friends there too. Some of my professors changed my life, and not in a textbook way, but in a human way. I made a lot of mistakes there, and I know a lot of people did too. But it was college, you're kinda supposed to make mistakes and grow from them. Take the wrong major, kiss the wrong person, say the wrong thing, etc. I'm not saying that you can't have those experiences elsewhere. Most people do. But the structure of the place makes it a lot easier to meet other people your age, fall in love, fall out of love, have your opinions challenged, listen to some great/terrible music, imbibe too much of the wrong thing, get help on classwork, etc. You can still not opt into it, of course. And you can do that almost anywhere too. But it's a lot easier. Virtual classrooms aren't going to replace that. Honestly, until we get a vaccine, that's all kinda on hold. Sorry class of 2020 :(
  - winter_blue 6y ago
    > Also about networking and friendships formed during college I've never been as lonely as I had been during my first few years of college. I had no friends basically. People always got up and left the classrooms after classes were over -- no one hung around to socialize. I was depressed and extremely lonely, and rarely talked to any human beings, and mostly spent my free time on my laptop filled with an ocean of sadness. In my later years in college, I did make some friends, a few of which (like around 3 or 4 friends) have turned into life-long friends. And I'm extremely happy about those. But people seriously need to stop selling/touting college as some great social place. It emphatically was not during my first two years). The "social aspect" absolutely does not justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on college. You can find friends through events on meetup, or joining a social group (like a club that teaches to code, or a writer's group, or a music/singing group, or a church/religious group, etc). There are plenty of groups like this that are open to anyone in most major metropolises in the US. I've also made online, on Reddit and other sites. People randomly start chatting with me after seeing one of my comments. You absolutely don't need to and shouldn't spend hundreds of thousands just for the social aspect of college.
- giarc 6y ago
  I tend to agree but online courses allows school to admit more people. Therefore the value of that limited resource should go down, along with the price. Although Harvard hasn't announced an increase in first year admittance, I suspect if this is succesful they will start to increase enrollment and therefore should bring the cost down.
  - tdumitrescu 6y ago
    Not without increasing capacity of professors, TAs, and administrators, and then the facilities to support all that new staff. Campus facilities for students is only one part of the cost structure.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      Stanford's all-online CS106A ("Code in Place") in the Spring quarter was organized in about two weeks and fairly successfully scaled all aspects of instruction to ~1000 online learners.
      - asdff 6y ago
        Curious how they scaled. Just threw money/TAs at it? The limiting factor in my department with expanded online offerings is the number of people willing and able to sacrifice currently strictly limited on campus research hours to TA. There are a finite number of students that a given TA can handle, and it quickly can be an overwhelming amount of work responding to emails and grading.
- snarf21 6y ago
  Just like the job interview screening game.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  Wow, that's wickedly cynical. I don't know how I would have learned how to become an RF engineer if it weren't for a four year BSEE that focused heavily on DiffEq, Complex Math, Fields & Waves, and Discrete Systems... and access to patient and friendly (mostly) professors for help during open office hours, which were a necessity (for me, anyway). I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to teach this to myself with YouTube videos. But maybe you've had better luck?
  - anoonmoose 6y ago
    Some fields are exceptions to this rule. Those fields represent a small fraction of all degrees awarded per year. Yours (and mine) are part of that exception.
  - p1esk 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure many people would be able to learn it much faster if they didn't have to sit through countless boring lectures: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/
    - sushisource 6y ago
      That is really amazing, but I'd just like to point out how amusing it is that he looks really tired in the thumbnail of that video.
      - p1esk 6y ago
        Yeah, it’s almost like if he was partying all night :)
  - Kaveren 6y ago
    > RF engineer if it weren't for a four year BSEE that focused heavily on DiffEq, Complex Math, Fields & Waves, and Discrete Systems You can learn all of this by yourself. > I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to teach this to myself with YouTube videos. YouTube videos suck for serious learning of non-visual activities. Written resources, particularly books, are optimal. People like to pretend that it's hard to figure out what you need to learn, but just taking a look at syllabuses and assigned readings and what the "best" books in the field are will get you plenty far. > access to patient and friendly (mostly) professors For many majors you can find decent help online, but often crossreferencing between different books will provide just as good results as talking to a professor. Lectures are extremely inefficient. The hardest part is not being able to find answer manuals, particularly with graduate-level books. Usually you can find alternatives.
- catawbasam 6y ago
  If that was it, they could just copy their acceptance letters and start applying for jobs.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  That is extremely contrary to my experience. I could code a little bit before college but I learned more math, abstraction, theory of computation. I have never encountered anyone from my school professionally, but it was a modest state school. I did a ton of programming and that always mattered the most when I interviewed for jobs - what could I do and demonstrate right then. I have to ask, were you in engineering, where your connections mattered?
fullshark 6y ago
The cost is incredibly justifiable, it's just you are paying for access to future opportunities not an education.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  No it's not. Knowledge should provide access to future opportunities, not prestige. The system is the problem.
  - asdff 6y ago
    With any knowledge worker job posting, there are hundreds of perfectly qualified candidates, maybe thousands. The knowledge taught at Harvard is already disseminated. You don't learn anything different with an undergraduate degree at Harvard than you would with a degree at directional state. The difference is now you know professor X, who lets you work on his super cool project Y, then employer Z sees you did project Y with well known professor X, who wrote a letter with nothing but high praise of your intimate accomplishments on project Y and why you are therefore extremely qualified, and you get a great job. To break the system would be to snap your fingers and will more knowledge worker jobs into existence to meet the oversupply of qualified candidates, but given our free market society and increasing disfavor of public engineering and public research, that just isn't ever going to happen. So you try and play the game as it is the best you can, and apply to schools like Harvard with faculty who can push your life forward.
  - fullshark 6y ago
    In a world of imperfect information, how do you prove to a stranger that you are knowledgable, in less than a full day of interaction? That remains the problem, and credentials/prestige remain our best way of dealing with it. In other fields you develop portfolios (e.g. github repos) perhaps that's what education will evolve to, developing a student work portfolio to prove you are knowledgable.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  It's not (or at least, doesn't have to be) a binary question; it's a sliding scale of ROI.
tinyhouse 6y ago
I would think the majority of non-rich Harvard students don't pay much. For undergraduate studies if you want to attract the best students you have to offer very generous scholarships. Otherwise they would lose students to other top schools. This is true for all schools, but the rich schools like Harvard have the funding to actually do it. I've met a couple of students who paid full tuition at Harvard, but both came from very wealthy families so it wasn't an issue. Schools know in advance the financial situation of applicants and plan accordingly.
- affyboi 6y ago
  The Ivies tend to have pretty generous aid since they have massive endowments
asdff 6y ago
I'm sure no small number of people will defer next year. Looking back at college me, I would lean on the side of not signing my college town lease, deferring for the year, and living with my parents in my hometown for a year along with the rest of my local friends (many of which have in fact escaped NYC and other cities rents and returned to their parents home for this work from home period). Maybe you could work on something on github for your resume during this gap, but I'm anticipating given the absolute chaos this pandemic has caused worldwide, employers aren't going to care if you've failed to secure an internship in a time when no one is hiring, or that you preferred to take more engaging in person coursework rather than watch live action youtube lectures for exorbitant fees.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vincentmarle 6y ago
  On the other hand, if there are a lot of students deferring, there is a huge line behind them willing (and able!) to get into Harvard. Harvard and other elite institutions will not suffer for students for quite a while.
  - asdff 6y ago
    If you want to take a year off you can come right back the next year if you've already been admitted. I'm not sure what incoming freshman are thinking, but for current students, why the hell would you not take a year off?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Well, some can't afford it. If anything, I'd think the choice of incoming freshman is even clearer assuming they can defer--including financial arrangements. I'm sure they could find something better to do than severely compromised campus activities that might revert to full-on remote a month into the fall term.
amiga_500 6y ago
The price isn't set on the cost to deliver, at all. It's based on ability to pay, which is based on available credit, which is based on whatever bankers can get away with saying lifetime earnings will be.
centimeter 6y ago
> Wise decision For whom? We're going to save ~0 QALY with this decision, but we're going to derail a lot of people's life plans and probably contribute to a lot of deaths of despair.

hpoe 6y ago

So here's a question how are they going to prevent people from sharing the online courses? Like is there anything that stops someone from sharing or restreaming their classes? I mean given what the value of a Harvard education is considered I would think there would be a lot of people interested in getting access to these courses.

bmmayer1 6y ago
I think most people would say the value of a Harvard education is in the name on your degree, not the content of the courses. That said, there's a quote from Good Will Hunting that seems appropriate here: "You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."
- qntty 6y ago
  Most of the value is the friends you make and the informal relationships you develop with professors and other people at the university. For someone who already has friends to talk about academic things with, and who doesn't need the structure of a curriculum, Will is right.
dublinben 6y ago
Harvard already provides many of their courses for free on EdX[0], so anyone who wants to access them already can. The lectures themselves are only a small part of the value of a Harvard education, so they don't seem concerned about "piracy" of their courses. [0] https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx
- murgindrag 6y ago
  They're not free. That was a lie. Right now, most edX courses have switched to models where homework (the key value of the courses) is paid. A lot of people supported edX with time and money, including much of the early team and course contributors, based on this lie. Coursera was at least honest about it. Aside from that, most Harvard online courses have amazing production value (fully staffed video teams), and preciously little learning value. That's reflected in the hiring too. How many Harvard professors care about teaching-and-learning, much less online. I predict ASU, SNHU, Georgia Tech, and other schools which try to do online well will eventually eat Harvard's lunch unless something changes. With "eventually" being 50-100 years, since that's how long university reputations last :) That's lots of time for even a Harvard to change.

ralmidani 6y ago

My understanding is a lot of universities are playing bait-and-switch, announcing unrealistic plans to reopen in the Fall in order to get deposits/tuition, but secretly knowing they'll be 'forced' to move everything online again. I admire Harvard's transparency, although having a multi-billion-dollar endowment does make this decision easier for them than it would be for struggling institutions. FWIW, I personally think distance learning is underrated, although I have been doing it for years so I've had time to become accustomed to it. I can understand why some students (including my wife) do not like it, and may never like it. From a strategic perspective, I can see universities like Harvard strengthening their brand by opening up more of their classes to the general public (and maybe even giving credit for a bigger chunk of them via the Extension School). This might hurt a lot of the smaller institutions and lead to consolidation, but I'm undecided on whether that would be a bad thing.

AgloeDreams 6y ago
It's Harvard. It doesn't matter how they accounted it, they have not changed the Tuition cost with this announcement so it's the same money and they are not hurting for students.
- thspimpolds 6y ago
  The average student at Harvard doesn't pay even close to actual tuition, most of the endowment is earmarked for student aid. If I remember right, something like under 90k earned by the student's family, they pay nothing. I haven't worked there in 2 years, so the math is a bit fuzzy but the concepts are accurate.
  - huac 6y ago
    while most students do pay much less than sticker price, saying 'most of the endowment is earmarked for student aid' feels misleading. in fy2019 harvard spent $193M on student aid (https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harvard_financial_report.pdf https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harvard_fin...) -- compared to a $5.2B operating expense spend and a $41B endowment size.

mahaganapati 6y ago

I'm confused why there is still so much fear and abnormal life in the US when the US CDC says the mortality rate is miniscule, e.g. [1]. We're not completely back to normal yet in Vietnam, but a lot closer. [1] https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-implies-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-below-0-3/ https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-imp...

paxys 6y ago
1. There isn't much trust in what the government is saying at the moment, especially since their communication is usually mismanaged, incorrect or contradictory. For example, some states have passed laws/orders blocking the public release of COVID data. 2. People are also afraid of simply getting COVID, not just dying from it. It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people.
- hartator 6y ago
  > It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people. Can you point to a study showing that?
  - celticninja 6y ago
    Not OP but a quick Google search found this. I have also read plenty of articles of a similar nature. It doesn't take much work to find a reputable source for this type of information. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Nothing in this suggest any permanent damage > Even after the disease has passed, lung injury may result in breathing difficulties that might take months to improve. You know what that's called? Pneumonia! All pneumonias cause that type of injury and take months to recover from.

otoburb 6y ago

I hope they and other universities increase vision insurance/benefits. From experience, staying glued to a Zoom screen for over >6hrs a day for an extended period of time places tremendous strain on the eyes.

ryanSrich 6y ago

Imagine paying the fee for a Harvard MBA and missing out on arguably the most valuable aspect of it - nepotism and networking.

hartator 6y ago
This. You can also learn everything taught there and better by just buying and reading the books.
- falcor84 6y ago
  Beyond nepotism, there's a lot of actual learning experiences you can gain from your peers by debating them in case study lessons, working with them on projects and participating in simulations etc.
  - wegs 6y ago
    Plenty of other schools in the area offer better, more rigorous instruction. If that were central to the value offering, no one would go to HBS.
  - ideals 6y ago
    Could you gain the same experience by finding people like that in an online community and debating case studies among them? Doesn't that happen in an informal way on a lot of subreddits and even here?
    - otoburb 6y ago
      I think determined individuals could, but it's much harder without ready access to pre-designed course material (e.g. case studies) and a learned facilitator, ideally one who has a mix of hard won industry experience, academic/research rigour and is a great teacher to boot. This doesn't come close to describing every single professor, but I imagine (albeit without any sources to back this up right now) that the ratio of such unicorn professors is higher at Tier 1 univerities vs. non-Tier 1. Perhaps with a larger supply of determined students willing to tackle this on their own, this is the year where a larger number of focused case-study groups could be formed and sustained online.

amiga_500 6y ago

So they are not deluding themselves about how transmissible covid is, nor how serious it is. Meanwhile the rest get told to get back to the office.

pwthornton 6y ago

Having taught a semester online, I think you can do really good teaching online, but you need a few things: 1) Small class sizes. Mine was under 15. Otherwise, very little discussion happens 2) A lot of work & learning assigned outside of class 3) Time each class for sub-groups I do think they will have to adjust the tuition. It is hard to justify paying 60k or whatever Harvard charges for online education. It is objectively much, much cheaper to deliver. Schools will need to invest in a lot more online tools and training, however. I don't understand how larger class sizes will happen, unless they are going completely lecture. The other thing I did with my small class was set up a Slack channel. I was available daily to chat about whatever and give feedback and work through concepts. I spent a tremendous amount of time chatting with students on Zoom and Slack inbetween classes when I taught online last semester. The idea that good online teaching is just like some free MOOC is not reality-based. It needs to be very hands-on.

screye 6y ago
My friend just did a full course load remote summer semester it was significantly more taxing. Group study is harder. Keeping attention in class is harder. Having your eyes stuck to a screen the whole day is harder. > The idea that good online teaching is just like some free MOOC is not reality-based. It needs to be very hands-on. Kudos to you. From what I've seen, online courses continue to be MOOC-esque or even worse. At least MOOCs have mature systems in place that facilitate learning through their system, however inefficient.
ksml 6y ago
I had a very similar experience teaching a class of 23, including the Slack, which students found very helpful. I was also a student in a class of 60 and quality of discussion suffered, although I'm not sure it's 100% because of the online format (I think the instructors could have done a better job facilitating discussion)

vmchale 6y ago

Consequences of an utterly inept pandemic response.

nick_kline 6y ago
What would be a good strategy? I think this makes sense for students and for professors, think of vulnerable people, the cost of going there and then the later canceling.

DebtDeflation 6y ago

If I'm reading this correctly, all incoming Freshman will spend Fall semester living on campus and all graduating Seniors will do likewise for Spring semester, however all courses will be online only. I can't imagine doing online coursework from the dorm and I'm not sure what kind of safety is being gained by just avoiding the classroom while social interactions continue.

code4tee 6y ago

COVID-19 will likely be a watershed moment for higher education in the US. Many colleges and universities will likely never return to what they had before. There will be immense pressure to rethink how the whole system works and the cost structures therein. At many schools the cost increases over the last few decades have very little to do with increasing the quality of education and a lot to do with unnecessary expenses and ever growing administrative bloat. It’s going to be hard for schools to justify their cost when they’re running essentially an online school and that’s the first step towards the whole house of cards falling apart. Expect to see a lot of changes in the coming years. It will be painful but for the best in the long term in getting schools back to basics of providing education. Schools like Harvard will be fine but outside the top tier it’s about to get real ugly.

mrlala 6y ago
Feel sorry for the students right now having to face all this.. but it's for the best overall. College needs to be massively re-imagined in this country. The costs are so out of control it's insane. As a parent with 2 younger kids, trying to save to help them with college some seems monumental.
flatline 6y ago
> unnecessary expenses and every growing administrative bloat This is a problem, and yet, I’m unsure how “unnecessary” that administrative overhead really is. If you went to college in the 70s you didn’t have all that. But college wasn’t a requirement, it was an entitlement (loosely speaking) and the people who attended largely reflected this - they were entitled, privileged. Even at a public school they were from comfortably middle class homes, white, etc. If you were poor, non-white, you were largely excluded. If you had mental health problems, you were on your own. In fact if you had any sort of special need you were on your own, there was no support from the school - they were academic institutions! So much of the work over the last 50 years has been to bridge these gaps. College is now practically a requirement for a comfortable middle class existence in the US. So we try to make sure everyone can go, even graduate, and this is the result. I still view schools as being pretty lean on staffing, for what they provide. All these problems with schools are symptoms of a larger societal issue in my mind.

augustt 6y ago

Finally, now the rest of us can wait for our administrations to copy them (at least MIT has been following their every move).

perpetualpatzer 6y ago
MIT announced roughly the same plan 2 weeks earlier. [0] https://covid19.mit.edu/initial-decisions-about-fall-at-mit https://covid19.mit.edu/initial-decisions-about-fall-at-mit

annoyingnoob 6y ago

I would hope that Harvard students could adapt pretty easily. The public school my kids go to will only be open 2 days per week next year, mostly for tech support. That is a real travesty for the kids, especially with Mom and Dad going to work, the kids will be one their own often trying to get it done. I'll be spending my evenings playing teacher after a full day of work. I refuse to let me kids fall behind, its obvious that the government won't do anything but send kids home and hope for the best. The kids need the classroom and need to be social. Not looking for my family to get covid but we need to do more to educate the next generation.

ManBlanket 6y ago

Aren't healthy young adults for the most part isolated to a single area sort of a decent path toward herd immunity while minimizing the death rate of Covid-19? Wait, but Harvard, they're rich. I forgot it was poor and minorities charged with face risks for white upper class. Oh, sorry I meant, "essential" people.

soganess 6y ago
Don't the professors who are not always healthy young people also deserve to not get sick? (My mom instructs chemistry at a university and she almost 65)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Aren't healthy young adults for the most part isolated to a single area sort of a decent path toward herd immunity while minimizing the death rate of Covid-19? No, there’s no such thing. “Herd immunity by infection” is a failure endgame, not a success goal, and the people involved in in-person instructivo aren’t categorically young (especially not the instructors) or healthy, much less exclusively in the intersection of those two sets.

paxys 6y ago

It's crazy how much the entire country is outraged over Harvard's tuition during COVID. Maybe worry about getting in first? Or even better, focus your anger on your state university system's funding and tuition costs. The majority of Harvard students receive financial aid anyways, and a fifth of them pay nothing. Whether online classes are worth it or not remains to be seen, but it's not a decision the country's masses have to make.

wycy 6y ago

> plans to bring up to 40% of our undergraduates to campus, including all first-year students, for the fall semester. Assuming that we maintain 40% density in the spring semester, we would again bring back one class, and our priority at this time is to bring seniors to campus I'm not sure what exactly is achieved by having 40% density if that decreased density isn't evenly distributed. Unless I'm misreading, the incoming Freshman classes will all be at 100% density.

itslennysfault 6y ago
I think it's pretty transparent that it's just because they need the Freshman class to pay that first year tuition so they're hooked. After their first semester on campus they're much more likely to deal with remote learning for the remainder.
- ksml 6y ago
  I think you make it sound more ill intentioned than it is. Freshman year is crucial to forming new connections, finding organizations to join, and adapting to a new environment. It's not just about "dealing with remote learning"; it's also very much about meeting new people face-to-face and making friends they can lean on over Zoom for the semesters to come.
  - shuckles 6y ago
    Unfortunately, much of the social substrate that builds freshman bonding is facilitated by older students, from dorm events and parties to students groups and office hours.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      not at Harvard
ksml 6y ago
Why would the density need to be distributed across classes? I think the idea is to have fewer people in the dorms, so that e.g. no one shares a room, to reduce potential for spread of disease.

modzu 6y ago

looking back at all of the things i most appreciated about going to university, classes are near the bottom of the list. you cant put a price on the relationships you form, the labs, the teams and companies that you spin off, the hands on activities with tools and technology and artifacts you could never access otherwise, even simply being away somewhere you didnt grow up. you dont just put that on the internet anymore than you can expect cybersex to yield offspring

Digory 6y ago

Athletics are going to be reeling. No announcement yet, but this effectively kills football, no?

legitster 6y ago

I recently talked to someone who worked in higher ed administration, and they said that Covid may sink hundreds of smaller private colleges across the country that have quietly been on the financial brink this whole time. So they are all focused on keeping as much revenue coming in as possible. On the other side of all of this, I am imagining a world where higher education is not nearly as important as we pretend it is now.

aphextron 6y ago

I love seeing all of these random meaningless "safe limit" numbers with regards to reopening things. Yeah, 40%, that sounds good right? Sure why not! Is this based on anything at all but an arbitrary bureaucratic decision? Nope!

kolbe 6y ago
Well, it was going to be a minimum 25% to allow all the first-year students in, because Harvard saw that they were going to defer in droves if they couldn't go on-campus.

kolbe 6y ago

You want to know why people are having difficulty trusting science? Because the institutions that guide science in the United States seem to frequently come to self-serving decisions. In this case, Harvard is not allowing all first years to come to campus because it's safer; they're doing it because first years are more likely to defer if they couldn't go to campus. If scientists want people to listen to them, start helping them. Don't lie about mask efficiency, because you want the masks for yourselves. Don't make other people lose their jobs, while continuing to collect your own paycheck. Don't admonish protests as being unsafe when they're conservative, but bless them when they're liberal.

gringoDan 6y ago

I left college for a semester, then re-enrolled and graduated. It's incredibly easy to do. If I were a current Harvard student, I'd drop out for the next year. Take some community college courses, work, travel (in a COVID-responsible way...maybe road trips only). This is a unique opportunity to get off of the well-trodden path and far preferable to sitting in front of a computer in your parents' house for a year. There is a huge safety net once you've gotten into an Ivy or other top school. Best case scenario, you start a business and no longer need Harvard, a la Zuckerberg or Gates. Worst case scenario, you graduate broke at 23 (with some great stories), rather than broke at 22 (without the stories). The value of a college degree is: 1) Signaling/exclusivity (the diploma) 2) The connections you make 3) The subject matter that you learn 4) The social environment – all of the benefits of adulthood with none of the responsibilities Distance learning only hits #3 on that list. Harvard can get away with charging full tuition for its classes because...it's Harvard. So it also hits #1. But the majority of schools are in for a rude awakening when they realize that students were paying for the social environment and aren't willing to, in the words of Good Will Hunting, "Waste $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."

opportune 6y ago
Unless you urgently need to start a business right now, I don’t see how this has a higher expected value compared to doing the same after you graduate.
- gringoDan 6y ago
  It doesn't have higher expected value and I wouldn't necessarily advise going down this path in normal times. But calculating the expected value only takes into account the diploma and learning subject matter, none of the other benefits. The decision right now is between a) paying full price for a watered-down college experience (graduating earlier) and b) gaining some life experience and potentially getting "the full" college experience in a year or two for the same price (albeit with the drawback of a later graduation date).
- albntomat0 6y ago

fullstop 6y ago

Archive link since the site is hammered: https://archive.is/ACRGl https://archive.is/ACRGl

slugiscool99 6y ago

Here's Cornell's email to students if anyone was curious: https://www.scribd.com/document/468208772/Cornell-Mail-Plans-to-Reactivate-Ithaca-Campus-for-Fall-Semester https://www.scribd.com/document/468208772/Cornell-Mail-Plans...

ilyas121 6y ago

Probably the first MA college that I've seen to say only freshman coming back. Mine, (WPI) still has been telling every undergrad that everything is only optionally online, and that they would just convert triples to doubles and the usual covid guidelines. Freshman-only seems to me more realistic although disheartening to hear as a rising senior.

MiroF 6y ago
> Freshman-only seems to me more realistic although disheartening to hear as a rising senior. I think that most schools will do most everything they can to ensure that the senior class still has a senior spring.

zekrioca 6y ago

It would be good to emphasize this applies to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

foodigger 6y ago

I doubt you would contribute more if you went to Harvard but this is probably a bro-post, so rock on

pjdemers 6y ago

I have two children in college. One college announced a similar plan, half of students on campus at a time. If the plan is followed through, then, the class of 2022 will spend 17 straight months on campus, from January 2021 until graduation in May 2022. The college held an online question and answer for parents. The question of burn out for the class of 2022 came up. The school president's answer was: That's a problem we would love to have. Basically, the school thinks there will be several more complete shutdowns over the next few years.

omot 6y ago

I personally think the value of a Harvard education is not necessarily what you learn, but who you meet. That's why it's critical for majority of the student body to be in close proximity to one another. I wonder if they could crack the challenges of building rapport between students remotely.

sriram_sun 6y ago

The brand must go on.

rurban 6y ago

Preferring seniors to attend the campus and all you fees to stay at home and learn remote is illogical. Seniors can finalize their exams much easier from home than juniors who do need the campus and direct contact with many. Seniors only need their advisor. But I never thought that Harvard can think logically.

MiroF 6y ago
This will be Senior's last impression of the school before they become alumni (and donors).

chanmad29 6y ago

With the new ICE Directive, I wonder how much of “this is the right thing to do” will change. From a physical well being perspective, remote is right. But with International student visa statuses at risk, the onus is now on Harvard to enable in person classes for those at risk?

the_svd_doctor 6y ago
It seems so. If they want to have international students attending (from the US), it cannot be 100% online.

fireflux_ 6y ago

Apparently ICE won't let international students stay in the US in an "online only" school [0]. Makes me realize that as convenient as it is to be able to get education online, having fast internet speed is a privilege. [0]: https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1280207487573069827 https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/12802074875730698...

the_svd_doctor 6y ago
You're correct. Original press release is https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during?fbclid=IwAR1q6W8g6uikfadS8eZDZI8ocer-Pv-mxEg5RWGZIwmb6lCu58KRklAgoL8 https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...

gz5 6y ago

So first year students can live on campus in the fall semester but not attend classes in person. I understand all classes having an online option, but am surprised they aren't mixed modality so the students on campus can be in person. Is it more difficult/expensive to make a classroom safe than the rest of the campus? Or professors have pushed back on mixed modality (due to health and/or logistics concerns)? Or something else?

the_svd_doctor 6y ago

Interestingly, DHS just decided today that international students cannot maintain their legal status with a 100% online education https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during?fbclid=IwAR1q6W8g6uikfadS8eZDZI8ocer-Pv-mxEg5RWGZIwmb6lCu58KRklAgoL8 https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...

koheripbal 6y ago
It's hard to argue with that.
- bransonf 6y ago
  Well, there are some consequences we must consider. Foreign student populations contribute a great deal of money to Universities. It is typical at many private institutions that foreign students pay 100% sticker price. If that institution goes full online, many international students may be unwilling to give up their immigration status and transfer. Likewise, institutions with large immigrant cohorts may be pressured to remain in-person to retain these financials (compounded by the fact that they are financially struggling as is). Similarly, access to broadband is often taken for granted in the United States. You cannot guarantee in other countries that you will have sufficient access to fast and free (as in unrestricted) internet access. At which point, you simply cannot remain enrolled at your current institution. (Essentially you would get deported, and lose a year of your education) The social issue of immigration aside, I think in economic terms this could be pressuring universities, and in perhaps the wrong way.
- the_svd_doctor 6y ago
  Well it means if Harvard goes through and is 100% online it won’t be able to have international students attending from the US. So it is essentially forcing universities to have at least a hybrid schedule (universities won’t pass on the nice 100% sticker price tuition paid by internationals).

yingw787 6y ago

I remember one inspiring story from a few years ago, a student who did janitor work to pay family bills before going to Harvard: https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from-janitor-to-harvard/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from-janitor-to-harvard/in... Hope colleges can prioritize students from underprivileged backgrounds. They might even be safer on campus.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

> “ Tuition will remain as announced for the 2020-21 academic year.” jfc

crb002 6y ago

The only barrier is making cafeterias safe with acrylic barriers and decentralizing them. Masking works.

TeeMassive 6y ago

Now that most courses can be taught online I've always wondered why not more companies would offer certified examination. I mean, you follow a course, you get graded in a certified grading facility; what else remains to justify those absurd tuition fees?

matthewfcarlson 6y ago

I've been attending online courses this semester (I'm a part-time masters student) and it has been interesting comparing them to my on-campus courses. At first, I was glad to not have to make the trip down there after work since the buses don't run often enough in the evening and it can be easy to be stuck waiting in the cold. But as time went on, I began to be frustrated. I'm paying frankly exorbitant amounts of money and getting basically, a live Udemy course with 20-40 other people at the same time. Previously, a lot of the value was the interaction with the professor and my peers. While I do think virtual education, done right, is indeed highly undervalued but also rarely done well. I don't think I should be paying the same amount for a frankly worse product. I'm curious to see how universities adapt to this in the future.

LatteLazy 6y ago

With more companies going to WFH and distributed models (even before coronavirus), I think its important for people to learn the skills needed. So I don't see why more (high) schools and universities don't do WFH at least some of the time. Obviously there is more to university than logging in and watching a video lecture etc. But given the new normal, airs not a bad thing to have to do that sometimes...

mvkel 6y ago

This move will unveil the commoditization of education. The value any school provides is campus connection. These campuses become part of a student’s identity, and drive strong loyalty for life. What happens when they’re no longer on campus? How does that connection happen?