I’ve told the story of Hofstra University shutting down in March of 2020 at least a dozen times now. I remember where I was and what I was doing when I received the alert that classes had been canceled. I especially remember how quickly I got up to pack for my new two-week-long spring break. I didn’t know then that that would be my last time ever living in the campus dorms or being on campus for at least the next year. Most importantly, however, I didn’t know that I would have a completely different viewpoint of college and schooling in general by the time I came back.
Taking classes from a laptop screen quickly put into perspective how much I was expected to pay to attend college. While I have been able to save money on dorm and dining plan fees for two and a half semesters, the fact that the base tuition at my university didn’t change during the height of the pandemic made me question whether I was still receiving the same value of education at home as opposed to on-campus since I was paying the same price. Being on campus meant access to dozens of printers when I needed to hand in an assignment, popping into my professor’s office hours, impromptu meetings with my academic advisor or taking a detour to the library to find a book or a quiet place to study. According to my financial statements, these resources are supposed to have the same value as the Zoom meetings and emails I have to rely on to stay connected to my advisors and professors. To this day I find that hard to believe.
While the pandemic forced a lot of high school juniors and seniors to reevaluate if they even wanted to go to college anymore, as a then college sophomore, I had to decide if I was going to essentially continue paying in-person tuition prices for an online education. There are dozens of degree programs that were created to be earned completely online, and their lack of a campus or physical resources naturally meant they were cheaper to attend. Some programs are more flexible depending on how much they rely on synchronous class meetings, and they were some of the least affected levels of education when the coronavirus hit. With the vaccine and “returning to normal” projected to be years away at the time, I started researching how to transfer my current credits to an online program to save my family the money and finish my degree with as few hiccups as possible from that point on.
In the end, not many online programs were able to accept all of my credits, and the last thing I wanted to do was set myself back a semester or a year after struggling through a pandemic. After rededicating myself to my current program, I surprised myself and my family by securing my first two 4.0 semesters in the Spring and Fall of 2020. As someone who never considered pursuing online schooling before the pandemic, this made me realize that it’s a very promising option for me as a student, especially since I plan on attending graduate school in less than a year from now. My experience with online schooling made me confident in my decision to prioritize online graduate programs over in-person ones. This decision has made my future plans less stressful since I don’t have to be physically tied to the campus I attend and I’ll be saving thousands of dollars that would have otherwise gone towards moving to and living on a new campus.
Whether it forced you to finish high school or college without a graduation ceremony or start a new school year completely online, the pandemic has disrupted the plans and direction of millions of students. My personal college experience has been altered just like everyone else’s, but it’s through this journey that I was able to fully question if my current educational environment was the best option for me. I don’t think I would have evaluated the price and value of an in-person college education if I wasn’t moved into a completely online format, but this switch allowed me to better understand what I wanted out of an educational experience and prioritize these things as I prepare to graduate and pursue higher education.