Obviously we’re all just wildly guessing here, but as I see it the options are pretty binary - the fall semester will be on-campus or online. Other ideas like having students living on campus but taking remote classes still opens the college up to an enormous amount of headaches/lawsuits if COVID is still a problem. Pushing the start date back is an interesting idea, but I’ve seen multiple colleges reject that idea right off the bat - they seem to prefer going completely online to messing around with the academic calendar.
Residential colleges are the perfect environment for this thing to spread. A whole community using the same buffets, bathrooms, gyms, classrooms, on and on. Not to mention how hard it is to stop thousands of young people from holding illegal house parties, etc, when they’re all cooped up. And sure, our youth protects us, but 1) colleges still promote the spread of the disease, even if the students aren’t the ones dying, and 2) young people can still get extremely ill.
I live in New York - this isn’t the flu. The hospitals here are using refrigerated trucks to store bodies because the morgues are full. They are digging mass graves for unclaimed bodies. I know multiple people who have lost loved ones and weren’t able to be with them as they died or hold a funeral. Believe me - Skype funerals are a really, really sad substitute. There are long, socially distanced lines outside grocery stores because they only let in a limited amount of people at a time, and you have to be wearing a mask. I live next to a basketball court that’s been constantly busy my whole life, and it’s deserted now - they unscrewed the hoops. Unless something miraculous happens in the next few weeks (it’s a very short timeline - this isn’t flipping a switch, colleges will need to decide this well in advance of K-12 schools) I simply don’t see how we’re going back to campus so soon.
I’m a rising senior, and I’m planning on taking a semester off (I was going to graduate a semester early anyway, so this is in lieu of that). Honestly, mainly I’m just hoping to be back on campus in the spring. Even that seems optimistic from my perspective. I go to a school that brings together people from all over the country and the world - normally that’s really cool, but suddenly everything really cool about residential colleges has turned them into perfect petri dishes.
The colleges are telling parents they’re planning to be back on campus? Of course they are - they’re businesses! But the reality is this might not be up to them in the end. All we can do is wait.
If you want to compare apples to apples, you have to count all the people who got the flu, but didn’t have symptoms. Unfortunately, we don’t have that figure.
I hope there will be a way for the students to return to campus in the fall. Our S19 is at Denison. It seems to be generally acknowledged that Ohio has done a very good job so far getting ahead of this thing, and now they are going to start a gradual reopening. It will be interesting to see how that is done and whether it can be done without another big spike. Denison has been good about keeping in touch since classes went online, with regular messages and videos from the President and other school officials, but they clearly aren’t yet ready to say anything about the fall. They have promised to circulate some possibilities for the summer in the next two weeks, and I am hoping that will be good. Online classes are imperfect, especially since we are in Asia and some of those classes are at 3 a.m., but nothing to do at all once this semester ends would be worse. Our S19 is Denison through and through after his one and a quarter semesters in Granville, so he will be much happier doing something Denison-sponsored than just finding a summer class online. Similarly, he wants to stick with the class of 2023 come what may, so we are not thinking about any sort of leave. The things I worry about are the possibility that many of his friends might make a different decision and take time off or that S19 will as a practical matter have difficulty getting back to Ohio from the country where we live (he is a US citizen but there aren’t really any flights at the moment and there’s quarantine in both directions). I guess I could also worry about sending him back and then having him catch the virus but that’s a bridge too far at the moment. To the extent we responsibly can, I’m inclined to let him go through this rather than try and fix the problem somehow. He’s a resilient kid and, at least so far, that’s the path he’s on as well.
This is interesting. ‘Some students involved in lab research’ = graduate students. I can’t imagine Ohio State’s 40,000 undergraduates will be able to return in the Fall.
And I’d imagine that to be true of all state universities.
If you google NYC health 2020 health alert #11 you can read the full text. It sounds like all of the announcements about % testing positive and immunity is not scientifically sound data.
@vhsdad , the figures exist. Up to 20 % of the population, half of them asymptomatic, like corona. 60.000 dead across the
US in a bad flu year (like 17/18). That’s, in exceptionally bad flu years, a case fatality 0.1 percent or 1 in 1000. That would be comparable to the best case corona estimate. Cue the usual suspects “but that means it’s no worse than the flu! Let’s let it rip!”
Only: there is no immunity, from previous illness or vaccinations, like with the flu. So, if you’d really let it rip, make that 100 %. That’s already 300.000.
Also, places like NYC, Northern Italy and, I’d bet my pitiful stack of face masks on it, it will turn out, Wuhan, will show that you can’t keep your fatality rate down to the 1 in 1000 best case corona estimate as soon as you get exponentially climbing numbers, with overwhelmed hospitals and medical staff. Or if you end up with all care homes and prisons infected (the so called hot spots colleges are supposed to recruit their immunised students from, according to @friday28. Um, really?) Suddenly you may end up with a fatality rate of 1 in 500. Or 1 in 100. That’s 16.5 million. Or 33.
And the rest may not be immune.
Didn’t work for plague, or small pox, or sweating sickness…
Just test people on campus, as often as the college can afford it. I wish they’d come up with something like a breathalyser!
I realize these boards are NY-centric, but it is important to remember that the NYC/NJ experience was not the norm in the US. Most large cities were able to control the spread, and have much better outcomes regarding fatalities. California and Texas are highly populated and did not experience any medical overload nor substantial deaths from this. California has 3 cities in the top 10 by population, as does Texas, and fortunately had a much different result.
Interesting to see the Ohio State letter. I’m in Ohio, and our new cases have been dropping the past couple of days. So maybe we truly are on the downhill? (For now). There have been statements by the governor of some reopening of businesses beginning May 1 but no details. Ohio was pretty early and strict with stay at home orders, so honestly I’ve been surprised at the May 1 date being thrown out. Perhaps we will become an example/experiment of a state that successfully flattened its curve and is starting a gradual reopen of both economy and universities. I suppose we will see soon!
Anecdote: I don’t get out much, but driving through OSU campus the other day almost brought me to tears to see it so empty. I’ve gotten used to the lack of traffic on my way to the grocery and there are lots of people out walking here, so driving through campus and seeing no one out was just a hard and sad reality check.
Nearly 70% of OSU students live off campus. All of those have paid for, signed leases starting in late summer, and I expect the vast majority of those students will return to those apartments/houses whether school is remote and campus is closed, or classes are in-person and campus is open. For some of those students that is their only place to live, for others their safest place to live.
I expect this situation is true for all schools that have students living off campus, unless of course they are a hot spot in the fall. So, schools will need to plan for these students moving back to the community, even if classes are remote.
UC-Berkeley has yet to make a decision about classes, but they said regardless of whether they are doing in-person, remote, or something in between, they will welcome everyone back to on-campus housing unless it is illegal to do so in fall.
Plot twist: My D just got an email that CIEE has not cancelled her Fall 2020 study abroad (at least yet) in Spain. They are delaying start to end of Sept. so that a student visa is not necessary b/c students would be there less than 90 days. Promising single rooms w/ own bathroom.
I have questions!! Is Spain really going to be open to US students after what they have just gone through? Will there even be flights going back and forth? Would anyone want their kid to be so far away during this time?
No idea if her college would even approve participation – they have mentioned a task force working on study abroad.
Curious what others have heard about Fall study abroad – I’d already written it off. I feel for CIEE - they are trying to survive just like other enterprises.
Canadian universities have yet to make much in the way of public statements regarding their plans for the fall. I did manage to find one report from the University of Alberta and it is likely that their considerations are similar as to what other public institutions are contemplating.
In any case regardless of scenario it looks likely that most undergraduate students studying in Canada can expect some degree of virtual/on-line learning to continue in the fall. Given the average size of first year classes at the large public universities it’s seems likely that the brunt of the on-line/virtual instruction will fall on the shoulders of the incoming freshmen. Quebec is having the worst outbreak in Canada with Montreal being at the epicentre which will probably have a significant impact on the decision making at McGill and Concordia.
@roycroftmom I wouldn’t be so quick to applaud TX for their Covid response. One of the reasons their numbers look low is that they have done far less testing per capita than almost any other state. So it is very likely test their case numbers and death numbers are under counted.
NY and NJ numbers are very high in part due to their reliance on public transportation as well as aggressive testing
I would have a hard time having my kids going abroad right now. I would put the money away if your contributing and save it for a graduation gift or just use when the world is not so hectic.
They haven’t cancelled it because they have 5 months to go before departure - and they don’t want YOU cancelling & asking for a refund. I would take that with a large grain of salt and have a fall back up plan just in case.
@katliamom – Yes, they really want it to happen but just seems really unlikely.
Fort., we’ve not paid anything – she’d been accepted by the program but we’d not signed the contract b/c COVID was quickly escalating. Her college told all students planning on studying abroad to go ahead and register for Fall classes on campus. BUT, she and the other students did not take part in the housing lottery b/c they did it right b4 Spring break and the world falling apart. So if students are back on campus, she may have to find off-campus housing. She’d be fine with that – would like her own kitchen anyway.
I like Beloit College has done. They have broken the semester into 2 modules (7 weeks each). Instead of taking 4 classes for the semester, students will take 2 classes each module. It should make any potential disruption easier to deal with,
Not so sure, @wisteria100. It was very difficult to get a test at first, but that seems to have been corrected here. Less than 10% of those tested are returning positive results, and the public health districts are following CDC guidelines for testing the dead and reporting those as well. Per our ER doctors, there just are not many people sick in Texas right now. Or at least, not many with symptoms or bothering to get tested, but I guess if you have no symptoms you dont feel a need to be tested usually.