before the inevitable comes through: “academic help” means stitching together a worthwhile education in the area she wants, at a level she can take advantage of, in a place that’s been gutted by two decades’ budget cuts. Silk purse scraps. She’s picking up fast, which is good.
The fact is last semester at my son’s university was in-person and pretty close to “normal”. Students didn’t drop like flies when waves happened, professors didn’t either. There wasn’t a mass exodus of instructors or other support staff. Small adjustments were made at certain points to adjust to localized conditions. All in all it wasn’t a bad semester.
Some students have taken gap years or gap semesters. I’m sure some faculty have quit or made major adjustments. The reality is college for most has continued largely as it was before. I think the 2020-2021 college experience was not ideal and no one (university or student) wants to go back to that. We’ve learned a lot in the last two years and we’re better able to understand what works, what doesn’t and where we can make adjustments.
In many jobs across the US workers have continued to work in-person to provide services that keep this country going. Some workers have inevitably gotten covid, quarantined and gone back to work. I’ve seen it at my workplace. Obviously workers have a choice, they can move on. Thankfully enough have stayed to “keep the lights on”.
Covid isn’t going anywhere. It’s going to be around as an endemic. No one can hide forever and the way Omicron is expected to spread we’ll all be dealing with it soon enough and moving forward from there. Hopefully this strain will be milder and offer the majority of us some longer lasting immunity.
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My kids go to Howard University. A few HBCUs went to remote learning after Thanksgiving and having students take finals online (or before Thanksgiving) because of the predictions around more Covid cases this winter.
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Presumably students who live within driving distances were more likely to return to campus. If that was the case, it might reflect more the degree of local infections.
One of my kids went back to campus, while my other kid stayed home, due to my D22 taking a vacation with a group of friends to the Caribbean and needing to fly out of Metro DC area (my family is based in metro Atlanta). She knew students who tested positive that ended up celebrated together after completing finals and all were fully vaccinated and some were also boosted. The students still on campus at the end were a mix of international students and West Coasters who stayed through the end of the semester, and some local students. But the campus was mostly a ghost town after Thanksgiving.
Neither the faculty nor staff resigned from either of my kids’schools. Many of the faculty strongly prefer in-person teaching and believe remote instruction does not equal that. A substantial percentage of the students would take a gap year if the school went remote again. Lots of incentives to manage in person for the spring.
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Plenty of parents here on CC seem to be able to find leafy residential college experiences for their kids and are not wealthy. Perhaps CC alerts them to merit opportunities or broadens their search parameters or they are just highly motivated to do so.
Even during covid, there will be a variety of college experiences available at various price points for students.
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Sometimes it’s easier to just ……never mind……
You wouldn’t know, nor should you. Nor should you have to worry about who’s tenure-track and who’s contingent, who’s permanent and who’s temp. It’s the job of admin to keep the front of house running as smoothly as possible. But back of house across the country is in a state I’ve never seen it in before. I won’t bore you with shop talk, but if your child’s not at a giant-endowment school, where I would look out is in the upper-level specialized low-enrollment courses. Assuming the pandemic continues, you can expect those to be cut if they don’t have strong enrollment: t-t faculty are leaping in (or being pushed) to make the save, but there’s still only so many of them to go round, they don’t want to be doing this because it’s damaging their research, and they’ll need to focus on bread and butter. If your student really wants or needs such a class there’s probably a workaround, but they’ll have to think ahead and rig it themselves. In any case the best way of making sure that things continue to run as smoothly as you’ve been experiencing is probably to nod and play some golf or something when you get news that during a spike things are moving online again.
It would be generous, though, if you recognized that among the workers who’ve gotten covid, quite a few have died, some have passed the disease on to family members who’ve died, and others have been left with long-term disabilities that are administratively and medically difficult, not to mention enormous medical bills. There’s also a small army’s worth of people who’ve left work, including early retirements, to take care of people living with those disabilities. I did wonder why the job market was suddenly so tremendous, with so many plum upper-level jobs available. I mean you glance at one and it tries to leap into your arms. But I am wondering if that’s why: it’s not that so many people in senior positions have died; it’s that so many have left early.
If covid were a matter of hanging around at home and coming back, I don’t think we’d be seeing any of these labor issues. Neither would this thread exist.
Well, some of us do have friends who are tenured at universities. Their experience differs. It sounds like the school highlighted is particularly dysfunctional, for many reasons besides covid, though that hasn’t helped.
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A look at the current classes and instructors teaching at my son’s university during the spring 2022 semester shows the same offerings with the same professors as previous semesters. Taking into account the number of students signing up for these in-person classes things look to be pretty normal. All of this information is accessible on their website as current and historical class data is readily available. It’s easy to see the classes, who’s teaching and how many students are attending. I don’t really see any red flags there.
Yes, some people that are working in-person have gotten covid. Some workers doing remote work have gotten covid. People going on vacations have gotten covid. People isolating at home have gotten covid. Tens of millions of Americans have gotten covid. Covid isn’t going anywhere.
Life does go on for many as we have needs as a society. People need food, water, shelter, security, healthcare, and a variety of other goods and services. There are people providing all these services daily to keep this country going. We have effective vaccines that greatly reduce the effects of covid. We have masks that can block the vast majority of the virus. We have policies that can be used when needed to reduce spread further. We have therapeutics available now. Covid isn’t going away.
We aren’t going to stop covid by going to full time remote learning. Not to mention we tried that and the outcome at various education levels was abysmal. There is a place for targeted use of remote learning on a limited basis when local conditions are extreme. I doubt you’ll find many that think it should be the norm or our only option. The reality is most students and teachers prefer in-person learning because it’s a more effective medium for most courses. Thankfully the majority of colleges and universities are working hard to keep classes in-person and provide the best education they can for their students.
Workers around this country work daily, in-person, to keep our country going. These workers have the resources stated above available to them to stay as safe as they can. Our college students will be doing those jobs in the future. They need to be trained well to carry out those jobs. There are plenty of individuals willing to continue to do these jobs and if some aren’t then someone else will be brought in to do them. We’re all replaceable.
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The CDC has said HCWs have different quarantining and isolation procedures now. Already the airline industry wants the same. Which group will be next?
Didn’t NYS ready shorten the quarantine time to 5 days for all essential workers?
I have no idea.
hopefully college students lol
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Dr Jha from Brown on Twitter. You can see how a shorter isolation period can work.
https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1475138739680727047/photo/1
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Rice sent out an email today giving SOME details about spring plans. It basically says boosters are required, classes will start on time (January 10th) but many will be virtual for 2 weeks, students are encouraged to stay home those 2 weeks but can come to campus the weekend before classes start if it’s not feasible to stay home or it’s unduly burdensome, masks will be required indoors initially and gathering sizes are to be less than 50. Classes with less than 50 students can be in person if the professor wants, but they must offer a virtual option as well. Is sounds like the 2-week period is to allow people to get boostered. There is a lot they aren’t addressing such as testing policies but say another email will be coming out this week. BUT, what I think is most interesting is the tone which is very different from other recent semesters. The message and tone suggest that they don’t intend for the restrictions to stay in place and they are moving towards planning for more of an endemic phase of covid and trying to balance limiting restrictions while keeping people safe. A couple of paragraphs:
"Most public health experts believe there will not be a clear end to the pandemic as COVID-19 transitions into more of an ongoing endemic condition that is always with us, but generally significantly less life threatening with available vaccines and treatments. This understanding embodies the evolving situation at our university. Because of the substantial medical and public health advances in fighting the pandemic – and the protective personal choices made by the vast majority of our community – the virus, to our knowledge, has not caused serious illness in the Rice population during the past year.
We must also recognize and take into account the toll that our pandemic risk mitigation policies and personal choices have taken on both the broader wellbeing of our community and our ability to execute our mission at a high level, and we must adapt accordingly. The Rice community has demonstrated we can live with the virus in a relatively safe manner, and that will remain so with the omicron variant. For that reason, we will begin to shift our policies to a posture that recognizes COVID-19 as endemic and facilitates our ability to deliver the best education and opportunity to our students, while still taking reasonable precautions. What this means going forward is generally fewer restrictions that inhibit our activities. It also means reducing certain public health measures such as those used in the isolation and quarantine of cases, which will be less necessary for those who have been fully vaccinated."
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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Princeton sent out an email expecting in-person second semester to begin as scheduled January 24 and having staggered move in the 10 days before.
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Will be interesting to see if Brown follows the science of their resident expert.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.providencejournal.com/amp/8986881002
So far they seem committed to not going remote.
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Here’s hoping!
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