Based on what we can see all over the world, the virus doesn’t do well in hot weather. Note that India has the same number of cases as Massachusetts (Mass has 5k more cases, actually). Using logic and data, the chances of us getting a second wave in October (or later) are much higher than in August/September. That’s the info colleges are working with.
If we don’t have PPE and tests by August, we won’t ever have PPE. Dr Fauci was confident that we’d be in a much better place for testing and PPE by August.
It will be hard for freshmen if studying remotely. If kids couldn’t go to campus, I highly doubt they can go in winter/spring as it is the season of the virus.
Actually reports I’ve been seeing say that don’t expect the warmer weather to mitigate and also I wouldn’t trust India’s numbers. Given their population and the level of poverty, there is no way they are testing nearly enough people for those numbers to be accurate. According to Worldometer their tests per 1m population is 1,275.
Just saw that the UC system announced it would be solely online for the fall. Surprised they called it so early, but I guess they are too big to be able to put in place substantial mitigation efforts.
@Dream20school I agree with both points. My kid will have a hard time, yes. And yes, it may very well be just as hard to go back in the winter/spring. This doesn’t mean they’ll go back in the Fall (other than remotely), though, especially in hot spots. Just thinking realistically as opposed to hopefully at this current moment.
Do you have the source link? I heard Cal States, not the UC (yet anyway). We just assumed D19’s will be online, anything different would be a nice surprise.
Regarding Covid and warm weather, I’ve seen reports say that the virus dips in summer as it is harder to spread outdoors/easier to spread indoors. That’s why some states are allowing restaurants to open with outdoor dining only. Maybe colleges will make outdoor dining an option!
With regard to the 2nd wave, some states, especially those with aggressive re-opening plans may never make it out of wave 1. There are some states that are aggressively re-opening and they have much higher rates of new cases per day, then when they started the shut down. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sure they may have a decline vs their peak, but they are still much higher than when the made the decision to close.
I think publics will be more included to make the online announcement versus privates that really need that tuition money.
Talked with my D who is suppose to be done by December. She said if fully online she is out because she does not learn as much online as in person and being her final semester she wants the most out of her education. Keep in mind that my D has an LD and gets some DSS services. I explained that Spring might not be better and she proceeded to cry. Of course being the age group that feels like they are “immune” to this, she is not being understanding. and reasonable. Being isolated for almost 2 months has taken a toll on her. I would assume that if given good Financial Aid for the fall, that I would push the issue and probably promise helping for graduate school , even though I never previously said I would. Also we are paying for an apartment, so I mentioned that and she said that she would then work instead.
also talked to someone who was going to try to help find her an internship this summer and he said that any positions that open up are going to current grads first, who are desperate for anything, and willing to take paid/unpaid, at this point and short term.
@Twoin18 wow just wow. So are you saying that kids whose parents are paying for the LAC residential experience cannot be brilliant or dedicated student? That’s unbelievable. We spent 18 years prioritizing education. Our kids have never had a tutor. They’ve had jobs since they were 16. They’ve worked very hard at school and they both like to learn for the sake of learning. And that’s not a joke, it’s real. There are no video games in our house. We have one tv that’s hardly ever turned on. The kids ride used bikes and get used iPhones. Take your bias elsewhere. Just because a family chooses to spend their savings on a particular kind of college experience does not mean their children are entitled.
Many states now have more testing capacity than they did even a week ago. More tests result in more cases. A better indicator would be new hospitalizations. Georgia seems to be doing pretty well by that indicator:
"The number of Georgia patients hospitalized due to the coronavirus has fallen to its lowest total in weeks, Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday as the state’s death toll from COVID-19 reached at least 1,400.
Actually, what doesn’t make much sense is the press not clarifying that testing is ramping up (nearly) everywhere and the more you test, the more you find. (But never let the facts get in the way of a good story.)
Right now, to me, its much better to look at daily hospitalizations and ICU beds.
Sorry - where did you get that from the article? That’s not what was in the article. I copied the information right into the thread.
“To the greatest extent that the public health situation permits, we seek to teach our students in person and on campus.”
“When we return to campus, public health regulations will almost certainly require us to reduce seating capacity in all of our classrooms. The flexible hybrid learning environment will enable an instructor, for instance, to divide the scheduled class time per week into two or more time slots and meet with smaller groups of students in the various time slots.”
That CSU decision is a big deal. I bet lots of other schools are going to start following that. The senate hearing today was not encouraging for residential colleges. I feel like it’s going to be a slow walk and we are all going to end up in the same place - remote instruction for fall.
What part was not encouraging? I thought it was neutral - nothing new. We need testing/tracking/mitigation to get back to life, was the answer Dr Fauci gave.
Most of the 23 CSU campuses are primarily commuter campuses. The mostly non-commuter ones are CPSLO, HSU, CSUC, SSU, CSUMB, CSUCI, SDSU, CSUMA (a few more are evenly split between commuters and non-commuters). Most of the students are paying the relatively low in-state tuition (and many are getting that reduced by in-state financial aid).
In other words, most CSU students are neither paying for nor getting a luxury class college experience like at the high end private colleges that many on these forums focus on.
Labs and arts could still be something that needs to be worked out, although if the students are primarily local, coming onto campus just for labs may be doable.
Yes, looking at hospitalizations is an important metric, but those who are hospitalized aren’t out and about with the general public. It’s those people who are positive that aren’t hospitalized who are more likely to infect others. So you have to look at all the numbers.
@Nhatrang - yes, you are correct, it’s only Cal State for now.
@homerdog Actually, I found Fauci’s testimony today encouraging. He said schools could return as long as they had robust testing and their region’s situation wasn’t as bad at the time of return, which is what we thought before. See my earlier post about many news stations directly misquoting Dr. Fauci and taking his statements way out of context.
Also, most (if not all) of the Cal States have very little students living on-campus, and our very cheap, with most students being in-state, and they already have big online infrastructures and already offered much of their curriculum online. I don’t think that Cal State’s decision is at all indicative of what residential colleges will do.
That’s not what I said at all. There are many brilliant and dedicated students including those at LACs. I said my hiring criteria were similar to what Truman, Marshall and Rhodes scholarship committees are looking for. All the applicants (or at least all them that get an interview) are brilliant and dedicated. The tiebreaker amongst them is often resilience and overcoming challenges.
But most of those scholarship winners are attending HYPSM, LACs etc because that’s where you will find a disproportionate number of brilliant and dedicated students. Similarly, most (though certainly not all) of the most successful people I hired went to top schools. Some of them were quite privileged too. But I certainly never asked (or cared) about how much TV they watched growing up or how much they paid for college.
There is a saying among Silicon Valley VCs and investors: “Chips on shoulders put chips in pockets”. So a bias in favor of applicants who’ve had to struggle to get where they are is not at all uncommon. And I do think that in a tough job market in a few years time, some employers will ask potential recruits “what did you do in the pandemic?”.