My kid is a senior and just about to choose a school so they will be in college under Trump for at least undergrad.
Will our colleges and universities make it through this presidency? Is this a ridiculous time to be sending a kid off to college?
My kid is a senior and just about to choose a school so they will be in college under Trump for at least undergrad.
Will our colleges and universities make it through this presidency? Is this a ridiculous time to be sending a kid off to college?
Comments
Depends on the state and the campus.
How would their situation be any different if they didn’t go to college? College seems to be a great place to ride out the chaos of the next four years and they will hopefully be graduating during a different economy and administration.
Our colleges and universities will make it through this presidency
Universities are trying very hard to continue our educational mission as usual. Grant funding is a problem, but that should impact an undergraduate much less than a graduate student. I think your child will be just fine
Undergraduate education is the move right now. Keep them out of a volatile job force and prepare them for a rebounding economy in a couple years. Best wishes to them!
What school is it? The administration released a list of 60 schools on the chopping block due to their protests, was it one of those schools? Is it one of the roughly 50 that are currently paying 1.4% tax on their endowment that republicans want to jack up to 21%? Other than that, big research universities that have a lot of science grants are also vulnerable. I would say a decently ranked liberal arts college that isn’t on either of those first two lists I mentioned would be pretty safe financially.
Then you also have to think about the changing student loan landscape. Things like public service loan forgiveness programs are getting the ax. If you were planning to take advantage of any programs like that, do your research to see if they’re still available. If your kid wants to go to college and will likely thrive there, don’t let trump stop you, but do your research and try to mitigate some of the risk if you can.
It really depends on the college and how affected they are by things like loss of grants and loss of international students. Look it up at ProPublica. If the college is on there, you can see how financially sound they’ve been the last few years, how big their endowment is, etc.
Tbh it will depend entirely on what kind of college/university they’re attending. Even though state schools and ivies are in the news because they’re getting screwed, they’ll survive. They may end up having to cut certain student services or programs or research projects, but they’ll survive. And college is essentially just nerds continually doing more than they’re paid to, so quality of services may go down a bit if they fire or overwork people providing services, but the people who remain will still be giving their all to support students in any way they can. DEI is still going to happen, just maybe not using the same terminology. If you’re at a private university, you’ll make out okay, as well. It’s small state colleges and universities with small endowments or who rely strongly on government funding that might be in a real pickle.
All that being said, the quality of education will be 100% better than not getting an education if your kid wants to go into a field that requires the degree
I went to college during a full Trump term. Calm down. Hes not their professor.
Some universities will survive, some won’t. This will also be true of colleges within a university.
Best odds for survival are larger universities with multiple revenue streams and choosing a major that has good job outcomes. Beyond the obvious better odds of a job after undergrad, majors with good job outcomes attract more students which means more tuition dollars. The odds a business college surviving will generally, perhaps universally, be better than a college of letters and arts surviving.
If the US economy really is done-zo, your kid will be in a much better spot to move abroad with a college degree.
I would probably pick either a state flagship or somewhere with a massive endowment though. Harvard isn’t going to close. UNC isn’t going close. Small liberal arts colleges might. I would also be even more cautious about cost than usual.
Quality will win – a good program at a good school is the start. Working hard and doing good work there is the key. If your kid really gets good skills they will make a go of it no matter what happens. That means soft skills as well as hard skills. That means learning to learn – because this is a lifetime of change. The ones who will have problems are those who don’t learn how to think, how to innovate, how to be creative.
Higher Education as a whole will survive. But higher ed is obviously under attack. And it matters what your kid is looking for in terms of major and college environment. I would recommend being more selective now than ever.
I would aim for a medium sized school. Colleges that are large and/or R1 universities are a specific target of Trump right now. Colleges that are too small are being closed.
Related, whatever major they’re picking, make sure the school has high enrollment in that program. Colleges have been discontinuing programs with low completion rates more frequently.
If your kid is any sort of minority (racial/ethnic minority, LGBT, not Christian) or isn’t into censorship, you should look at schools in blue states. Attacks on DEI have gone beyond admissions and hiring, and into controlling what programs, resources, and classes a college can offer.
Finally, financial aid. I recommend applying to as many schools as possible that meet their/your criteria, then narrowing it down based on which offers more in financial aid.
Hard to know. Obviously, we’re all hoping to keep our jobs. I think it’s fine for students, but there could be some cuts to faculty and staff jobs. Send him 🙂
GO ABROAD. My God, how I wish I had.
The life you save might be your own.
Come to university in Canada
Colleges are (generally) being hit less hard than universities. Undergrad itself will probably be rather unaffected, but the professors and TA’S teaching those undergrads might flee and/or loose their jobs
Would you consider going outside the U.S. for higher ed? For our family, in July 2016 Trump secured the nomination, and the next month we were touring a Canadian university campus. Our kid was accepted, enrolled in September 2017, graduated, and now is a permanent resident of Canada. The exchange rate made tuition reasonable even as an international student.
For undergrads, it will be weird at research universities, but most of them will continue to offer good programs and excellent faculty for now. The big thing to watch is how soon you see research faculty departing for other countries. That trend is about to accelerate quickly.
If your kid is thinking grad school, Oxford, Cambridge, University of Toronto, McGill, Tsinghya, NUSingapore, University of Tokyo, and other elite global universities are about to win the lottery.
Do you live close to Canada?
It’s a ridiculous time. Period.
There is no safe harbor from the absurdity.
imo send them to community college then to a college to save money