Covid Crunch: When Colleges Got Even Greedier

They shut down operations and offered classes only online—and charged full tuition.

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., May 5, 2022  /PRNewswire/ -- Colleges and universities got even greedier during the government-ordered lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic, says Patrick Nelson, founder and CEO of college housing builder Nelson Partners.

In a new op ed released today, Nelson points out that the schools got billions in direct federal aid after closing their campuses and having students stay home to take classes online. Yet they continued charging full tuition, even though the value was vastly reduced.

"I just paid $200 a ticket to take four of my daughters to see the Imagine Dragons at the Forum in Los Angeles, and if we saw the concert on a laptop computer, I would have insisted on paying a lot less," Nelson says.

"It also was greedy. Colleges and universities have raised tuition prices 130% since 1990, even after adjusting for inflation," he says.

Higher education must have better lobbyists than his, Nelson writes (he employs none). His company, Nelson Partners, owns two dozen off-campus apartment buildings in 13 states.

Government edicts made the lockdown only worse, he argues in his new op ed, the first of a three-part series. When some students stopped paying their rent, this cut off revenue flow for Nelson Partners and made it harder for Nelson to keep up with debt payments and dividends.

"Yet we, as property owners, were forbidden from evicting anyone, by order of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control," Patrick Nelson writes. "Who handed control of our constitutionally protected property rights to a health agency, and when do we get it back?"

Even as government forbid owners from evicting non-paying renters, it did nothing to protect businesses like Nelson Partners from their lenders by ordering lenders to forgo collections in the way the CDC ordered landlords to do so.

Nelson laments the government's heavy-handed role in picking winners and losers in business based on rules passed by unelected bureaucrats with zero business experience. In an interview, he says government dominates his business so much that he must start speaking up about it. "That's why I'm writing this column," he declares.

"It is craziness, and it's time more people woke up about what's going on," Patrick Nelson says, vowing, "I want to wake 'em up."

About Nelson Partners

Nelson Partners is a student housing builder located in San Clemente, CA. Nelson Partners manages 23 investor-owned buildings, worth $900M in 13 states.

Media Contact: Interdependence Public Relations at  [email protected] or (813)951-4169

SOURCE Nelson Partners