Sounds like a great new experience - certainly better than taking classes in your childhood bedroom for another year.
I’m wondering if more colleges will start taking Bowdoin’s “cautious” approach by severely limiting the amount of students on campus and doing mostly online classes, except in special cases (e.g. lab work)?
Contrary to what was predicted a while ago, attending a Power 5 conference, mostly public, football heavy university, may actually be the colleges that have the most students back on campus in the fall.
I really thought the large, endowed top private universities would have had the funds to “stay open” this fall, but most of them so far seem to be taking a very cautious approach. I hope Duke is not the next casualty… :neutral:
Faculty members at Williams were to inform the college by this past Saturday whether they would be teaching in person or online if the college were to reopen this fall:
"Some faculty members have raised the concern that requiring hybrid courses might discourage faculty from choosing to teach in person. “My strong preference all along has been to teach in-person,” Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Crowe ’03 said. “But the insistence on hybridity for all courses has me resigned to teaching remotely.” He explained, “To have the College compound the extra health risk of in-person teaching with extra workload — and the hybridity requirements are a substantial amount of extra work for anyone who chooses to teach in person — is disappointing.”
Catching up here…lol…https://president.umich.edu/news-communications/letters-to-the-community/announcing-a-public-health-informed-fall-semester-for-the-university-of-michigan/
Basically no fall/winter break. Go back for Thanksgiving. Resume classes finals remotely. Have a nice break and go back like Jan 18th or so…
Everyone back in the fall. But families can decide to stay home if they want to and just do remote. Stay in “family” units so if you live with 4 kids kinda stay together. My daughter did this the last semester for her senior year and it worked out fine. Staggering meal times. Staggering class times to make everything work. Large hall classes will be remote but might break down to smaller sections to meet in person. Smaller classes to meet live.
It’s still a work in progress and I like it and know my son will also.
At Michigan only Freshman are guaranteed housing but during normal times they have plenty of housing for pretty much all. But after your freshman year many students want to live “off” campus. Remember that Ann Arbor campus is within the city of well…Ann Arbor. There is “plenty” of off campus housing like a block or two away from any of the campuses. It is plentiful with many different options. Also they were supposed to knock down Northwoods 2/3 apartments on North campus like now but that was put on hold and from what I understand this might be used for some housing. It is like 350 students right there and most are 2 bedrooms with 1 bedrooms mixed in. So if they said only freshman can live on campus they would of announced that already. Getting an apartment some do that almost a year in advance but if you just look at some sites there are many options available.
@TheVulcan wrote:
I have a feeling that if you dig deep, even you will admit the Bowdoin decision came as a surprise. For me, however, it was also a disappointment; I feel as though I’ve come to the end of a 400 page gothic novel.
I’ll be perfectly honest here: I’ve never heard of Bowdoin until I came on this thread. I don’t even know how its name is pronounced;)
We grew up in a different country, and since LACs were never under consideration for our kids due to their academic interests and profile, I simply never looked into them that closely. Some of our elder’s classmates applied to some of the top 3 LACs (and one named William is headed to Williams;), so I sort of know of those.
So that puts a natural limit on the amount of surprise I can feel about Bowdoin’s decision;) But since it seems to be a rich school with a top reputation, its cautious approach appears to align with the correlation I noted upthread among the research universities.
…I just googled it out of curiosity, and this is fresh off the presses:
“Division III Bowdoin College cancels football and rest of sports this fall due to COVID-19 pandemic”
Yeah, its hard to field an athletic team when most of the team is at home.
Knowing how conservative Yale was in early Feb, I will end up surprised if they do invite two years back to campus. (Student rumor is First Years and Seniors, but no idea what that rumor is based on.) 88% of the U/Gs live on campus, and most with shared bathroom configuration. (Hall bath, shared by a couple of suites, so say seven + students/hall bathroom.)
Cornell just released two long reports (47 & 97 pages with appendixes) “the committees of faculty, staff, and students who have worked incredibly hard to develop recommendations for reactivating the university”.
The president still needs to discuss options with Bd of Trustees, and then present a plan to NYS for review. Wondering how long NYS will take to review?
“Over the coming days I will be discussing our options with our Board of Trustees, and I hope to shortly thereafter submit a plan to the state for review. Until we do, we cannot confirm our plans. But the reports provide a clear sense of the considerations that will go into final decisions about whether and, if so, under what conditions, we are able to invite our students back to Ithaca for the fall semester.”
Middlebury’s Plan
Notre Dame’s plan released. I don’t have a kid there but Rice and them seem to have been on similar wavelengths so I was curious.
https://ndsmcobserver.com/2020/06/university-changes-to-campus-life/
Deleted. Middlebury’s plan to bring all students back already posted.
Hm. Now I feel like I need to consider whether that model seems better than Bowdoin’s choice. Bowdoin could have gone with Midd’s model but did not. Cannot wait to hear tomorrow in the town hall why Bowdoin is making choices that other NESCACs are not. I think Midd is the only other NESCAC now to give their definitive plan.
nvm
Having options helps tremendously. I think more students would be open to gap years if they knew they had a solid Plan B.
@ProfSD It seems like plenty of students are already open to gap years, as according to a survey by our student newspaper, over 80% of Amherst students would rather take a gap year than do another year of remote learning
I like their plan, too.
I do think the state where the college is has a lot to do with the decisions by the college. My kids are out of college but I still get the emails and FB notices. Wyoming hasn’t announced any restrictions. The entire state of Wyoming has had 15 deaths so far and very few cases.
Florida Tech has announced rooms will be singles (bedroom) but about 90% of the school is suites only anyway, or apartments. Also said some areas of campus will not be open to the public. There is botanic gardens walking trail and an art museum, plus some other museums and showrooms around campus, so I think that’s what they mean. Anyway, it’s Florida so any ‘rules’ are loose.
Both schools have a number of classes offered online each semester, so any student who wanted to take online only course can do that.
I am surprised that schools are closing completely, but I think that’s a better plan than having them on campus and then expecting no activity - no sports, clubs, classes, parties? That’s just not realistic or fun. I don’t know what my kids would have done if they were sophomores who couldn’t return. I don’t think they would have lived in another city with 3 friends. They might have been happier at home with food, a nice washer and dryer, maybe their hs friends, their work out gyms. I don’t see them wanting to establish a household when they weren’t planning on that if they’d returned to school (one in dorms for sophomore year, one in sorority house)