It seems that a few of you work in universities. Would you be wanting your kids to be starting this year in September? It is a huge investment they (and us as parents) are making. Can you see them getting value for money?
I have twins who should have been taking A Levels, well, about now actually! They are going to the same university although doing different courses on different campuses.
One is doing Fine Art which doesn't seem like it would be much good online.
I really don't know how to advise them.
I don't have kids, certainly not 18+ ones, but I am a research student at my 3rd university.
I'm going to give a completely different answer to the other two given. Yes, now's a potentially strange but great time for some to go to university in September for various lesser talked about reasons.
Depending on studiousness, subject and personality I would definitely consider going this year, with the proviso of being able to afford it and what you want. Although one may also save quite a bit of money... Many subjects have relatively low contact hours, many skip some lectures and attend on-line anyway. The start of term in September is totally crazy and this is too much for a large minority of students. It's noisy, it's chaotic and there is so much Fear of Missing Out. in September this will be the only year in history where there won't be fear of missing out compared to your fellow students - it may exist thinking towards next year! If you really love your subject and want to navigate things distraction free, it's a good time. My supervisors are spending MORE time with first year students at the moment. Large minorities of 1st and 2nd years spend a lot of their time fretting over that they can't make deep and meaningful friendships on their course/housemates for various reasons and that there's something wrong with them despite streets thronged with students and packed eateries and coffee shops on/near campuses/uni buildings. Not any more.
Additionally if wealthy enough (some are) many students jet off to travel on holidays/margins of term/exams. That is just not gonna likely be happening normally over the summer or large or all parts of 2020/21. You can't disappear now and go on a gap year travelling. So again it makes sense. In 3-4 year's time, yeah on that sort of timescale going travelling and all that jazz is more likely to be 'normal'.
Let's look at what someone might do instead of uni. A job. So with everything mixed up there will be opportunities for some who want to work this year. Let's be honest and I have a bit of perspective that many of the older posters here don't have. I graduated and had the world financial crisis to deal with. It absolutely fecking sucked. The world financial crisis is going to be a tea party compared to the economic destruction now and post-millenials, many are going to have an extremely difficult time finding work, getting on etc. It's going to be a gigantic blight on this generation and people are already talking about this stuff now. If an 18 year old has got some fantastic job offer and not sure what to do at uni that's fair enough. If your children are extremely extroverted and party animals wanting very packed and noisy environments all day long and not so fussed about the subject, then yeah probably give it a miss this year. For most others, it won't be that bad, infact there'll be some positives. Societies and sports are being geared up to do stuff in some sort of form from September.
