Colleges That Keep Small Isolated Towns Vibrant Now Pose Public Health Threat

[Muda69]

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/14/900309119/colleges-that-keep-small-isolated-towns-vibrant-now-pose-public-health-threat

Quote

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Hundreds of small colleges dotting the country rely on students paying tens of thousands of dollars a year in exchange for a distinctive, personal, high-touch college experience.

Many of those colleges hung on year-to-year even before the pandemic. Now COVID-19 threatens to cut off the oxygen sustaining these schools, and the sports programs that drive enrollment.

But the very thing small colleges need to stay afloat — students coming in, spending money, playing sports — also poses a major risk to relatively isolated little towns that, so far, have dodged major coronavirus outbreaks.

....

Other small-town schools across the country, and the communities tied to their fate, face the same existential crisis.

"Some of the people I know are looking at hundreds of colleges going out of business within the next several years, if this pandemic continues and if the economic devastation associated with it continues," said Scott Carlson with the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Small liberal arts colleges have been shaky for years. Enrollments have slumped, endowments have been drained. Many schools have piled on debt in a building boom fueled by competition for students.

Most offer courses online, but online classes don't pay the bills. Small schools survive only by providing an expensive, in-person college experience. And Carlson said the pandemic shreds that business model, and threatens to trigger the higher education equivalent of a mass extinction.

"It's kind of sad," he said. "These colleges are unique, little entities all on their own, and each one of them provides a unique spin on higher education."

...

"If COVID defeats the athletic season this year, it will probably defeat a lot of small colleges," he said. "And as a result, hurt a lot of small towns ... badly."

So, the same colleges that keep some small towns vibrant now pose a particular threat to public health.

"The college probably is the most dangerous element for us in terms of COVID," said Kristina Darnauer, a family practice doctor in Sterling. "It potentially brings back students from all over the U.S. who have variable levels of exposure."

Darnauer is torn. She loves Sterling, loves the college, and fully appreciates how important it is to the school and the town that college ramp almost as normal this fall.

But she's got patients to care for. And she said this county, with only one hospital and no intensive care unit is not ready for a cluster of coronavirus cases.

"If we have a huge outbreak," Darnauer said, "we're going to be out of resources very quickly."

....

Small colleges and college towns across much of the country face the same worries.

But some analysts say that a pruning of universities may prove inevitable, and that the coronavirus has only sped up the thinning of the higher education herd.

"I actually see the future of higher education, broadly speaking, as entering a new golden age," said Richard Price, a research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. It's a think tank that presses for dramatic change in institutions.

Price said the pandemic may hasten the evolution to better online classes, and a public education system that's much more accessible and equitable.

"The traditional model, it was originally for the landed elite and it wasn't for all genders," Price said. "It wasn't for all races. And that is slowly getting phased out along with some older business models that aren't pivoting well."

Price thinks many little colleges will adapt. Lots of them have cheated death before. But he said there's little doubt that this time next year the United States will have fewer colleges.

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So will the likes of Wabash, Depauw, Hanover, Franklin, etc. weather this storm?

 

[DanteEstonia]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/14/900309119/colleges-that-keep-small-isolated-towns-vibrant-now-pose-public-health-threat

So will the likes of Wabash, Depauw, Hanover, Franklin, etc. weather this storm?

Hopefully not. 

[Muda69]

35 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Hopefully not. 

?  Why do you wish for these private institutions to close their doors?

 

[DanteEstonia]

27 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

?  Why do you wish for these private institutions to close their doors?

We have an over-saturation of colleges. Time for contraction. Lol

[Muda69]

18 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

We have an over-saturation of colleges. Time for contraction. Lol

Yes, thanks to all the "free money" handed out by the federal government in the form of loans. A business the government should not even be in.

 

[DanteEstonia]

14 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Yes, thanks to all the "free money" handed out by the federal government in the form of loans.

... which have kept the private schools alive.

[Muda69]

12 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

... which have kept the private schools alive.

And very well may keep them alive, at taxpayer's expense.