Katrina's Academic Victims

This story was written by CBSNews.com intern Jaclyn Schiff.

But he never made it to a single class.

"Not a thought crossed my mind that lead me to believe this year would be any less than the best year of my college experience," Hyman told CBSNews.com.

When Hyman and a few friends left New Orleans for Texas right before Hurricane Katrina hit, they had been back on campus for less than a week. Until recently, they were unsure exactly when — or if — they would ever return.

But just one month after Katrina, Tulane, the region's largest academic institution, announced that the spring semester would begin as originally scheduled on Jan. 17, 2006. Hyman expects to be there.

Academia in New Orleans has already started showing signs of life: The University of New Orleans became the first university in the area to conduct fall semester classes when it reopened officially on Oct. 10. According to the university, almost 7,000 of the school's more than 13,000 students had registered for at least one class at the time of reopening.

The area's private universities are aiming for January. They announced earlier this month they would work together to make that happen.

For students, however, January seems a long way off.

Thousands of students have had to deal with the unique challenge of how to navigate their way through the semester while their colleges were forced to cancel classes.

Universities from around the country offered these "academic refugees" admission for the semester. Many students did just that, often enrolling at institutions in or near their hometowns.

Hyman decided to take classes at the University of Southern California. He uses some of his spare time to update the Tulane Student Blog, the Web log he started out of a hotel room in Houston. Hyman combined and filtered information from different sources to connect Tulane students and offer support just days after Katrina struck.

While Hyman said he was "extremely disappointed" about losing a semester of his senior year at Tulane, he describes himself as optimistic and sought to use the blog to help students view the situation positively.

He is also getting hands-on experience with his finance major as he looks into expanding Category 5 Entertainment, the company he started his freshman year.

Other students have gone abroad. Universities in Germany, Israel, Italy, England and elsewhere overseas offered students reduced tuitions or full scholarships to come and study.

Jane Tardo, a third-year student at the University of New Orleans, accepted an offer from the University of Innsbruck in Austria to study there, tuition-free, for the semester. Although Tardo noted that many of her friends opted to be close to their families after such a tragedy, the opportunity to go overseas was almost irresistible for the international studies major.

"I have always wanted to study abroad... [and] I'm extremely grateful for this chance to go for mostly free," Tardo said via e-mail.

But while some are acclimating to new cultural environments, others are adjusting to nine-to-five work schedules.

Loyola University New Orleans junior Ashley Genz-Foster said she hoped to enroll at Loyola University Chicago, closer to her home in Burlington, Iowa, but the deadline was closing in on her and she did not even apply. Instead, the English major is doing an internship at her local paper, The Hawk Eye.

Genz-Foster said that many of her friends who are seniors chose not to take classes elsewhere and are getting work experience like she is, "because they don't want to spend part of their senior year at another school."

"[It is] pretty cool that they've taken this situation and turned it into something that can better their future," she said.

In fact, some students took that even more literally, not just bettering their own futures, but others' too.

Although they are away from campus right now, Tulane juniors Adam Hawf of Columbia, Mo., Kevin Lander of Boulder, Colo., Stephen Richer of Salt Lake City and Aaron Rubens of Kalamazoo, Mich., are helping from afar.

The men established a volunteer-based fundraising organization – the New Orleans Hurricane Fund – that has raised over $46,000 to date and offers students the ability to sign up online to volunteer with relief efforts.

Glenna Gross, a Tulane senior, points out that the situation is quite different for freshman than those with more established ties to their schools. Although all of her friends will be returning in January, she is not so sure about new students.

She said, "Not every freshman is going to have the same desire to return in January as the upperclassmen, whether it be because they are scared, confused or settled at their new school."

By Jaclyn Schiff