it’s actually not a surprise following the CDC, state of IL and city of Chicago announcements about the change in mask guidelines and rules for the vaccinated. UChicago hasn’t jumped ahead of these authorities in any of its decision-making but has instead followed the local and national guidelines to inform its own policies. NU no doubt has done the same at least to some extent but it’s interesting that the vax mandate preceded the CDC’s own surprise announcement last week and that the city of Evanston hasn’t even lifted the mask mandate (maybe it will soon). IMO, these decisions seem to rely on what the institution needs to do vis a vis the surrounding community more than what peer institutions up or down the street are doing.
Northwestern actually would’ve made their announcement much sooner if they could have, however, the hold up was Evanston, not the school.
In general, most school’s at least the big name one’s (all the Ivies had done so before the CDC), Duke, Stanford, UC’s, Vandy, and many more, have done so well before the CDC. Once Rutgers announced and then Cornell announced the dominoes all started to fall. It’s no different than when Cornell announced they would once again go TO next year and so many schools soon followed. Only a few, as you know U-Chicago being one of them, have been test optional prior to this year. It just takes one school to do what everyone else is thinking and then to go from there.
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That seems counter-intuitive. How did the city hold up this decision? You’d think they would have welcomed it.
I think in general that’s true. Schools were looking for first movers last year throughout the pandemic (not just TO decisions last year or this). Schools need to be a bit more bold and innovative.
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Boldness gets favored when the (perceived) reward and its likelihood for a first move that turns out to be right outweigh the (perceived) loss and its likelihood for a first move that turns out to be wrong.
Wouldn’t you think it’s more about trying to do the right thing even if no one else has thought of it? Or maybe having different reasons for doing what appears to be similar and explaining why it makes sense. Not sure that colleges and universities are doing a good enough job communicating to parents how their Covid policies are devised with the distinct attributes of their community in mind. One is left with the impression that they form their policies on what peers are doing (sometimes that makes sense but not always) or maybe just taking the path of least resistance. Lazy thinking, IMO.
If they knew what the right thing was. Also, the “right thing” in terms of actual effect may be different from the “right thing” in perception (which often matters more in terms of future prospects of the organization).
Being the outlier who does something different that is noticeably better is obviously beneficial, but being the outlier who does something different that is noticeably worse is obviously detrimental. Since people tend to remember negative things more than positive things, that may bias some organizations toward avoiding risk in this respect.
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The problem is that I’m not sure an academic institution that relies heavily on perception is one that can be depended upon to make bold faculty hires or take a chance on a new line of scholarship. Obviously, these universities communicate with each other across many of their departments and there are organizational similarities among them. However, the “industry” of academia makes advances when someone bets on a risky decision, not a safe one. Clearly there are bad ideas within academia, but the very institution exists so that ideas can compete for the best way forward, usually amidst controversy. Not sure that how an academic institution responds in a time of crisis is all that different from how any academic would work to solve a difficult problem. These institutions, after all, are run by academics, and the top ones by notable scholars (most of them anyway).
This doesn’t mean the organization should be reckless but betting safe doesn’t suggest that the institution understands what priorities it should have. Many of them prioritized safety when they should have been prioritizing teaching, learning and research.
The UKs office for national statistics found that those employed in the education sector where second only to healthcare to self report suffering from long covid.
https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/article-listing/more-support-needed-for-teachers-with-long-covid.html
Schools and Colleges have a moral and legal responsibility for protecting the health of its staff. If the only difference in covid related factor between a teacher and a non teacher is the job then the job is the problem. The mitigation policies in place obviously wasn’t sufficient.
The difference is that a bold faculty hire and taking a chance on a new line of scholarship is mainly a risk at the department level, rather than the university level. Even then, the risk is somewhat limited (if it fails, the bold faculty hire does not get tenure, or the new line of scholarship is quietly dropped, neither event of which gets noticed outside the academic field), although the potential rewards if successful can be greater (the department and university may get to announce some amazing new discovery or whatever). At the university level, many such decisions effectively diversify the risk, much like how an investment manager diversifies the risk of individually bold investment choices by splitting up the money across many of them instead of putting all of the money into one.
On the other hand, when a decision affects the university and its reputation as a whole (like an investment manager putting all of the money into one investment choice), the risk becomes existential. In addition, the COVID-19 situation last year was one where all choices were likely to be bad, but (due to incomplete information available) it was not obvious to any university-level decision maker which would be less bad in the short or long term, nor which would be perceived as less bad in the short or long term, and any choice and its consequences would be widely visible (rather than limited to a small number of people in an academic area who pay attention to faculty hires or new lines of research). So it is no surprise that a risk averse “herding” occurred here.
To me the proper question is did they contract Covid on the job? The healthcare worker statistics seem appropriate given their direct contact with Covid positive patients. Since there seems to be general consensus that kids aren’t significant vectors of transmission, the question is where these teachers were infected: inside or outside of school.
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The problem with those statistics is it’s just raw numbers. It’s not really based on a percentage of total workers and so can hardly be compared to different industries or the general public. Also as has been stated above, where did they contract covid? Many teachers in the US have been working from home but have still been doing other activities outside of their homes. Without more information it’s hard to draw any conclusion from the numbers.
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All other factors being equal, why wouldn’t you come to the conclusion that teachers caught it at work. Are teachers more likely to engage in risky social practices than those in retail or IT?
At the hospital that I work at the infection control protocol for paediatric patients is identical to adults. In practice we don’t treat kids as having a lower risk of being infectious so I don’t personally understand the differentiation when it comes to schools but that policy choice is above my pay grade.
Can understand that for a small college without easy access to epidemiology experts and perhaps limited campus, facilities and funds. Don’t understand a top medical university such as JHU suddenly switching from “we have the expertise here to ensure we can open safely” to “you know what - just stay away.” No doubt that strategy is the “safest” from a liability standpoint! (Pres is a JD, IIRC). Was it the “best” strategy in terms of what they were actually capable of pulling off? I don’t know but personally I doubt it. It’s as if they were investing more in their messaging than in actually figuring out how to re-open.
Being faced with “bad” choices doesn’t absolve decision makers from making a decision; it’s their job, after all. Herding during a crisis seems an abdication of duty - are presidents and provosts paid to be leaders or followers? If followers, what are they doing with all that extra time on their hands? (we know what the leaders are actually spending their time on).
For the most part, bold hiring decisions originate at the department level, but they are approved at the university level; the provost is involved and sometimes they do care about the scholarship 
Sure, if that guy is a fail, this guy might work out in another department, but my hunch is that leadership in general doesn’t hire that way. Most departments “diversify” by subject area or field of expertise, but all hires are supposed to be publishing relevant stuff with the expectation that they continue to do so (along with other responsibilities such as advising, teaching, etc). It’s a thin market and hiring takes a lot of time and effort. Where I see risk aversion is a department’s desire not to blow their cred with the provost. You hire two rockstars today, you might get to hire three more tomorrow. If you hire a dud, the provost may cut your budget. That usually encourages everyone to take a good look at the quality, not just the quantity, of publications. Opting for a smaller number of home-runs is not necessarily a more risky venture than hiring someone who has hit a bunch of singles.
Where universities make bold decisions is in how they wish to be known. Are they the “social justice” university? the “free thought” university? The “NCAA” university? And so forth. This is usually where they spend a good deal of their time building up their image and raising funds to support this identity. I do believe that the response to the pandemic by and large has been shaped by each university’s own desired image and could thus easily contribute to “follow the herd” decision-making. However, things like state health departments and state law shouldn’t be overlooked as additional factors.
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I don’t have the article to cite, but didn’t they find out that in NYC the majority of Covid cases from last spring were caught at home? Anecdotally, I know that’s exactly how my in-laws all got Covid (not in NYC but in a nearby metro area); they shut up with other Covid-infected family members and/or invited close friends (with Covid, it turns out) to shelter in place with them.
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You just explained it yourself right there. In this particular type of case, doing something different from the herd that turns out worse is a bigger risk than the reward for doing something different from the herd that turns out better.
A mistake in hiring an assistant professor can be limited by not giving them tenure.
Production of PhDs far exceeds the number of faculty job openings, so departments hiring faculty (especially for tenure track) have the luxury of being very choosy.
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It’s an understandable judgement call. Is it the best one for the undergrads at JHU would be my question.
Yep and it’s mostly a local issue. There you will have a slow-moving process, a significant investment and little tangible payout (6+ years before you know they aren’t going to work out). Still, the provost is watching. They keep track of who is a star later on if not immediately, or where the losers end up. A bad hiring track record - or a good one - gets noticed because the quality of that department impacts the entire university - not just that department.
YMMV here. Yes for humanities. For some of the social sciences it might be a different story and then again for the hard sciences a completely different picture. Competitive R1’s can be more picky than choosy, which might narrow the field quite a bit, and there are uncertainties from whether this potential super-star will come on board to whether he/she will work out once there. The world of research breakthroughs runs slowly. A lot of investment with not much tangible benefit to show for it. Reputation, whether you are a good university to be from or end up at - all of that matters and it begins with the academic department but it impacts the entire university. If a department or division isn’t doing well, that hurts everything from undergrad admit rates to getting the top PhD’s, to say nothing about the missed breakthroughs, Nobels and so forth.
Covid has damaged the advancement of research in most fields. We know this from personal anecdotes as well as from the news of halted PhD programs and faculty hires, the deficits run up by universities and the hit to endowments. We may never know the what-if’s from 2020/21, but there is a reason universities want to go full speed ahead. It’s not just about getting the undergrads back paying full tuition - although that’s obviously important as well.
Brown just announced they are requiring the whole community (students, faculty, staff etc) to be vaccinated. Only allowed exceptions are medical and religious. They want more than 90% of their community vaccinated.
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They already mandated the vaccine so is the staff an addition to the mandate?
Good for them!
Yes. I’m surprised that they were able to do so (but am glad they did).
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Carlton and Mac both here in MN did the same when they announced the mandate - it applies to everyone.
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