Only students who can prove financial need will get help, he tells families. “Education really reflects our operating costs, and those costs are not only not reduced, but are greatly increased.”
A survey by the American Council on Education estimated that this fall’s resumption would add 10 percent to a college’s regular operating costs, and would cost the country 5,000 colleges and universities a total of $ 70 billion.
“For institutions,” said Mr. Hartle, who lobbies for the council, “this is a perfect storm.”
Students also feel tempted to throw.
Temple sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab, founder of the University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice, said the organization was “bombarded” with pleas for help from students who could not cover their hair and did not know how they apply for food stamps. At least a third of students had lost jobs due to the pandemic in May, according to the center.
Such situations, Ms. Goldrick-Rab said, are particularly risky because they often ask students to take up second or third jobs or to be distracted, which in turn requires financial help that can be withdrawn if their grades fall. .
Laurie Koehler, vice president of enrollment strategy at Ithaca College, said nearly one in six students reported in a just-concluded survey that the pandemic had significantly impaired their ability to continue their studies. At Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., The school’s president, Alison Byerly, said she expects requests for additional financial aid to grow by a maximum of 15 percent this year.
But the shift online has also accelerated fundamental questions about the future of higher education, said the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, Marguerite Roza.