Guessing you read the Drudge Report with this copy / paste. Go easy with the drama. Many people are concerned, fearful, want to help and can be wrong…like maybe this guy.
@NJSue – interesting. My U has given out no plans yet. Except my class sizes are all increasing, as they’re dumping the adjuncts. I really hope they start making the kinds of progress in planning that it sounds like your school (same state) is making. But if I recall correctly (I have a friend who is an adjunct in, I think, your department), you all made the announcement to go online before we did.
If you set up a procedure that gets most contacts, and then you execute the procedure correctly, then you will get most contacts.
There’s a free Contact Tracing class in Coursera! Started today. I just dipped into it, and it looks pretty cool. They even give a sample call, so you can see how it goes.
Find the ‘more money elsewhere…’ comment difficult to believe. Fact? State Universities administration? This is public record…not remotely true. There is way too much money being spent on many of these roles.
I’m curious as to why it is not possible to give a lecture wearing a mask? A microphone clipped to the collar would certainly override any dampening of speech. If everyone else is supposed to wear masks while working - what makes lecturing such a special subset?
Many people who are giving interviews or speeches (Nancy Pelosi, Fauci, doctors, governors) wear the mask until they are at the podium and then sling it around their neck. I think if a professor is working at a white board or behind a podium, with at least 10-15 feet away from the students, taking off the mask would be fine.
Apologies if this was already posted (I get a little behind sometimes), but I thought this was noteworthy:
Harvard first year medical students will learn remotely in the fall.
@NJSue Would you be able share the area where you live? I’m interested in which school might be considering that model.
Thanks
[quote=“NJSue, post:3281, topic:2088334”]
I live and work in a hard-hit area. I have heard rumors of a reopening strategy that has first-year students coming to campus for hybrid instruction (social distancing won’t allow the traditional classroom) and living in the dorms, but upperclassmen will have remote instruction and no residential presence, at least for fall semester. With only 25% of the students on campus, it might be possible to observe social distancing if students actually cooperate.
This is exactly I wished for. My S will be the freshmen. I am so worried if everything is online. I told my S if the school could give the freshmen priority to go to the campus to get know all professors…then they can switch to online study and let other students take turn to go campus.
Just as a general reminder, the goal of this first lockdown was never to prevent spread altogether; it was never to prevent every single person from dying. It was JUST to slow the spread ENOUGH to avoid overwhelming the health care system. The point was never to shut down society until a cure was found.
This^^^
Maybe but endowments seem to keep growing. How much of dent is FA really?
Not spending some money on improving the online experience could backfire. Sure, might save some for FA but won’t matter if the school isn’t competetive. Enrollment will decline…maybe a lot for some schools which will lead to more closures or acquisitions by larger colleges. Basically buying their enrollment.
Hiring freeze? Not going to get much sympathy when unemployment is +20%.
Will be interesting to watch. Sure, they can reduce FA but “tuition discounts” had been growing for years and that was with low unemployment. If unemployment stays above 20% I’m not sure how schools won’t have to offer more discounts to keep the doors opens. More kids will have to shop for the lowest COA schools.
Either we’ll see an enrollment boost at CC’s or state schools, increased FA from schools that want to stay open, or kids will pass on college until it’s affordable.
@dietz199 sustained talking while wearing a mask is not practical. People can’t understand or hear you. You can’t breathe normally. It’s not "yes or no’ type stuff. Also, lecturing is a performance which requires breathing control, facial expression, etc. I cannot lecture while wearing a mask. I can only speak briefly.
@SCgirl1 it’s New Jersey but I think what I hear would apply to the tri-state area (NY/NJ/CT).
Are you saying Rick Bright’s a drama queen? He’s a major expert in vaccine development. That’s why he had that job, and why it’s a bad thing that he got ousted for opening his mouth and trying to warn people about what’s going on.
You’re a microbiologist, maybe?
Oh, one of these. This isn’t “contact tracing”, this is “contact guessing” according to a model that I bet hasn’t had a workout anything like it’s about to get. If so, this is the epidemiology equivalent of giving Covid ICU patients Tums in hope that raising pH might do something, because why not, and they don’t have anything better. It’s what we do because people aren’t going to behave themselves, wear masks, stay home, etc., and nobody’s making them.
Wow. I really hope it’s something more…together than what you’re suggesting, Cardinal Fang.
Take your average STEM prof, making maybe $85K a decade after getting a PhD. This is a pitiable fraction of a salary next to what this prof’s PhD students will make going off to work for, say, Gilead, Monsanto, Exxon, Intel, or even your energetic CRO startup. This has been true for decades, btw. I remember hearing a guy laughing, engineering prof, because his dept chair was trying to punish him by withholding a raise for not toeing a party line. Guy made a lot of money as a prof, but it didn’t touch what he made as a consultant to industry, and he found the idea that the chair thought he could punish him that way kind of adorable.
Or take me. The going rate for the sort of work I do, outside universities, is about 2.5x what I get paid. If I went to work for, say, the College Board in an entry-level job, my salary would about double overnight. But they wouldn’t hire me entry-level, I’d come in higher than that.
Or take your average lab worker. At my university, they start at around $25K. With a BS minimum, often with a graduate degree.
Or a clinical study coordinator. How does $38K sound? We’d like it if you had an advanced degree and long experience in working with patients, also familiarity with IRB protocols and ability to do effective outreach and marketing work, also if you’d travel (in your own car, please), work late and weird hours a lot, and work overtime when we need you to. Advancement will be slow.
Or take your average lecturer, who spends about 50-60h/wk teaching and more or less getting nowhere with a career outside going in and out of that classroom and helping several hundred students. $55K sound good for a three-year contract? We might bump it up a little if you’re teaching those 700-student courses. 24-hour turnaround on student emails pls.
The pricey administrators the Fox friends like to shout about are…well, they’re not quite the welfare queens of the university. Welfare queens were figments, but overpaid admins do exist. However, as a percentage of university budgets, they’re invisible. They are not the problem. The problem is it takes a lot of work from a lot of people, even anemically-paid people, to make a university go, and that’s before you get to the part with taking care of heaps of buildings and equipment.
Incidentally, the overpaid admins are generally bad admins. Just bad at the job. There are plenty of those. But I’ve been watching the new dean we got a while ago, and I am quite impressed. First time that’s happened in a while. Done right, that’s a highly responsible, very difficult, very long hours job that requires significant diplomatic, leadership, and administrative skills, not to mention a wealth of knowledge, and I bet he isn’t overpaid for the job he’s doing.
You’re right, but are you saying you’d like more people to lose their jobs so your kid can have more financial aid?
The fairly obvious (to me) thing to do is to run the kids tabs. No interest. Just say: look, we know your parents are unemployed, just forget it, show up, come to school. You can pay back when you have money. Someday, you’ll have money. No, we won’t come hunt you down, just take care of it when you can.
I bet 80% or more will pay back, and the goodwill will be invaluable. In fact I bet that if you went back to those kids 15 years on and said, hey, we know you’ve been paying, but forget the rest, we’ve fixed school, some fraction would insist on paying back the whole thing as some sort of donation.
I found this about the recommendations from the Missouri Department of Education. How feasible do you think these recommendations are? (The link to the recommendations is in the article.) https://www.kmbc.com/article/missouri-school-boards-association-releases-guidelines-to-consider-when-reopening-schools/32439931?src=app&fbclid=IwAR1um2Y1_UXUBeEOZ2jmF_mwXLhQHT_pDB8EzvFK3cuytVMCswbH5uaqvIg
I work in a school in the tri-state area. Last night Gov Murphy and Cuomo said it is too early to decide what may happen in September.
There is a lot of talk (informally) about what an eventual reopening might look like:
- kids and parents will be asked if they received/gave Tylenol that morning. We all know that many parents give their kids Tylenol etc and send them off to school. Once it wears off....they appear at the nurse’s office. Kids will be asked if they vomited ...you would be surprised at how many kids show up at school and then say they threw up that morning or night before. That can’t happen. Temperature checks will be done in the morning.
- Kids and adults with runny noses etc will be sent home until they prove that they test negative. Kids have a runny nose all the time.
- Social distancing rules will be enforced in the classroom, no lunch, recess, assemblies etc. No collecting of papers...any papers can be placed one at a time at an assigned table to be picked up later. Desks are 6 feet apart. No flexible seating.
- There will be AM/PM sessions... or kids will come every other day and take turns. The kids at home can “zoom in.”
- No sharing of supplies. iPads or laptops will be disinfected after each use. Each student has a personal box of supplies.
- mail will continue to be disinfected. Copy machines, bathrooms etc will be disinfected after each use.
- Adults will wear masks. Not sure yet about younger kids.
- Frequent hand washing and cleaning of the schools, doorknobs etc.
- pre-k will be problematic. How do you operate a pre-k program now?
- New guidelines for active shooter drills. Obviously if an active shooter enters the building (G-d forbid) then all social distancing rules are cast aside and we focus on keeping everybody safe. What about drills? We can’t cram everybody into the closet during drills. These drills happen regularly in public schools. A new system will be necessary.
If rapid testing becomes widely available and accurate, can we use them in order to achieve a higher degree of “normalcy” within the school system?
I don’t know what to expect this September…but I do know that big changes are coming. What about districts such as NYC? You can’t put 30+ kids into a small classroom.
@twogirls I’ve seen similar discussions in my area for K-12.
I can’t see how those measures are going to be realistically implemented, especially with the younger kids.
Are they also discussing shortening the school day? The younger kids need lunch and recess to burn off some of their energy. I can’t imagine trying to teach the younger kids when they are not going to have those opportunities…
If the schools open with those policies, I would expect that many parents who don’t depend on the schools for childcare will keep their children home.
Many socially valuable professions, including teachers, nurses and social workers, are underpaid. Nevertheless, since there is at this point sufficient supply of such labor to meet demand, wages will remain unchanged.