UChicago announced yesterday that they are pushing back the start of class one week and going virtual the first two weeks of the next quarter.
Penn is also delaying move-in by a week and going online for the first two weeks of the semester. In my opinion, itâs unnecessarily disruptive to a community that is 99% vaccinated and regularly tested. While D is happy to have another week at home, neither she nor I am thrilled about online classes again. Covid is here to stay and colleges need to act accordingly. Vaccines, masking, and testing should be enough.
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How does one do online classes while on campus unless everyone has singles? How can one contribute in class unless one has their own private space?
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I have no idea. D has her own room in an apartment-style suite, but some students live in doubles or triples.
No one is catching Covid masked in a classroom! I get maybe pushing off the start of class because Covid cases could explode on campus from out of classroom activities and if class is supposed to start early Jan. I donât understand online class. Come on back but no class makes zero sense.
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With omicron they will, even if they havenât before. Masks are helpful but not magical. Apart from which, unless the professors are going to be 18 years old, theyâll very sensibly be staying out of rooms full of breathing college students, masked or not.
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Here is an example where students did catch COVID-19 while masked in class (elementary school):
The kids, profs and staff at our kidsâ schools require the booster. That plus masks seems like pretty good protection.
Teacher in that case was unvaccinated and kids unvaxxed. Not the same as a college where 99 percent of students and staff are vaccinated.
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The number of people showing up for work will be a decent measure of how many agree. At this point, if your school is delaying its start, Iâd assume theyâre delaying because if they donât, theyâre going to have staffing problems that are not of their choosing. It takes a lot of people to run a university, and a lot of people are okay at this point with abandoning careers in academia for work thatâs some combination of âpays better/is more meaningful/has less toxic politics/has less covid exposure/more desirable locationâ.
Iâve never seen universities advertising remote positions before, but theyâre not hard to find now. Surprisingly nice ones, too. Itâs not because it was in their strategic plans.
If universities donât step up and provide a quality product that students want then there could potentially be a backlash and the university could suffer. Itâs not just one group that has the reins here. Many occupations have had to and continue to provide services during the pandemic. Everything cannot go âonlineâ. People on both ends do have options.
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The assumption that delays in opening for spring semester are due to staffing issues is incorrect. Delays are due to medical and scientific projections that the current wave should subside by late January, making it safer for all to return to in person learning and not overwhelming the quarantine facilities at the school. Elite schools can afford to delay; students will wait a few extra weeks. They remain committed to in person education.
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Thatâs my daughterâs biggest stress about online classes. She is in a suite of 8 - 4 double rooms. There is very little privacy. But she would rather struggle through it I think then spend more time taking classes at home.
Headphones⊠Everyone will be wearing them anyway. Kids are creativeâŠ
My 2 kids University gave out guidance about a week ago that the booster is now required, but they are giving students until 1/31/2022 to get the booster (or within 30 days of becoming eligible for the booster)
They are also requiring that everyone returning from winter break to the campus for the Spring, 2022 semester will be required to provide proof of a negative PCR test within 4 days prior to arrival.
The University will continue its weekly testing policy along with requirements for mask usage indoors, and in groups outdoors.
Other announced measures include;
- The University announced its closure over the winter break period. It remains open to essential personnel, and to those who were granted special access. If you were not granted access to campus, please do not visit the campus unless there is an emergency.
- All campus facilities will be closed to the public. Visitors to campus will be limited to those supporting essential functioning,
- No fans will be able to attend sporting events hosted on campus during the holiday break,
- No gatherings will be approved on campus,
- No campus tours will be conducted through the winter break
Since students can start arriving on their campus starting on 1/7/22 and classes start on 1/10/22, it will be interesting to see how the school handles things (They sure need to hurry if the school plans to start the semester later). The overall semester positivity rate (592 positive tests out of 92002 tests given or a 0.64% positive rate) was excellent in my view, but the Covid positive numbers during the last week (12/11-12/17) were very bad despite having most of the student body stay home after Thanksgiving because finals were given remotely for all students (2.4% Covid positive rate for professors and 15.7% Covid positive rate for students).
My D22 is currently scheduled for 3 in-person classes 1 hybrid class, and one remote class and S24 is scheduled for 2 in-person and 4 remote classes. My kids are both okay with any and all restrictions as long as they get to go back on campus.
Is this the rate for surveillance tests? Is vaccination mandatory? If the answers to both questions are âyesâ, thatâs one of the highest positivity rates Iâve seen on any campus.
The answer is yes for both questions. But the numbers are based on a much smaller set than normal as the school tested around ~5,600 students a week during the semester, but only 281 students during that last week on campus because so few students came back after Thanksgiving. But it is worrisome that 10% of all positive Covid tests for the semester came when the campus had between 5-10% of the on campus student body remaining.
Care to share the name of the school? I havenât heard of many schools that allowed the choice to stay home or go back after Thanksgiving.
Iâm sure admins everywhere are aware of this. Not much to be done, though, if people quit rather than show up to teach and run the offices in clouds of covid. And theyâve been quitting all semester, and people are not showing up in droves â or sometimes at all â to replace them. The pay might be tiny, but theyâre not actual slaves, you know, canât be forced to show up. Iâve been watching admins everywhere placate and play for time all over: on one hand, employees saying âthis job is not worth the risk to health, forget it,â and on the other, parents who are decidedly uninterested in anything but their kidsâ promised magical four years. When things are good, covidwise, you will win; when things are bad, labor will win.
So long as the parental yelling is at the same level across peer institutions, college is seen as necessary, and enrollment is âstickyâ (people donât switch schools easily), they donât really have that much to worry about. From their pov, this is a bad-timing problem: they were expecting to have a demographics-driven oversized-workforce problem over the next decade. Employees are leaving too early. If they do what they need to do to pump the brakes on attrition, they wind up fine.
In the meantimeâŠ
College is still not normal. âNormalâ was already untenable anyway. I remember when I realized that my daughter was not going to have the kind of gold-tinged-afternoon leafy-80s-campus college âexperienceâ Iâd had â she was probably 7 or 8 at the time. It wasnât just that I couldnât pay for that; it was that the stakes had grown so high and the kids so anxious, and the debt so enormous and the academics so panicky, and the world beyond so bifurcated wealthwise, that this experience was no longer available to anyone except maybe-maybe those so wealthy that nothing the children did could really matter.
We donât know how long this pandemic will go on. We donât know when this SARS might be joined by another. Itâs a good time to ask serious questions about what college is for, who itâs for, what it is, what it can and might and canât look like. The universities will look after themselves. They donât last hundreds of years without being serious hardball players taking a long view. But in terms of what you and your kids wantâŠyou have room for these questions. You canât make many demands, but you can maneuver. My kid, for instance, is DIYing her way through Giant Threadbare State U with my academic help and with scholarships that take her COA down below cost of room and board: sheâs got all kinds of flexibility mapped out and fast friends. Sheâs getting her time and moneyâs worth, and zoom/in-person isnât a make-or-break thing.
If part of your beef here is that youâre paying gazillions for a dream thatâs not materializing, then I think you have to ask a few things:
One, is the kid content; if so stop there;
two, is the dream available for purchase elsewhere,
and three, if not, are you paying the gazillions for anything?
If the answer to that is no? Iâd stop.
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Oop, sorry, @PrdMomto1, I donât know why that replied to you instead of to @MarylandJOE.
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