College freshman is not adjusting to college. Is it cruel to make him finish out the year?

My oldest is a junior at college so this is not our first rodeo. The junior stayed relatively close to home (a little over an hour away) and picked a state school, so he knows some people there from high school. While he had a hard freshman transition, I do think having a couple of high school classmates there helped. One of his closest friends is at the same school and they relied on each other a lot.My freshman was accepted to that school and strongly considered it but opted for a private out of state school instead because it was stronger in his major. He's struggling hard. He has tried putting himself out there. He plays intramural and club sports. He looked into frats but decided to hold off on that. He goes to campus events. For some reason he is still uncomfortable. He is home for Thanksgiving break and told me that he really doesn't want to go back to school. He says he made a bad decision and wants take the spring semester off to apply to other schools for the fall. He has felt this way since we dropped him off. I thought it was normal nerves. He cried but so did his roommate. My older son did as well even though he was only an hour from home. He called me a couple nights after dropoff and said he wanted to come home. We hoped that sticking it out would eventually make things easier over time but it hasn't. He's happy to be home and with his high school friends. They'll all go back to school soon but most of them stayed in state so it would be easier to see them if he attended one of our state schools instead.We told him that we want him to finish out the rest of the school year and then transfer. That way he'll have all of his freshman classes done and can look to applying somewhere else as a sophomore. He isn't sure where he wants to go instead so I told him we can take the winter break and spring break to explore tour other schools and explore other options. We can do all of that and he can finish his freshman year where he is. He was pretty upset but I don't know what else to do. I guess community college is an option but he doesn't want to do that. Are we cruel? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2rDbQaO