I hate the hand-waviness behind this argument. Yes, much of college is not worth it anymore and can be attained online. Still, these HN threads always come to the same conclusion that there remain elements of the college experience that can only be found on campus.
Not attacking you personally btw. You seem to see the nuance required of the conversation.
> Still, these HN threads always come to the same conclusion that there remain elements of the college experience that can only be found on campus.
In my view the college experience (societies, living away from home, mixing with people from outside your local area) is far more useful than the actual teaching. "There's a time and a place for everything - and it's called college".
However with covid, all that is removed, and you're left with some lectures (which in normal times you can't pause or rewind, and may well be at terrible times of the day), and an occasional chat with a bored professor.
It's very unlikely that this lasts more than another semester or so though. If you're looking to enroll in the fall or the next year, it shouldn't be a big concern.
"A semester or so" reasonably covers until September 2021. I can't see the world standing for social distancing that long, and as such covid will spread throughout the population just like Polio, TB and uncurable/vaccinable diseases of the past. IFR of covid for undergrads is about 0.002-0.005%, so 1 in 20k-50k.
Chance of death for a 20 year old in the UK is about 1 in 4k, so you're 5-10 times more likely to die for some other reason than covid.
Indeed by moving away from home you're less likely to infect older parents, so it's a rational call.
There are multiple vaccine candidates that have passed phase I trials, have demonstrated they produce antibodies in humans, and have demonstrated they are successful in animal challenge trials. The chance's are good that we have a working vaccine by end of year, and the chances are very good that we have one sometime next year.
In the unlikely event it turns out that we can't develop a vaccine in the near future, we'll have to just deal with the disease long term. If we try to keep the world economy shut down for more than a few months at a time, we'll kill more people than COVID would. And as other people have pointed out, college students are very low risk.
Not attacking you personally btw. You seem to see the nuance required of the conversation.