FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With time growing short and the future uncertain, many high school students are considering skipping college in the fall.
The coronavirus pandemic has left many universities uncertain whether they’ll be able to welcome students to campus after summer, and many students don’t want to pay for top-flight universities if they can’t get the full in-person experience.
Some say they may skip a year. Some may opt for cheaper alternatives like community colleges. Either way, the coronavirus could leave its mark on higher education long after the pandemic fades.
Most colleges haven’t decided yet what to do about the fall, said Brian Eufinger, of Edison Prep, an SAT tutoring service and college admissions expert in Atlanta. “The closer we get to the Fourth of July they’ll have to say yay or nay,” he said.
As some students decline to attend, some schools are combing through their wait lists to fill enrollment vacancies. Eufinger said he has seen students “come off of wait lists at top schools – schools that typically don’t pull from wait lists – so that tells me their overall deposit numbers are lower.”
Some Florida schools say they have seen indications of students’ concerns:
• Broward College said it has seen a 5% withdrawal rate for the current semester, although it’s too soon to know whether its application numbers will drop for the summer or fall classes. “We understand that this is a difficult time, and the current environment is unpredictable for everyone,” said Marielena DeSanctis, the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs and student services, although she said being online helps students who have transportation problems.
• Florida State University said it expects to still have an incoming class of 6,000 students, “and we are on track to meet that number,” said Amy Farnum-Patronis, a university spokeswoman. As of late Thursday, about 130 students have asked for more time to make a decision beyond the traditional May 1 deposit deadline.
Weighing their future in college are students such as Alec Degen, a 17-year-old senior at South Plantation High School. He said he has had his heart set on the University of Central Florida in Orlando since the eighth grade, but when summer classes were scheduled to go online, he said no way. “I didn’t want to start college online,” he said.
The school agreed to let him start in the fall instead. He wants to study kinesiology and sports coaching.
But if classes are online for the fall, he plans to delay it again.
“That would be the worst thing,” he said, adding he wanted to be there for football season and predicts he’ll get better grades in a classroom.
Eufinger, of Edison Prep in Atlanta, speaks on national podcasts and conferences on college admissions. He said although some of his clients are considering whether to delay college, most schools have to approve a gap-year request – and he said most universities are not increasing the number of deferments that are granted.
And, he said, he’s hearing “more fear among junior moms that if you have too many deferrals, it will create a huge traffic jam of two classes of kids competing for the same spots.”
Many students don’t have the option of a gap year because it would jeopardize their financial aid package, he said.
Some students might want to stay closer to home in case of campus closures, and some families might have had to cancel plans for high-priced schools if they have lost their jobs, or fear layoffs or furloughs, he said.
“It’s possible students won’t get the “Hollywood-esque, Americana freshman year,” Eufinger said.
One parent struggling to make the best decisions for her children is Evvie Eyzaguirre, of Davie.
Her graduating high school daughter, a senior at Western High, would fare better going to school in person, she said.
“She needs to be around peers,” Eyzaguirre said. Not everyone wants to “do the work alone.”
Her daughter was considering attending the University of Central Florida, but the family is now thinking about a community college instead to save the money for the same online classes.
“I don’t know if I want to spend the money” for online learning, she said. “It’s really difficult. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the fall.”
Michael Horn, the author of “Choosing College,” said national studies show many students are looking at alternatives. He said for families to spend the same dollars for online classes that were intended for a classroom experience “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“They were signing up for something way more than the classes,” he said. “A lot of the experience is in the extracurriculars, late-night experiences with other students – shared dining room, parties – meeting alumni, that’s part of the college experience. It’s not just a collection of classes.”
Thomas Jaworski, a college counselor at Quest College Consulting in Chicago, said one of his clients chose a gap year because of “anxiety about what college will look like.”
Another client in Destin got accepted to Georgia Tech College of Engineering for the summer – but he didn’t want online school. Because deferment for a semester was not being offered to that student, the teen chose to go to the University of Florida in the fall instead, in hopes classes will be on campus by then.
“Their idea of college is going to campus and meeting other people,” Jaworski said. “Some of the high-achieving students, they want that enrichment that is going to come with networking with other students.”
Broward College said it hopes to resume on-campus classes in the fall, but “that decision is not definitive and will be guided by what the state is doing.”
The University of Florida is awaiting more information to make a decision about fall classes. “We expect that valuable information and breakthroughs will emerge in the month of May, enabling us to make important decisions in June and July about the fall semester,” UF President Kent Fuchs said in a recent online post.
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