The End of Education As We’ve Known It ??? [The Covid-19 Edition]

I’m not involved with or in the loop of education, but many readers here are (at various levels). Especially at university level we are now seeing colleges all across the nation close down brick-and-mortar classes in favor of online education. This will likely last for the remainder of the current semester, and one can easily imagine it carrying on through the summer and next fall semester.

I can’t help but wonder how easy it will be, if this alteration continues very long, to return to traditional classrooms and lecture halls (for some courses of course, much easier than for others). Once young people get fully accustomed to an online format will they have tolerance for returning to buildings/desks/chairs/etc. I’ve watched, over time, how many friends have gotten ‘hooked’ on online shopping to the point that actual stores/malls/shopping seem like drudgery or a nuisance to avoid.

Where I live, for some decades now, the main state university has been planning a major expansion of its grounds to meet future needs (I believe it started as a 50+ year plan… except that we are now I think at least 25 years into it and little has been done, except pay for a lot of expensive independent studies that were then trashed). It involves transforming a lot of beautiful woodland and wild habitat into another separate university campus to meet future demands. From the beginning I wondered if this expansion was even necessary. In 50 or 100 years I could imagine the university requiring LESS, not more land/space and brick-and-mortar buildings — because students may not need classrooms, lecture halls, and other physical spaces, IF most learning takes place online. In the future students may not even matriculate at a single university, but instead take a smorgasbord of courses, over 4 years, from a variety of schools: physics 101 from Princeton, English Lit. from Yale, Economics from University of Michigan, American History from Stanford, and on and on. Of course there will always be some courses and labs that require student presence in a special building, but a lot of courses can indeed be covered digitally. Not only that, but in such a world you don’t need 100s of professors teaching calculus 101; perhaps 10 (or less) of the best could instruct ALL students throughout the nation, with plenty of assistants available more locally. 

The point being, who knows what education will be like (or its needs be) 50-100 years from now; few of us can foresee or predict all the changes ahead. And what I’m wondering is whether or not this current disease-driven crisis is simply going to hasten the day where brick-and-mortar universities, like brick-and-mortar malls/stores will be a dying breed. A lot of smaller, less well-endowed colleges are already struggling or going out-of-business in the very competitive world of higher education. How many will be left standing in decades to come, and how big of a physical footprint will they require from generations raised living their lives so largely online?

Anyway, for now (and sorry to sound like such a doomsayer) it’s difficult for me to see any likely near-term scenario for this crisis that doesn’t result in a worldwide depression and potentially huge societal transformations. I’m amused at folks using the tepid word “recession” when surely they must realize the far worse implications/ripples for economies, business, employment, and daily lives that the current situation seems to augur — but hey, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’  so who knows what lies ahead, what creative solutions may evolve and how quickly society will adapt — if you see a realistic scenario that avoids widespread financial depression feel free to offer it in the comments. I'm not perceptive enough to imagine one and I need some opening for optimism!

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ADDENDUM (3/12):  With the Dow Jones Average tanking another 2300+ points today, the answer to how to attempt to avoid economic depression may have come in the form of the Fed announcing a plan for dropping a tidy 1.5 trillion dollars into the economy (I know some debt-ridden students who would like a chunk of that). They don’t have a lot of tools left in their arsenal, but they seem to be rapidly employing those they do have (...or maybe we can all just start printing up $20 bills at home, LOL).

https://news.yahoo.com/feds-1-5-trillion-intervention-224344024.html

Meanwhile, I’ve told friends for over a year that I thought the actual fair value for the DJA was somewhere between 18,000 and 22,000 and we’ve now reached that range with an awful lot of Covid-19 news still to come. Gonna be a wild ride.

ADDENDUM II (3/14):  In my town (like many), closings/cancellations are now happening fast and furious. Most of these closings are talking of a 30-day action to be re-evaluated at that time. But we are still far closer to the early stages of this situation than to the end. I can’t imagine that at the end of 30 days, many of the closings won’t be extended for another 30-60 days (…and then after that perhaps again) with devastating results for individuals’ economic lives, especially the MANY who live month-to-month. Still possible with spring around the corner that this novel virus might prove to be seasonal, and much of the danger dissipate soon, in a best-case scenario,** but still the ripples/ramifications outward won’t suddenly end.  Whenever this ends, how much of society and human behavior will have changed for the long-term?

   ** Addendum to an Addendum ;) ... for a take on why 'seasonality' might NOT be a good thing see:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-shouldnt-hope-covid-19-is-seasonal-like-the-flu/