FAQs for Parents and Families

If you have questions or would like to review the resources available to parents, please contact the office of Parent and Family Relations at (619) 260-4808 or visit https://www.sandiego.edu/parents.

The university is prepared to pivot to our planned hybrid approach of both in-person and remote instruction when conditions improve and allow us to do so. The timing for a transition to our hybrid approach will be determined by future guidance from State and County officials. When we receive the permission to move forward with our plans, we will continue to offer our students the options for remote or in-person instruction — whichever approach they believe is in their best interest. We will keep in close, weekly contact with State and County officials to monitor progress toward guidance that allows for in-person instruction. While our goal and desire was to have students join us on campus at the beginning of the Fall semester, we still remain hopeful we will be able to return to campus later this semester. However, our first priority remains the health and safety of our campus community.

Over the past several months, we have made significant investments in technology to enhance the remote instruction experience. All remote courses will be taught to ensure learning outcomes are met and that students have a close relationship with instructors. Each course has been carefully designed to meet the needs of the curriculum and deliver the highest academic standards you expect from the University of San Diego. 

Our faculty will engage students in a remote classroom environment that continues to offer small class sizes, open discussion, hands-on-experiences and creative problem solving. Faculty are committed to finding creative ways to connect with students and build strong classroom communities via Zoom and other media platforms. We will deliver a faculty-student-centered academic experience in any learning mode. 

One of the most complicating elements of planning for your return to campus at some time in the future is to deliver great online and remote learning while being ready to pivot with little notice to the full on-campus experience that the vast majority of our students and faculty desire.

To have this option means we must be prepared to keep campus offices, the library, our career services, our student health center, campus ministry, dining services, and many other offices and services open. In addition, we plan to have one of the most robust COVID-19 testing, daily temperature checking and campus cleaning protocols in the country. All of these will require staffing, resources and money to run.

It is important to remember that tuition pays for only 70% of the costs of a student’s education.

The university receives the remaining 30% through philanthropic support, funding from our endowment, auxiliary services such as room and board, rentals, camps and attendance at events.

To help us prepare for the fall and to keep our campus as safe as possible, we have limited access to our campus from outside visitors. We have stopped renting our facilities to outside groups, and we decided not to rent any of our housing units or facilities for summer camps.

We will continue to implement these same policies for the rest of the academic year.

The negative financial impact of the pandemic on the university for the spring semester alone was in excess of $17 million, and we are projecting that the impact on the current academic year will exceed $40 million. 

In addition, our endowment has decreased in value by more than $50 million since the beginning of the current economic downturn. We have no plans to pass these additional expenses on to the students. 

We have proactively initiated significant cuts to our budgets and spending while trying to preserve the jobs and health benefits for our employees. Our academic and administrative leadership have voluntarily reduced their own salaries between 5-15%, and all employees had their retirement contributions cut in half for the foreseeable future. Every employee will also forgo any salary increases for this academic year. We are taking aggressive steps to lower costs while also accelerating our fundraising efforts to support both need-based and merit-based financial aid for students. 

We are investing in technology in the classrooms to ensure the hybrid model delivers on our commitment to academic excellence. This summer, more than 350 of our faculty enrolled in training courses on delivering the highest-quality educational experience grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition, regardless of the delivery mode. We have also eliminated a number of fees, including instituting no parking fees for the fall semester.

Finally, we have continued to invest in our campus infrastructure, and will do so for the foreseeable future. This includes the opening of a new Learning Commons on campus in August, which is completely dedicated to offering the latest classroom instruction, and we will also reopen the Copley Library, which was completely redesigned as a 21^st century information hub on campus. This next year, we will also renovate Camino, Founders and Sacred Heart Halls, and by next spring, we will break ground on the new Knauss Center for Business Education, which will be open in 2022. 

Most importantly, rather than cutting back on our faculty resources during this time, we will maintain the low faculty-to student ratio that is the hallmark of a USD education. We will also be welcoming 11 stellar new faculty to our ranks next month to join what we believe is amongst the best teaching faculty in America.

USD recognizes that many students and their families have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. If students have not already applied for financial assistance, they can still complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). 

Dependent students who already have a FAFSA on file for 2020-2021 and whose family has experienced a change in financial circumstance that will lower the student’s family resources may be eligible for a re-evaluation of their federal and /or state aid eligibility.

It is also important to know that the university has increased its own undergraduate financial aid budget from $92 million in the 2019-20 fiscal year $104 million for the 2020-21 fiscal year to meet the needs of families who have been hit hard by the economic downturn.