For the first time in four weeks, less than 800,000 people filed new unemployment claims (those who have lost their jobs and now seek financial relief from either state or federal government) during the week ending October 17, 2020. Yet, the pre-COVID job market is slow to recover post the March 2020 financial tantrum, as…
Tag: College students
Is Sentiment the Cost Now that Freedom Has Been Lost?
The Modern College, a place where students guided by mentors, supported by peers, experiment with adult responsibilities, free to discover their life’s purpose, only impersonates its Pre-COVID self. To mitigate health risks of the pandemic, in March and again in Fall 2020, university administrators are restricting students’ freedoms, for which they believe they must, yet,…
Diminished Learning from a Distance
The 2020-21 virtual K-12 schooling experiment, born of necessity from the wholesale disruption of the modern educational process and haphazardly planned and implemented by an institutional elite that does not have to practice managing entrepreneurially since the educational industry is relatively monopolistic, is failing for a variety of reasons. Although I admit that the sample…
The Lessons of Distance Learning
Creative Marbles’ Jill Yoshikawa was a featured guest on Your California Life, a local morning telecast in Sacramento, California, discussing the COVID-related disruption of education on high school and college students, as well as their families. For more information about how Jill Yoshikawa, EdM, a UC San Diego and Harvard alum, helps students and parents…
College Blues
As the 2020-21 school year dawns, with the United States mired in the global COVID-19 health emergency with no signs of abating, given vaccines or treatment protocols have yet to materialize, university administrators are scrambling to effectively respond, if even possible, in an increasingly political environment. In the heat of the epic man versus nature…
The Shrinking American Middle Class, Part 4
The American middle class is shrinking, as educational achievement plateaus at the average level of attainment and more middle class families compensate the lagging educational achievement with discretionary spending on extracurricular activities and supplemental academic support services. By the late 1970’s, the collapse of American manufacturing sector made way for the meteoric rise of the…
Stay Frosty, Keep Your Head on a Swivel
“Plans don’t survive contact with the enemy”, pith advice on the dawn of the new school year, especially when the enemy is multifacted and the commander is a novel virus. Those who will thrive in the 2020-21 school year, are the one’s who are flexible and lean into the disruption, instead of exhausting themselves trying…
A First Day of School to Remember
As college students prepare to return to college campuses, scattered in varying locales around the nation, to begin the 2020-21 school year, it will not be business as usual given the surrounding outbreak of the novel COVID-19 coronavirus; therefore, monitoring the fluid situation, locally, regionally and nationally, will be of vital importance. The New York…
Educational Adjustment Ahead
As college students prepare for the new 2020-21 school year, the college experience during the time of COVID-19 will be fundamentally altered. Students, professors, parents and college adminstrators are in the midst of an adjustment period, transitioning to a new mode of learning. Perhaps, for those students attending in-person classes in the U.S., professors will…
The COVID-Induced College Conundrum
In mid-March 2020, under threats to public health associated with the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, government officials acted swiftly, instituting a series of closures that disrupted our lives, especially for college students who were summarily sent back to their childhood homes, halting their coming of age process. As of May 2020, officials believing the worst was…
Higher Ed Management Crisis in Time of COVID-19
The 2020-21 school year plans of 1075 colleges, almost a third of all colleges in the US, as compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education While the pandemic shows no sign of abating, increasingly college administrators are wrangling with how to maintain the efficacy of their institutions in a time of crisis. As crowded school…
College Modified
College administrators are proposing two scenarios for the 2020-21 school year, first, a hybrid model of modified residential on-campus living + online instruction + limited in-person instruction and secondly, continuing distance learning with no on-campus residency. With either model, students’ college experience is severely curtailed. Incoming UCLA freshmen, who are not able to acquire housing,…
Empty or Empty-less Nest Interrupted
In mid-March 2020, due to lockdowns (shelter-in-place orders) implemented often helter-skelter throughout the nation and around the globe, parents welcomed their college students who were sent home to their childhood bedrooms. Back home, living under the same roof simultaneously forced the transformation of the parent-adult children dynamic (when the child is no longer a child),…
Google in the Time of COVID-19
Google News engineers compiled the latest news, statistics, and trends for locations throughout the globe in one convenient place for families to stay up-to-date regarding the on-going coronavirus (COVID-19) induced health crisis especially if their children are attending college away from home only adding to the need to know. Check out the site: Coronavirus (COVID-19)…
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade
Since mid-March 2020, students, parents and educators have been developing ways to ensure a continuity of learning for all students. However, in the uncertainty of the continuing pandemic, 65% of parents worry “whether their children will stay on track and be prepared for the next grade”, with 60% believing school closures will have a negative…