Many universities have announced plans to move courses online next year, but few have mentioned dropping the price of tuition. Colleges across the nation may be tempted to pretend that remote schooling is worth as much as an in-person experience, but students aren’t stupid. If colleges persist in this willful blindness, students will consider alternatives to the four-year degree.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many of the vulnerabilities inherent in an already tenuous and fragile higher education system. Even before the pandemic struck, college students were experiencing a crisis of confidence in the value of a college degree. This crisis, driven by rising costs and ballooning student debt, reached an all-time high of $1.4 trillion in 2019. At that time, the fraction of college dropouts was nearly as high as the fraction with a bachelor’s degree (18 percent versus 21 percent). These concerns are what prompted the Democratic presidential candidates to advocate for “free college” and abolishing student debt.
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