Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Should students slated to graduate this spring delay that indefinitely?

I'm not in the know here.  I'm just thinking aloud.  Are companies that have made job offers to students already still honoring those?  Are students who have yet to get an offer in jeopardy that no offers will be forthcoming, indeed no interviews for jobs will happen as well.  What should students do in this circumstance?

And what should the university do to help such students in this very frightening time?

We might want to appropriate the acronym ABD and redefine it as All But Degree.  In the current circumstance, which I would term an emergency, students who are ABD might then become partly grad students and partly undergrad help employees - NOT SUBSTITUTES FOR GRAD TAS - but rather, in addition, to help make the online instruction more personal.  This might happen in the summer or fall semesters.  If the crisis has largely passed by the spring, they would graduate then.   The year between when they were scheduled to graduate and when they actually graduate would be something of a twilight zone.

If there's a better answer here, I'm all ears. 

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