Is 2022 the year when young people should postpone college?

 "Nobody thinks of anything as long as his luck is good," Kurt Vonnegut observed in one of his novels.  "Why should he?"

American colleges have had a remarkable run of good luck. For half a century, they've enjoyed a steady supply of students and a cornucopia of federal money flowing into their coffers. International students flocked to American universities in ever larger numbers, and they obligingly paid their tuition bills with no complaints about the cost.

Salaries for university presidents rose ever upward, and administrative staffs became more and more bloated with overpaid administrators--vice presidents and associate vice presidents, deans and associate deans, provosts, and executive vice provosts.  

Universities launched aggressive building programs: luxury dorms, ostentatious athletic facilities, world-class student recreation centers.  Wealthy alumni made fat contributions to have their names on all these gleaming edifices.

Tuition went up every year to pay for all this, but students paid their bills with federal and private student loans, and no one complained. 

Those were the gravy days!  

Then, in March 2020, the black swan arrived. COVID swept across the country, forcing universities to close their campuses. College leaders shuttered all those glittering student rec centers, emptied out the posh student dorms, and canceled college sporting events. 

Still, no worries. The coronavirus pandemic wouldn't last forever. How could it? In a year or so, the crisis would be over, and everything would be back to normal in the halcyon world of academe.

In fact, University leaders patted themselves on the back for responding to the pandemic so nimbly. In a matter of days, virtually every college in America had kicked their students off-campus and forced them to finish the spring semester by taking courses on their home computers. 

But students weren't happy about taking classes online, and they filed hundreds of lawsuits, demanding refunds for their tuition and fees. More than 300 lawsuits were filed.

And the COVID virus did not go away. In fact, many American schools are starting the 2022 spring semester with online classes--even such snooty joints as Harvard. Stanford and Georgetown.

Now student enrollments are declining--especially in the for-profit sector, the community colleges, and the non-elite private schools. For reasons that college presidents can't seem to understand, students don't want to pay $70,000 a year to attend online classes from the parents' basements.

In addition, universities across the country have been mired in scandals and litigation: sexual misconduct by varsity athletes, bribery in the admissions offices, and accusations of race discrimination.

In sum, American higher education's run of good luck has run dry.

So, if you are a young person, is 2022 a good year to postpone going to college? A good year to let things settle down?

I think it is. Unless you clearly understand how your college education will improve your life, don't take out crushing student loans to pay tuition at a college that won't let you on its campus.

Just leave your tuition check on the doorstep.

Omicron variant harasses American colleges: "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand!"

 Porter Wagoner, singing about a chance encounter with an ex-girlfriend, quickly bade farewell. "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand," he tells her.

College students are singing the same song. The COVID pandemic has been with us for almost two years, and Omicron promises to prolong the disruption well into 2022.

This week, several colleges announced that final exams for the fall semester would be online, and classes at some schools were temporarily switched to online formats earlier in the fall term.  

NYU recently banned all "discretionary, nonessential nonacademic gatherings," presumably allowing nonessential academic meetings to proceed. At some schools, students who meet friends over pizza and beer at an off-campus dive run the risk of being suspended from their classes.

Since the campus closings in March 2020, students have sued more than 300 colleges, demanding their money back. Specifically, they want tuition refunds for classes that switched from face-to-face classroom settings to an online format.

They also want their fees refunded--the fees they paid for access to campus recreation centers, varsity sporting events, and collegiate health clinics. You closed all these venues, the students argue, but you kept our goddam money.

As I have said since the beginning of the pandemic, I sympathize with the universities.  College leaders acted reasonably when they closed their campuses in the spring of 2020, cleared out the dorms, and sent students home.

But the students who got booted paid big bucks to take classes during the 2020 spring semester.  At the private schools, tuition bills were north of 25 grand! Many students shelled out $30,000 for the dubious privilege of matriculating at snooty universities for four months when you tack on housing, fees, and books.

Colleges responded reasonably to a public health crisis when they closed down in March of 2020, but they need to understand that it costs too damn much to go to college these days. Students will put up with this banditry when they can stroll through elm-shaded campus quads and listen to gassy professors opining in quaint, wood-paneled classrooms.

But they ain't gonna put up with face-to-face college classes periodically going online or rules that prevent them from meeting their friends off-campus.  Not for long anyway.

College enrollments are already down significantly from pre-pandemic levels.  Men, in particular, are increasingly deciding to sit out of college until the chaos comes to an end.

What can colleges do to entice students to continue taking out loans to pay their tuition bills?  They can start by publicly admitting that online classes are inferior to on-campus learning and lowering their prices accordingly.

Porter Wagoner: "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand!"