Much of the benefit of college comes from interacting with people, whether meeting interesting students, making lifelong friends, or talking with professors. In the wake of the Coronavirus, these experiences are dramatically different, and the college experience may not return to normal for at least four or five years. Is college still worth it then?

  The cost of an undergraduate education has already been rising rapidly in the last few years. In fact, CNBC reports that “the cost of college increased by more than 25% in the last 10 years” alone. While many are upset at this fact, many colleges are refusing to cut tuition despite allowing only online or limited in-person instruction. Representing the entire student population’s anxiety at this fact, approximately one fifth of the Harvard’s freshman class

deferred admission in fear of beginning their education online. Over half of college students who did continue their education online said their professors did not transition well from in-person to online instruction, and with many professors also being hired for their research instead of just quality of teaching, hopes of this improving are not high.

   While many colleges’ high tuition is a reason to not attend, the job opportunities are not. Ninety percent of jobs created in 2017 went to those with at least a bachelor’s degree, and with the current recession that will

likely be exacerbated by the pandemic, the number of available jobs is only declining. More than charging equal costs for a lower quality education, universities are feeding into a cycle that disadvantaged those who are financially unstable in these new times. Hopefully colleges will wake up and change their policies before they birth a new generation of loan-burdened students, especially considering the lower rates of unemployment in recent college graduates.

   Considering the vast majority of jobs that are given to only college graduates, this pandemic does not seem like it has erased the value of college. It may have just changed what colleges are worth it, and we may see a rise in applications to cheaper universities.