Can colleges be ready to open by fall? Should they?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Daniel W. Drezner / The Washington Post

Tuesday was the last day of spring semester classes at my school, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, which means it is time to start grading and think hard about what the fall semester will look like in an Age of Coronavirus.

Fletcher has set up a working group to game out how the next academic year will play out. I am sure every other institution for higher education has a similar committee. Will residential schools encourage students to return to campus? Will classes stay online or return to in-person lessons?

Some schools had toyed with the idea of shutting down for the fall semester and restarting in spring 2021. On Monday, however, Harvard University’s provost announced that the university would be open for business in the fall. Harvard tends to be a trendsetter in these areas, so my hunch is that most other schools will follow its lead.

Harvard did not specify whether the fall semester would be on campus or virtual, which raises some thorny questions. My Fletcher colleagues and students were able to adapt quickly to an online learning environment, but there are reasons to think that this semester was anomalous. Because these classes started out in person, it was relatively easy for students to get to know one another and for professors to get to know them. Starting a class online prevents that kind of tacit knowledge from easily emerging.

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[old guy]

1. Depends on how powerful their football programs are.

[stillcool]

2. Necessity is the mother of invention..

find a way to keep everyone safe.

[genxlib]

3. I have strong opinions about this

Mainly because my daughter is scheduled to start school as a Freshman in the fall and will be heartbroken if she doesn't get to go.

I think they will open even if it looks different.

First let's start with an acknowledgement of two things.

First, the risk for these kids is relatively low. The main value is asking them to social distance is community wide suppression and to not transmit it to older or vulnerable folks.

Second, they will not be social distancing no matter where they are. It is just a question of whether they are mingling with new college friends or old high school friends.

With those things acknowledged, it changes the way I look at things. I see no reason to try and keep them apart from one another. It changes the challenge to one of keeping them separate from most of the rest of society. Just think of it as one giant quarantine unit with all of them isolated together.

There will still be enormous efforts to test, trace and isolate. But the main goal will be to keep the virus away from the staff and to faculty. Dormitories can be run with limited young adults. Cafeterias would have a hot zone on the service side and the staff would be working in an isolated space in the kitchen. Class rooms could be for students and grad assistants while faculty joined remotely. Administration could continue to tele-commute.

If something like this were offered to my family right now we would take it in a heart beat. Hell, you could even make it a requirement that the students have to stay on campus once they get there. No weekend visits to grandma or home for the holidays. We would still take it. In many ways, it would be safer than having those same kids out in public everyday bringing the virus home to vulnerable parents and grandparents.

I know it is infinitely more complex than I describe but I think it will happen. And about half of the students will decide to go and the other half will either drop out or do remote. That 50% capacity will make it more manageable and give them more space to distance, separate and isolate.

Go ahead and tell me I'm crazy. I expect to get beat up over this post.

[Igel]

5. No beating up here.

1. The cafeteria thing could be worked out. A lot of colleges/universities have all sorts of food venues. Last time I had any influence on a campus the administration and student-union folk were talking about integrating their food services, not on the management side but on the food plan/payment side.

You'd get so much money for each meal if you had a food plan. It would get you a dining hall meal at the right time (and, possibly, at the right place). Or you could apply that amount of money to food at once of the non-res hall venues.

When the administration peeled out their overhead at market rates--which they insisted on doing--it wasn't a good deal for the students. Student union and students liked it, but admin didn't. For the duration of the COVID calamity, however, it would be workable and reduce student concentration in the dining halls. Or the two could merge to provide parallel menus, so it didn't matter where they went.

2. Testing/tracing/isolating would be difficult. If one person comes down with it in a dorm Saturday morning, it's likely s/he'd be around all sorts of people Friday night--either in the lounge, in town, just in the hallways. Or sitting next to people in Bio 101 or whatever the current required diversity class is, with an enrollment of 350. Depending on how they do instruction.

On the other hand, if the virus surges through a campus in September, by the time the kids went back for break they'd all have recovered (perhaps from something no worse than a cold) and no longer be infectious. It might open up some tenure lines for adjuncts, too.

3. Instruction would change. I suspect that the mass-enrolled classes would move online. Little point, in fact, in sitting there with teacher in front while 350 people take notes. If 2% of the class has questions, there goes 15 minutes of class time. Make them videos or readings (best choice: Both/either) and do what is usually done with large lectures: have recitation sections. (TAs teach those, and they're also low risk. Speaking as a former TA for Linguistics 101.) Seminars, specialized courses can be in person or Zoom.

4. Why have kids show up if they can do everything online? Because networking is a big deal, and it helps to have a cohort of people all reinforce to set up alternative cultures, carefully supervised, so as to make parents feel like their kid's a pod person.

No. That's not why. Young adults have typically managed before college became a thing, and were no worse off for it.

The reason is that often students interact and network, students sit in on classes to "try them out" before signing up for a professor or topic, they talk over majors and students change their minds, labs can't be done properly at home and research is difficult.

[roamer65]

4. I suspect football will be running.

Televised with little to no one in the stadiums.

They want the revenue.

[blitzen]

6. I'm a Prof. That last sentence is right on target...

My online classes (both small) went well, especially because the students and I already had a good rapport and because I pretty much knew them as individuals.