College Changes: Updates on how colleges are handling COVID-19

After colleges across the country shut down due to COVID-19, they’ve made changes regarding virtual learning, tuition prices and study abroad programs for this semester and the upcoming year.

The University of Washington was one of the first colleges to close in early March, and almost every university in the country followed shortly after. They switched to virtual learning, with many schools holding classes over video chats like Zoom.

Students are adjusting to the online courses and have even found them easier with access to notes and the internet for assignments and tests, according to East alum and freshman at the University of Kansas Jack McElroy. However, McElroy has also found that it brings technological problems and issues with internet connection.

Along with connection issues, the lack of accessibility to campus has prohibited students from using student centers filled with resources like the Writing Center and Math Help Room or peers to help solve problems. McElroy found that the lack of additional resources can make studying and working more difficult.

“I was used to going to the math help room and going to the writing center and getting advice from professors who knew exactly what they were doing, and now I’ll be at home and have to ask my parents those questions and they don’t really know any more than I do about the subjects,” McElroy said. “It’s been challenging.”

The abrupt closure of schools, many announcing the closure in the middle of their spring break, left students struggling to bring their belongings home. East alum and sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles, Madeline Hlobik, was lucky to bring all of her belongings home, but many of her other out of state friends were not.

“A lot of my friends left their belongings in the UCLA dorm room, then they got an email a couple weeks later that said that if they didn’t move your stuff out by some date UCLA was going to move it out for them,” Hlobik said. “And for all of my friends who live out of state, they couldn’t just fly back out and get it all. Most of them either had roommates or friends from California who had to go pack up all their essential stuff for them.”

Some schools, like the University of Kansas, had students sign up during time intervals of two hours to go clear out their dorms and pack their belongings.

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Colleges like the University of Kansas and Creighton have refunded smaller portions of tuition for room and board and allowed meal plans to transfer to next year or be refunded, according to KU’s COVID-19 Information. Many however, according to US News, such as Harvard and Tufts are not giving any refunds for the tuition cost of the semester, primarily because they cannot afford to.

Financial issues weren’t the only thing affected by COVID-19. Even before the closure of campuses, study abroad experiences were being shut down across the globe. East alum and sophomore at Marquette University Matthew Trecek was three weeks into his study abroad program in Beijing when he was sent home mid-January. He was supposed to study at the University of International Business and Economics in the Beijing Center for the whole semester, and then complete two internships through August.

“The weeks kind of went by and we started hearing things about them closing down cities and the city we were in got closed down so we had to leave and then [were] kind of being forced to get out of the country as quickly as possible,” Trececk said. “It just hit us pretty quickly.”

Trecek will be able to complete the program in the spring semester of his junior year, but many other students cannot postpone the experience. According to US News, some study abroad programs for the upcoming fall semester have already begun closing.

Concerns have also been raised about the possibility of canceling classes for the 2020 fall semester, according to Trecek. Although nothing has been confirmed, many students like Trecek are considering removing their enrollment for the fall semester if this were to happen.

“I hope that plans won’t be ruined that far in advance, but from the perspective of someone who would be going back to their normal college experience in the fall, if I were to do that and then find out my classes were to be cancelled for another semester of staying home and doing classes online I would just take a gap semester,” Trecek said.

Students like Trecek, Hlobik and McElroy haven’t found the same college experience with virtual classes, and hope that amidst all the changes colleges are trying to navigate, they can return to normal soon.