Posted on 08/12/2020 7:57:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’ve been tempted to tweak my liberal friends with the mischievous thought that COVID-19 is actually a Trump five-dimensional chess plot to destroy universities, unionized K-12 public education, and Hollywood (since TV and movie production is largely shut down too).
Colleges and universities were already facing mounting financial pressure because enrollment is steadily declining and certain to get much worse in the coming decade (the result of falling birthrates back at the time of the housing crash in 2008-09). Add to this the financial hit they are taking right now because of the virus, on top of the huge loss this year of foreign students who typically pay full tuition rates and subsidize other students, and a large number of colleges and universities face a serious risk of insolvency. (There are many colleges for whom a large foreign student enrollment—especially Chinese students—is a key part of their business model.)
This week it is reported that 20 percent of Harvard freshmen are deferring a year; at other colleges, the rate of students saying they aren’t returning runs as high as 40 percent. At places further down the food chain than Harvard, how many students will decide not to go to college at all a year from now?
Now add today’s news that major college football isn’t going to happen, and you have the making of a death spiral for many colleges. Even schools that aren’t football powerhouses like Ohio State are going to take a huge hit from this, as football even at second-tier universities is still a money maker.
Ticket sales and TV revenues are one thing; football, and to a lesser extent basketball, are huge magnets for alumni donations, and if there’s no football, there’s no fancy skybox game day parties for college presidents to schmooze donors. And since huge football revenues cross-subsidize all the other sports, look for the sports portfolios of many colleges to collapse. Some schools, like Stanford, have already cut a large number of sports.
This could happen very fast. I expect by spring many colleges will be downsizing fast, and some will fold up. Will they cut administrative bloat and the politicized departments of gender studies? More likely, if there is a Biden Administration, a bailout of higher education will be a line-item in an “infrastructure” bill, which Democrats will call “investment” in education.
What good is it?
Cam’t social network and they are just going to hire india anyway
Save your money and launch an app.
Engineering don’t matter. They will hire China and India and you’ll be SOL
Business entities with 40 billion dollar endowments. They don’t even NEED to charge these days
[[Engineering don’t matter. They will hire China and India and you’ll be SOL]]
Today I would go right into the skilled trades from the start.
Hit a good technical school first or an apprenticeship with the union.
They can’t get any of these kids to do this work. Its paying great now.
Don’t even have to get your hands dirty if you go into the design side or management/planning.
Yeah, that threw me. I think it means even schools that aren’t Ohio State-type powerhouses.
Yeah, I reread it after I initially posted and got there too.
See #6...
Big Integer Football is not going to happen. The greatest university in the Midwest (if not the nation) had football practice on Wednesday and still intends to play football this fall.
The UoMI is largely a State Constitutionally independent enterprise.
Pretty amazing legal construct actually.
...”The greatest university in the Midwest (if not the nation) ...”
Turns out that none of those Unis were really that great...
Certainly not now.
What happens to the poor professors that get let go? All the new openings will end up going to minorities. What a shame. At least they will be able to practice what they preach.
Turn off the tax dollars, and let them respond to market forces.
“Biden Administration, a bailout of higher education will be a line-item in an “infrastructure” bill, “
Paid for by return of O-BodyMortgage Care Mandate. Watch
Yes, that’s one process that might lead to good outcomes.
It also goes to show us that “opening up” alone is not enough. If customers don’t want to come, business isn’t going to happen much.
We need to shut down the epidemic and get business going again, and defeatism is unthinkable. We’re Americans. Our ancestors won a revolution and two world wars. We put men on the moon, and contrary to conspiracy theories, that was not a hoax. We can find some self-discipline and endure minor discomfort. Just breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, and keep on working.
Colleges are now halfway to being full service vacation resorts for young people to waste their prime working years on. When the bubble bursts some colleges will make the transition into a Club Med format, if they can maintain their indentured sex trafficking business.
This free market distortion was visible 20 years ago. The amazing thing about bubbles is how long they can keep going even after they become obvious to all, especially if the government props them up. Everyone knows bubbles must pop but nobody can predict when. Until then, they party on and try to get the taxpayers to cover their coming losses.
This is it people, we’ve reach peak barista. No more open positions to make coffee. Why go to college now?
Academically, we offer only four major studies now: diversity, sustainability, inclusiveness, and community outreach.
We have hired several diversity administrators, installed quotas for non-traditional students and faculty, and established a special hate crime investigative committee.
So far, no anti-Israel policies, but that can't be far off.
Our endowment is over $700 million, so we have a few years of breathing room, but the end of the college as we once knew it may soon be a reality.
Leading Crisis Indicator - alumni magazine correspondence from graduating classes before 1990 has dropped almost to ZERO, and I assume donations from my age group have completely tanked.
Our woke female college president has implemented significant spending cuts, and her last email gave off the first faint signal of anxious concern.
Yes it has. Half the colleges that do not open this fall, will never open. Maybe ten percent of those who open only online will not reopen next year. All those expensive school buildings and staff will drag down small private colleges. While online for profit colleges that have little to no campus will surge in popularity because they will have better online line infrastructure, and lower expenses.
That is the real impact of de facto open borders: The jobs are no longer there for many American graduates. I see what happened in tech now happening in the financial sector; Asians are preferred to Americans. As with tech, there was no shortage - just a mans of suppressing wages.
This Red Chinese flu (through working remotely) has made it even more clear that many jobs today are at risk because of the triumph of the “information superhighway”...
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