Top colleges telling students they’ll pay full tuition even if campuses are closed this fall

We were tipped off by a friend that University of California, Davis recently sent an email to its incoming freshmen telling them that the school’s campus may be closed this fall or it may be open but housing may not be available but the tuition will be the same whether the delivery of education is on-campus or on-line. The letter read:

Congratulations on your admission to UC Davis, ________! We look forward to welcoming you as a member of our proud Aggie family.

While we navigate these unprecedented times, the health and safety of our campus community is our top priority. In order to help ensure your safety, UC Davis is implementing new policies and procedures.

In support of social distancing guidelines, some or all instruction for the 2020-2021 academic year may be delivered remotely. Tuition and mandatory fees have been set regardless of the method of instruction and will not be refunded in the event instruction occurs remotely for any part of the Academic Year. Students will continue to receive an outstanding education from our top-five public institution.

As you know, UC Davis guarantees on-campus housing to all incoming first-year freshmen, transfer students, and second-year returning students. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UC Davis may amend or withdraw this guarantee in the case of public health guidance or other extenuating circumstances. We encourage you to learn more about UC Davis’ response to COVID-19 and contact us with any concerns:

Student Housing and Dining Services, 530-752-2033
Undergraduate Admissions, 530-752-2971
Financial Aid, 530-752-2389

Please remember that MyAdmissions remains the best way for you to stay on track as you continue looking toward the future.

If you haven’t already done so, we hope you will accept our offer of admission and respond with a Statement of Intent to Register (SIR) by the SIR deadline.

If we can be of any assistance in helping you and your family make this important decision, please feel free to reach out to Undergraduate Admissions and our campus partners.

Undergraduate Admissions, Ask an Advisor, 530-752-2971
Student Housing and Dining Services, 530-752-2033
Financial Aid and Scholarships, Contact an Expert, 530-752-2389

Once you submit your Statement of Intent to Register (SIR), you can schedule a remote Aggie advising appointment. Your advisor will help you build a course schedule so that you are ready to register for courses in August.

We congratulate you once again on your admission to UC Davis, thank you for your resiliency in the face of challenge and look forward to seeing you soon!

Sincerely,

Don Hunt
Associate Vice-Chancellor for Enrollment Management

College Recruiter believes that every student and recent graduate deserves a great career, and attending the right school is an important step in that process. One of our core values is to be a thought leader, and we’ve taken a pretty active role in helping disseminate to students, college career service offices, employers, and others the changes that are occurring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recently wrote an article, for example, about Boston University becoming the first of probably many schools to announce that it was making plans to deliver its educational services remotely if it was unable to open its campus in time for the fall semester.

The student who received the above email and her parents were very unclear as to what it meant. I wrote to Don Hunt hoping that he could clarify this for me and told him that we intended to publish an article on our site and then share it with our 200,000+ social media followers about the announcement from UC Davis and I wanted to be sure that we had our facts right. I asked him the following four questions:

• You wrote, “some or all instruction for the 2020-2021 academic year may be delivered remotely”. Does that mean that the student may choose to have the instruction delivered or that the school will make that choice? 
• The letter states, “Tuition and mandatory fees have been set regardless of the method of instruction and will not be refunded in the event instruction occurs remotely for any part of the Academic Year”. What if the school believes that it can provide a safe environment for the vast majority of students and so re-opens but students who are more risk of serious illness or even death choose not to attend. Is it your position that those students will still need to pay for their housing, tuition, etc. and, if not, why was there no mention of reasonable accommodations being made for those students?
• Does the school plan to test the entire staff, faculty, and student population before they descend on-campus to help ensure that everyone stays healthy and, if not, why not? Also, why did the letter include no mention of any safeguards that UC Davis is considering?
• The email provides no indication as to whether or when the school will provide additional information even if it is just another email with an update that simply says that no decisions have been made but another update will be emailed within X days. Does the school plan to provide additional updates and, if so, is there a schedule for when those updates will be provided?

Unfortunately, the response was as vague as the initial, confusing email to the students:

Thank you for your patients. These are challenging times, especially for our young people and their families making important decisions for their future. We understand. We want to do all we can to help.
 
The safety and well-being of our campus community is our top priority. We are closely following the directives and guidance of our county health authority and the state — including measures for social distancing, personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing through our Student Health and Counseling Center.
 
At this stage of the pandemic, it is too early to tell whether or not instruction will be delivered remotely or in person. Our chancellor has established two committees that are working on possible scenarios for instruction and campus operations.
 
We regularly communicate with our admitted students and families, and as we look forward, those in the next stage of admissions who submit statements of intent to register. Admitted students can access information through the MyAdmissions portal. Our campus home page and others highlight our coronavirus website. It includes regular messages from the chancellor and information for admitted and prospective students and their families. We also highlight ways to be in touch with advisors, students housing, and financial aid.

Don’s response did not state whether the student would be able to choose whether to learn online or if that choice would be the school’s. My inference is that it will be the school’s. Seems to me that both should have that choice as the school should be able to determine that it isn’t safe for them to re-open their campus but the individual students should be able to decide that they don’t feel safe attending classes in-person even if the school deems the risk to be low enough to re-open.

In answer to my question about whether students who didn’t feel safe to live on-campus or attend classes in-person would be reasonably accommodated, Don’s response seemed to indicate that the school would follow the directives and guidance from the county health authority and the State of California. That makes sense, but isn’t the school the best judge for determining what is safe for its students, staff, and faculty? What if the county and state say it is safe but the school feels otherwise? What if the county, state, and school say it is safe but the student feels otherwise?

Don’s answer to my next question regarding testing and safeguards was a simple copy-and-paste from his previous answer. Again, UC Davis is abdicating to other authorities and that’s both surprising and disappointing to me.

Finally, in answer to my question about whether and when the school planned to again communicate with its incoming students, Don indicated that UC Davis communicates “regularly” and students can visit its website. Fair enough about the website, but what does “regularly” mean? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Seems to me that one of the best schools in the country could do a better job of committing to a communication schedule such as, “We will email you at least two weeks to provide specific updates on this rapidly evolving crisis and how it impacts our community”.

Then, after Don’s email arrived, I received an update from the family of the student. Turns out that UC Davis told them that it will update them every two weeks. That’s excellent news.

The email from the family also indicated that the school considered charging a lower tuition if instruction needed to be delivered online. The response, disappointingly, was that UC Davis feels that it is a world-class institution (so do I) with world-class faculty (so do I) and so they are justified in charging full tuition even though it won’t have nearly the same expenses to deliver its services on-line than on-campus. That’s very disappointing and, quite frankly, greedy.

I also learned that students are able to defer to 2021-22 if they choose and, I suspect, many will but once a student accepts at UC Davis and chooses to defer they are prohibited from enrolling at any other school. Realistically, I don’t see how UC Davis can prohibit that but I could certainly see how they would refuse to accept credits earned at another institution. Again, in a time of crisis like this when we should all be working together for the betterment of us all, that strikes me as being greedy.

Are other schools struggling with how to deliver education this fall like UC Davis has been and will continue to? Certainly. We can agree to disagree about what UC Davis and other schools are willing and able to do in order to help their students during this very difficult time, but it is my hope that schools do a better job of clearly and frequently updating their students with what the school knows and doesn’t know and when the next updates will occur. A school may not know today that it will have an answer to an issue within the next two weeks as the issue may not be within the control of the school, but the school can control when it next provides an update and can commit to that. UC Davis is clearly trying to do the right thing but, it seems to me, there is an opportunity here for it to improve its communications to reduce unnecessary uncertainty in a time that is full of too much uncertainty for us all.