Medical students feel sidelined in the fight against COVID-19. Read more about why they want to help.

Many national and local institutions, including Cornish and WSU, have made grading accommodations with pass/fail and universal pass options, and have (partially) refunded nontuition charges such as housing and meals. UW is not charging students who left their housing for the spring quarter, and is refunding some of the students’ dining account card balances.

Tuition refunds, however, are a different matter.

“I would say colleges and universities will say uniformly no to tuition refunds,” says Richard Vedder, professor emeritus of economics at Ohio University who writes about higher education issues.

While he acknowledges the quality of education may suffer from the move to online learning, Vedder says most colleges don’t have a ton of cash on hand — particularly not now, near the end of the academic year. “Financially, it would be devastating to schools,” he says. “A typical school gets minimally 30% of its income from tuition fees. Saying ‘we’ll give you that back’ would be devastating to them unless there’s some school with huge cash balances, which would be the exception rather than the rule.”

Most schools, including Cornish, UW and WSU, say they don’t currently plan tuition refunds because credits and degrees are still being earned. While, yes, things have changed, many institutions argue, operating costs have not. Many say they’ve increased.

“With the university shifting to online instruction for spring quarter, we are actually increasing our investment in instructional costs,” says the UW’s Balta. Making new and existing services available online, plus investing in new technology, costs more, Balta says. He also says the school has awarded more than $235,000 in emergency financial assistance to students through a fund fueled by a combination of institutional monies and private donations to the UW.

Like the UW, WSU won’t be offering tuition reimbursements or reductions, says university spokesperson Phil Weiler. “You’re still getting the same content, you’re still meeting the same faculty members and seeing your fellow students,” he says, adding that the university is reviewing various fees students pay “line by line” to see which ones it can refund.

But the calculations are tricky, Weiler adds, particularly because colleges will face significant budget challenges.

Tuition revenue will likely take a hit. Even if colleges can return to in-person education in the fall, it’s hard to predict who will actually show up. Who will reenroll? Will parents feel comfortable sending their freshmen to campus? Will international students, who often pay the full sticker price for tuition, come back? Schools have also lost part of their revenue from room and board and have canceled study abroad programs, athletic events and conferences. Public colleges also expect cuts in state funding. A volatile stock market means endowments bring in less money, too.

“We don’t know what the future holds,” Weiler says.

It’s likely the current economic uncertainty will put colleges in financial danger, says Sandy Baum of the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. Particularly tenuous are smaller private and regional public colleges with an already tight budget. “A lot of them won't make it,” she says.

Central Washington University, a public university in Ellensburg, has declared a “state of financial exigency,” a crisis declaration that gives the school broad powers, including terminating faculty appointments. (The college has said it plans to maintain current staffing levels through at least June 30.)

Most at risk, Baum says, are the “nonprofit, small private colleges that are very tuition-driven and are always struggling and don’t have large endowments.”

That’s Cornish College of the Arts in a nutshell. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the school’s financial situation wasn’t rosy. Enrollment had been declining, which is a problem for a school that powers 93% of its operations and costs with tuition revenue.