My dad just sent me a text: “St. Edwards [in Austin] is cutting personnel by 10% , eliminating elementary education, merging 5 academic schools into 4, and dropping 6 of their 16 sports.”
Missouri Western State University cuts a quarter of faculty, dozens of programs:
The article states that enrollment had been in decline for several years, also that the state had held back funding for 2020-21 due to Covid-19.
UofSC has suggested that they might cancel fall break and have students go home and stay home at Thanksgiving. Right now, the calendar only has one week of classes after Thanksgiving, then reading day and finals. That last week could be shortened (by cancelling fall break) and the rest plus finals would be done on line. Classes would resume in-person after Christmas break.
Not a final calendar, but eliminates one mode of bringing the virus back to campus, not a bad idea with so many OOS students.
The idea is fine for students who can travel home in their own cars, but terrible for others. UofSC may not have many such students, so it may work for them. Other universities (e.g. Rice) have plans that are almost identical, and they have lots of students who must travel home by air during the Thanksgiving rush.
The airports this Thanksgiving certainly won’t be as hectic as in years past, but air traffic would still be significantly greater than in other times of the year. These students could be infected on their way home and then spread the disease to their families and extended families during Thanksgiving get-together.
For colleges, this may seem like a good solution and they won’t be held responsible for infections due to air travel. But it’s a really bad idea. Colleges should instead mandate students stay on campus during the Thanksgiving break and resume classes afterwards. Many students this year would likely choose to stay on campus during the break anyway.
But then what? Students are still going to need to go home a few weeks later for Xmas so won’t it be the same issue?
No. Colleges on quarter system typically end their quarter mid-December and those on semester system a couple of days later. They could all end their fall term in mid-December or even a few days earlier by starting their fall terms earlier by just a few days if necessary.
Christmas time travel is pretty crowded anytime after December 15, and I do not think you can reliably predict Thanksgiving or Christmas travel patterns this year. Sending students home in November will also help avoid the seasonal flu on campus. At many schools they won’t be expected back on campus until late January for spring semester.
^The day before Thanksgiving will surely have more air traffic than mid December, even this year. If colleges can end their fall term, or send students home to take the finals online, in early December, that’d be even better.
I expect the problem is many students would go home for Thanksgiving anyway, and then return to campus. Many live within an easy driving distance, and might miss a class or two but that is all. Wealthy students might even do quick turnaround flights. I don’t think there is any effective way to expect everyone to remain on campus at that time.
I agree. Not sure what the difference is. This pattern they are suggesting is excellent… Gets students back home only once, and that is for an extended period. Eliminates a holiday (or more, if they get rid of “fall break”) of travel home. I hope my D’s school does the same thing.
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This is exactly what D17’s university is planning. They have already changed the school calendar and starting classes in mid-August rather than after Labor Day like they normally do. They intend on having exams before Thanksgiving and want to send kids home before the seasonal flu typically hits. Spring semester for her university typically starts the end of January, so this would mean they would be home for at least two full months.
S19’s school has not made any announcements - waiting until the end of June. I’m not as optimistic what will happen with his campus and whether they will return in fall due to its NY location.
Most of the students at UofSC live off-campus, so I don’t think the college could “mandate” that they stay through Thanksgiving. Many drive/fly home, others leave for mini-vacations. And many students are OOS and fly home and back - Why would it make a difference whether that is right before Thanksgiving or right before Christmas? Either way they will have the air travel issues.
Unless it is a college with 100% of students in the dorms with a contract clause saying that, how can a college do that? Maybe it can have final exams on Thanksgiving day and the day after to force the issue, but that might get a bigger backlash than other things that it might do.
The idea is to travel when the planes and airports are less crowded. There’s much more air traffic on the days just before Thanksgiving than in early or mid December (the earlier the better in December, of course).
Yes, primarily residential colleges. These colleges could arrange some interesting activities (probably not exams) to keep students on campus during the break.
And staff will be working on Thanksgiving instead of being home with their families? The likelihood of this happening is very low.
This happens on some campuses every year. The activities could be mostly run by the students themselves with some staff supervision. Some staff don’t go home during the break either (there may be more of them this year), and they, and perhaps even others, can be compensated to make it worthwhile to them.
I don’t think colleges are going to pay people to stay on campus at Thanksgiving.
Lots of residential colleges have most non-frosh living in nearby off-campus housing, rather than the campus dorms. This is true of the example one here, University of South Carolina, where 94% of frosh live in the dorms, but only 27% of all undergraduates do so, according to http://oiraa.dw.sc.edu/cds/cds2019/cdsf2019.htm . “Interesting activities” other than mandatory ones like final exams are unlikely to keep that many students (who would otherwise leave for Thanksgiving break) around during Thanksgiving break.
I don’t see colleges caring that much about Thanksgiving itself. If the world is open, the holiday will be ask it always is, either a week break or a few days. If the world is still closed, people won’t be hosting big dinners, the high schools won’t have their rivalry games for all the college kids to attend as alums, there won’t be a reason to go home.
My daughter’s school had a lot of internationals, so it kept Thanksgiving to just W-S. There were a lot of students who stayed on campus or close. Because it was in Florida, a lot of OOS students had family come to the student. My daughter went to her boyfriend’s in NJ once or twice, but she really hated the travel on the short weekend so really just preferred to stay. She never got a spring break because she played a sport. Her college experience wasn’t harmed.
“Whoo hoo! It will probably be a few hundred dollars”
Maine, consider yourself lucky, a friend of mine said he got an athletic fee credit of…wait for it…$19!!! He was dancing in the streets (with a mask of course).