A Fall Like No Other

Posted on July 23, 2020

No aspect of college life — not how we teach and learn, not the money it costs, not social norms and certainly not health concern — is exempt from enormous challenges in the pandemic.

 by Eric Johnson ’08

Nobody can tell you exactly what college is going to be like in the fall — not at Carolina, not anywhere. The coronavirus pandemic has forced a series of high-stakes bets by students, parents and college leaders who all are eager to get back to some form of normal, even though normal isn’t an option.

“It’s going to look and feel different than any fall semester we’ve had,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said. “And we’ll be wearing masks. So it’s going to look very different.”

It’s also going to cost the University tens of millions in added expenses at the same moment that revenue comes under pressure. How UNC leaders manage that could shape Carolina for years to come.

“It’s hard to overstate how challenging this is for higher education,” said Andrew Kelly, the UNC System’s senior vice president for strategy and policy. “The basic logistics of reopening safely are incredibly hard. College campuses are right up there with restaurants and airplanes when it comes to situations that are simply not designed for social distancing.”

But UNC’s leaders decided they must try. Because whatever the costs of engineering a return to campus, the costs of continuing with online-only education also are daunting. A third of high school seniors across the country would defer or cancel their college plans if schools remained fully online for the fall, according to a May survey by the consulting firm Carnegie Dartlet.

And paying full tuition for remote classes is a nonstarter. “An overwhelming majority (95 percent) of prospective students said a move to online coursework, even partially, requires at least some change to the cost of attendance,” the national survey found.

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“We are optimistic, leaning in and expecting our students, faculty and staff to return to classrooms, labs and libraries this fall.”

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“We would’ve been challenged financially to not reopen,” Guskiewicz said in a June interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes. “We know many students would have perhaps taken a gap year or to defer their enrollment. But I want to emphasize that our decisions are based on creating that learning environment for students, where we know they can thrive, and building in all of these measures for safety.”

The desire to get back on campus is shared by state policymakers. At the May meeting of the UNC System Board of Governors, Dr. William Roper, then interim system president, told board members that he has listened closely to their concerns about returning to some version of normal operations.

“You are, each of you, deeply concerned about how we get back to a time of good health and a vibrant economy. And please know that I am, and we are as a team, deeply concerned about and working flat out to deliver on that for the entire UNC System,” said Roper, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are optimistic, leaning in and expecting our students, faculty and staff to return to classrooms, labs and libraries this fall.”

Enrollment uncertainty

It remains to be seen how much students and parents are reassured or unsettled by all the pandemic planning. Trying to predict college enrollment is a high-wire act in the best of times, with admissions officials making their best guess at how many admitted freshmen will commit and show up in the fall. Now they have to do the same for continuing students who might be considering gap years, remote study in less expensive schools and other options. Admissions has to land that prediction pretty close to keep classrooms humming without overwhelming dorms and dining halls.

With the pandemic and the resulting economic shutdown creating all kinds of uncertainty for families, it’s impossible to know what decisions students ultimately will make about enrolling for the fall.

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UNC essentially is hoping that any second wave of infection can be put off or contained long enough to maintain a functioning campus through an accelerated fall semester.

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“This really is an unprecedented situation for all of us,” said Steve Farmer, UNC’s vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions. “No one has been through anything like this before in our lifetimes.

“We still believe we’ll have a great class in the fall, one that will be well prepared and richly diverse. But we do think we’ll see some shifts. Fewer low-income and fewer first-generation college nonresident students said yes to us this year. We think that’s almost entirely a function of the pandemic. Students are probably wanting to stay closer to home, and they’re looking for lower-cost options. We are also seeing an unusually strong response from children of alumni; we think they are choosing what’s familiar to them and their families. Some may choose to learn remotely in the fall or postpone their enrollment, if they have that option and that flexibility.”

Admissions officials across the country worried about a spike in gap year requests. Students usually are granted gap years — a one-year deferment in enrollment only for enriching experiences like volunteer service or educational travel. University officials didn’t want scores of students taking a gap year to stay home and wait for college life to return to normal.

Guskiewicz said there’s been an uptick in acceptances from in-state students and a corresponding decline in projected enrollment for out-of-staters.

Farmer’s team admitted more students than usual and invited more from Carolina’s waitlist, hedging against the possibility that some students will make a last-minute decision to skip a semester with significantly fewer campus activities, a lot more remote learning and still-evolving health risks. Plans for the fall include an early start date, no fall break and closing out the semester before Thanksgiving.

“Based on advice from our infectious disease and public health experts, who believe we could be facing a second wave of COVID-19 sometime late fall or early winter, we are making significant changes to our operations,” Guskiewicz wrote in an email announcement on May 22. “On their guidance, we are starting and finishing the fall semester early in an effort to stay ahead of that second wave.”

Guskiewicz acknowledged that all of those predictions could change, forcing the kind of rapid shift that upended the spring semester, when millions of college students were sent home from campuses across the country as their professors scrambled to move classes online.

No one in higher education is eager to repeat that experience, which is why some schools — the California State System most prominent among them — decided to largely give up on in-person instruction. “The forecasting sees a much larger spike coming in the late fall of COVID-19, coupled with the influenza, which will be perhaps even a more difficult moment than the one we are going through right now,” said Cal State Chancellor Timothy White. “I hope I’m wrong. I hope when we get to fall that we can do more in-person than we’re anticipating right now, but I want to be prepared. I don’t want fall courses that may start in-person and then have to be pulled back.”

UNC essentially is making the opposite bet, hoping that any second wave of infection can be put off or contained long enough to maintain a functioning campus through an accelerated fall semester. There are good reasons, beyond student preference, for UNC leaders to try for an on-campus fall.

Even with awkward physical distancing protocols and a loss of many campus activities, there’s a wealth of research to show that in-person instruction is simply better for keeping students on track to graduation. The accountability of actually going to class and the generally supportive environment that campus creates are hard for some students to replicate in their homes.

“We’ve got concerns certainly about retention of current students,” said Kelly, the UNC System vice president. “We know that students who are new to online learning often struggle in that medium. Learning online takes an enormous amount of discipline. So those are some of the immediate concerns that are on the minds of all institutions across the country, not just in North Carolina.”

The financial storm

Financial strain is another major reason that students across the country fail to complete college, which is part of the reason UNC has long made such a generous investment in need-based aid. That, too, is coming under increased pressure.

A major part of Carolina’s national reputation centers on its need-blind admission policy, which means the University admits students without regard to their financial circumstances. It’s considered a measure of quality in higher education — schools like Duke, Davidson and the University of Virginia have similar policies.

That, too, is coming under increased pressure from the pandemic. Money worries hit early when campus abruptly closed in the spring. Sending almost everyone home came with major unexpected costs. Students needed emergency funds to return from spring break and move out, to scramble back from canceled study abroad programs, or to make quick technology upgrades as classes moved online.

Some lost part-time jobs that helped cover college expenses. The University encouraged campus offices to switch student employees to remote work if they could, but that still left hundreds of Carolina students who work off-campus jobs as restaurant servers, baristas and babysitters. All of that work dried up when Chapel Hill went into lockdown.

Donors kicked in more than $745,000 to the Student Impact Fund, a pool of aid money managed by the dean of students office and the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid. Nearly all of it went out the door as quickly as it came in. Carolina awarded just shy of $2 million in emergency funding to more than 1,900 students.

“It’s been a little overwhelming,” said Rachelle Feldman, who heads the aid office. “We’re helping students who never filed for financial aid, and we’re helping some international students, which is not something we’re normally able to do. We’ve had to think hard about what’s reasonable for students, what’s reasonable for the University to help with.”

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Sending almost everyone home in the spring came with major unexpected costs.

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That’s because aid covers much more than tuition and fees. Standard budgets include housing, food, other basic living expenses — a range of resources to keep even the lowest-income students on track for graduation. Anthony Jack, a prominent researcher of college access at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, summed up the dilemma for universities trying to support their neediest students.

“As colleges respond to #COVID19 by going online & shutting down, remember campus is a sanctuary for many students: the only place they have steady access to food, shelter, safe living quarters, and/or internet to take online classes,” he wrote on Twitter. “Please help those without exit strategies.”

Feldman’s office was able to lean on recent experience distributing emergency aid for families after hurricanes Matthew and Florence. But a global pandemic affecting every student was a challenge on a completely different scale. “It has definitely been a significant lift,” Feldman said.

The next challenge will be major adjustments to the aid offers already made to students for this fall. Financial aid is calculated based on family income from two years ago, meaning a student enrolling in fall 2020 is getting aid based on that student’s family’s 2018 taxes. Normally, family income doesn’t change much from year to year, and using older tax data makes it easier to complete paperwork on time and give students a clear picture of the support they’ll receive. But these are not normal times. A small percentage of families request aid adjustments every year, but there is no precedent for recalculating aid when the American economy has shed tens of millions of jobs in a matter of weeks and upended family finances on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.

“I have a lot of concerns about families who may have lost jobs, and we’ve made them an initial promise to meet their needs, and now their needs are greater,” Feldman said. “I think it’s a real stretch for the University to keep our promises to those families, but we still have the intention of doing that. We’ve gotten some federal money, but it won’t be nearly enough.”

The CARES Act — passed by Congress in late March to provide economic relief for businesses, households, health care providers and students — included $14 billion for higher education nationwide. Much of that was earmarked for student support, meaning colleges had to direct the money to students in need, with the rest to help cover the cost of shifting classes online and dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. Feldman said the University is holding most of its CARES Act funding for the fall semester, using it to help with the anticipated surge in family needs.

University leaders across the country are lobbying Congress for more money to help schools weather the pandemic. The American Council on Education called for more than $46 billion in university aid as part of any new coronavirus relief package, reminding lawmakers of the damage done during the last recession.

“Students, states and schools all will have fewer resources and greater needs,” ACE President Ted Mitchell wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. “The pandemic is striking during the height of the admissions process, and the requirement to close physical campuses for extended periods, along with justifiable concerns among current and prospective students about when and if to return to campus, are problems higher education did not have in the Great Recession.”

Pressures on UNC budget, too

The University doesn’t have firm aid projections for the fall, largely because the economic outlook and the financial strength of families has shifted so quickly. No one knows whether conditions will improve as lockdowns lift or whether another wave of financial hardship will come as states continue to fight the virus with restrictions on business activity. “We want to make adjustments not so late that families can’t plan but not too early that circumstances change dramatically,” Feldman said.

She told the UNC trustees in May that the University was hearing from families who have suffered major financial hardship in the past few months. “We’re already seeing a record number of appeals for additional funds coming in the fall,” she reported. “This is just the beginning. Students’ financial needs and family financial circumstances will be changed not just for a short couple of months but probably for a couple of years.”

The same recession that’s hurting families also will hurt Carolina’s budget. Clayton Somers ’93, UNC’s vice chancellor for public affairs, told the trustees in May that state lawmakers already were expecting a $4 billion deficit as a result of rising unemployment and falling tax receipts. The estimates have only worsened since then. “We do expect a very tight budget cycle,” Somers warned. “Everyone will be asked to do more with less resources. That’s just the nature of the game.”

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“This is just the beginning. Students’ financial needs and family financial circumstances will be changed not just for a short couple of months but probably for a couple of years.”

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State funding will be constrained at the same time that tuition and fee revenue is under pressure. Out-of-state students pay considerably higher tuition rates, so any decline in out-of-state enrollment means fewer dollars. And it’s not yet clear what impact reduced campus operations will have on housing and dining revenue or on fees for things like athletics and student activities. If club gatherings and extracurricular events are sharply limited, students may balk at the usual array of fees that sustain campus life.

In the last recession, Carolina saw a sustained rise in students qualifying for need-based aid — a 23 percent increase from 2008–09 to 2009–10. Some of that was driven by tuition increases, which are off the table this time around. The Board of Governors decided this spring to freeze tuition for the coming year, continuing a yearslong trend of sharply limiting tuition hikes. But even without increased costs, a deep recession will stress aid budgets for years to come.

“We have done our best for a very long time to make sure that the University is open and is welcoming to students from all backgrounds … to make sure we don’t turn students away because they can’t afford to pay the cost of their education,” Farmer said. “It will be expensive; we will need help.”

Kelly at the UNC System office also worries about how a recession might affect enrollment decisions. Financial stress tends to dissuade lower-income and first-generation students from going to college or pushes them to schools that look more affordable but offer far less support.

“The story of the last recession was a lot of higher ed consumers going into institutions that had some of the lowest completion rates and the least capacity to help students,” Kelly said. “We saw this big boom in enrollments, but we certainly didn’t see a comparable boost in completion. It brings you to some of those college-match conversations, about the likelihood of student success.”

Because graduation rates vary tremendously among schools, the decision about where to enroll in college can make a huge difference. What education researchers call “undermatching” — when talented students enroll in less competitive schools  with lower graduation rates — is a bigger problem during times of financial stress. Families are more likely to send students to community colleges or universities closer to home, even though a place like Carolina can offer a better shot at earning a degree. The disruptions to K-12 education have heightened that concern, given the lack of in-person counseling and support for high school students trying to make college decisions.

On the internal listserv for UNC’s aid office, counselors shared a message from Salem Sheridan ’18, an adviser for the Carolina College Advising Corps assigned to Eastern Randolph High School in Ramseur.

“My students are still defying the odds, but they are nervous, confused and scared,” she wrote.

“This is all very hard to understand, and they have not been in school to have their advisers and counselors walk them through it. Please be patient with our students. I promise they are worth it.”

Eric Johnson ’08 is a writer in Chapel Hill. He works for the College Board.

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