Impact of this current turmoil for Fall 2020 graduate students.

[m-yadav]

Hello All,

Hopefully all of us here have been able to avoid this virus so far. Just out of curiosity, how would this current virus scenario impact students like us who will be starting graduate studies from fall 2020? To be more precise, would we still remotely continue our school? Can there be any circumstances where universities take away/cut funding opportunities like scholarships and TA/RAships, which have already been granted? How would graduate assistants' duties change ? I know one's not foresighted enough to accurately answer all of these future events but does any of us have any idea on how the great recession(2007-2009) affected the higher education enrollment, assistantship and funding opportunities? I even tried googling it but wasn't much of a help. Well, this thread can come as an intimidation for some but I am only being a little restless.

Any educated guesses will be appreciated.

Thank you!

[bayessays]

I've asked some departments and been googling education news and nobody really knows yet - I think they're just getting done figuring out how to salvage the current semester and summer classes.  If social distancing is still going on, I suspect some schools with the resources will go/stay online.  Schools with big endowments will probably find ways to pay grad students even if there are less TAships available.  One public school I spoke with was concerned that their MS program wouldn't be able to enroll many international students and thus they'd lose a big source of their funding.  I'd suspect some schools might be flexible and allow admissions deferment.  Cancelling a semester would be a pretty huge move and I haven't seen much talk about that.  I am hesitant to sign a lease for the fall though given the uncertainty about whether there will be in-person classes.

AFAIK, grad school enrollment went up during the great recession because people couldn't get jobs, but obviously this is a different scenario with the in-person limitations.  I read something on reddit people talking about assistantships being pulled during that period because of funding issues, but I don't have any idea if that's true (I personally suspect this was something that happened with one or two programs in some field and became a bigger story than it was) and I don't think we can draw any conclusions from that.

I'd be more worried about whether classes will happen online for a while or (much less likely) whether school will just be cancelled more than I'd be worried about funding issues.

[statsday]

No school I’ve been accepted at said they would be changing anything and that the semester will still happen albeit remotely. My wife is in a program now and has been proctoring exams and holding office hours remotely. She is still getting her same TA assistantships and slaving away for her advisor. I think a lot of people will be applying next year and getting a spot will be much harder. In the thread about going straight to PhD from undergrad vs getting a masters there are some links that support this idea. 

 

 

[SomeNerd]

From two of the big departments that I got accepted to, their fall semesters should start as normal. I have not heard anything about possible assistantships cancellation (well if that happens by any chance, I would be the last person to know anyways...)

For the recession concerns, I don't know how the universities would be affected by it. My guess is that RA's funded by department, NSF or NIH would not be affected as much since the grant is from the government directly or indirectly (from student tuition for private institutions). But my guess is that some company contracted RA positions may be affected since they might even be firing their full-time employees as well. Again, these are just me guessing and making assumptions. 

[m-yadav]

Thanks for your input. Hopefully this will be alright for us.

[mathfriend]

NCSU sent out an email to admitted students indicating that online instruction is a possibility for the Fall, and that funding will be impacted. They also suggested that they might allow students to defer a year, in which case you wouldn't have to worry about a more competitive pool next cycle. 

I know that we'll manage somehow, but I know that in my Master's, it's been so important to have a good group of colleagues I can talk through problems with.  It will clearly be more difficult to form those strong connections if next Fall is online. I'm hoping there will at least be an in-person orientation so we can get a chance to know our cohort, but who knows.