Amherst is allowing freshmen and sophomores on campus late August in single rooms plus some thesis writing seniors. Juniors and other seniors online. If the school can’t return to full capacity in January then those off campus for the fall will have priority to return…which I guess means freshmen and sophomores will move out (that was not really clear in the email). No reduction in tuition mentioned but since my son is a senior who will be at home we don’t pay the approximately $20,000 room and board. Personally I would have liked to see priority given to freshmen and seniors for the fall although I guess this is a way to have everyone on campus at least one semester and seniors can be there for graduation. No dining hall - all meals on campus grab and go.
Nonetheless, Harvard and Stanford are not even allowing a majority of students back and Williams is allowing everyone the option to return. Online education is not the same as being at a residential college with your professors. These prestigious school should reduce tuition at least this year to lessen the blow to families with their kids at home!
Frightened to break away from the herd mentality? They’re frightened of a deadly pandemic that has killed 130,000 people in this country alone. And rightly so. As for the gap year, colleges can’t offer every student who asks for one that opportunity.
Apparently it costs colleges more to offer online classes than to have them on campus as usual.
However the risks of outbreaks explain the decision.
There’s really no good situation. 
We have to face the fact that, as a country, we prioritized bars and restaurants reopening over reopening schools and colleges.
However you look at it, it’s terrible. Families won’t want to pay so much for online classes, even if they can “save” R&B, and colleges are in pickle since they have expenses and don’t want outbreaks.
I can’t understand why they can’t have one lab group or discussion group per lecture offered on campus with the others online.
The fact the 1st wave never went down and, after plateau-ing high, is now moving to a “doubling” movement over10 days AND accelerating means it’s really out of control and may spread everywhere like these Australian bushfires.
Some States seem much more impacted than others: Colleges in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, etc, are probably better off than ASU, UAlabama, or Florida universities at the moment.
@hillybean Agree completely. Yet, Harvard decided to risk first years as guinea pigs to see if the on-campus but 100% online instruction model would work. These kids are the first test-run batch of a new set of pandemic protocols. They say in the Gazettle: “Without a vaccine or effective clinical treatments for the virus, we know that no choice that reopens the campus is without risk,” the president and deans wrote.”
Full text here: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/harvard-to-bring-up-to-40-of-undergrads-to-campus-this-fall/
Sounds like H wants to secure a fall freshman class full of the youngest and emotionally least prepared kids who will be obedient and won’t complain too much when asked to evacuate campus if COVID hits 10%+ of the returned student body. Can’t help but ask what are their priorities? Faculty safety? Upperclassmen safety? Or, Endowment safety? Isolating the youngest and most emotionally vulnerable among all students into an aggressively social-distanced environment with no in-person human contact with faculty, older kids or other non-pod peers, feels wrong. This fall marks the very first time most kids will leave home to live on their own in isolated singles only dorms with no social events, even on weekends. Does it make sense to use them as guinea pigs to test-run if this in-person experiment works during an escalating second-wave COVID pandemic?
@MYOS1634 The most horrifying fact is that every school advertises they have students hailing form all 50 states in large numbers. Now, these kids are without parental supervision and expected to act responsibly purely based on some honor statements they sign? For real? When kids like me, who have been emotionally suppressed for six months, descend upon those 20+ colleges in ME, MA and CT, does anyone believe we will never behave like what everyone saw in the beaches of FL and CA recently?
What will happen if there’s a local outbreak? We will be sent home really angry, after leaving the staff on campus and the local community hitting another new peak of infections. Sounds like a lose-lose scenario to me.
Can students opt for a gap year. Good friend applied the minute she got an acceptance. She knew she didn’t want to do Harvard this way. But it’s not the schools fault there is a pandemic. I think they did the right thing by making s clear plan and not dangling possibilities forever. I think you underestimate your kids. They are probably thrilled to be going. Who wouldn’t want a single at Harvard. It’s not like they will be hiding out and not interacting.
Hard to imagine anyone at 18 is thrilled by a house-arrest style prison sentence, trapped in a small, cold single room in order to “…abide by strict social and public health regulations. For example, they must submit to coronavirus testing every few days and cannot visit each other’s dorms or dining halls…” Breaking the rules, the offender will be sent home, but still paying tuition and housing.
“They (H) want first-years on campus for the first couple of months in order to ease the transition to college life, but we can’t talk to upperclassmen because there will be no upperclassmen… We can’t really build personal connections with professors because everything is going to be online and it’s much harder to talk to them if everyone’s trying to access them in these small slots for virtual office hours. And then we can barely talk to our own classmates because of very restricted socialization rules.”
"The only common spaces that they (H) said will be open was the laundry room… It just doesn’t make any sense. The only place where we can talk to people is while doing laundry? What?”
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/7/8/harvard-coronavirus-fall-freshmen-reactions/
My son, an entering freshman, was pretty disappointed. But he would go out of his mind with boredom if he took a gap year. Travel is restricted, and work is unlikely given the economy.
Given the alternatives, going onto campus, even with restrictions, seems better.
Trust me those students who do attend will not be staying in there rooms staring at the walls, they will be doing what most 18 yr old’s will do - socializing (off campus if need be). The loss will be in the classroom where there interactions will be limited.
I think their priorities are to give the new kids a chance to see the physical plant, learn their way around Cambridge, meet their teachers, etc. If you are a freshman and you don’t want to come back, you don’t have to. There are no guinea pigs here.
Online streaming…
Netflix…$126/yr
HULU…$72/yr
Disney+…$96/yr
Harvard…$49,693/yr
So 40% of the student body on campus in the fall, freshmen and those who need to be on campus for academic reasons. Single rooms, shared bathrooms (but fewer students sharing).
ICE announced that international students cannot stay in the country if all their classes are online. Harvard is far from the only university now saying that the announced plans, which took months of planning, may now change.
Grad and professional school students will certainly be affected and many of them have apartments here.
State universities depend even more on international students and this will hit them hard.
We’ll see if Harvard is still online.
@CU123 Totally! Tons of Boston clubs and frat houses at other colleges to go to. They’ve got 250 quarantine beds ready to save our lives. When nearing that capacity, everyone will be evacuated again with three days of notice, like in March.
Netflix…$126/yr
HULU…$72/yr
Disney+…$96/yr
Tuition and VR Office Hours…$49,693/yr
Solitary confinement with three daily prepacked meals left at door…$22,738/yr
First cohort of heroes to test-run a pioneering coronavirus testing and contact tracing software from HSPH… Priceless… For everything else, there’s MasterCard
@compmom Good point. Let’s see if they will change or sue the government. Higher Ed news suggested they might go to courts.
@hebegebe I see your points. However, their 100% online plan is quite different from all other Ivy+ colleges which offer a hybrid system of large lectures online, small sections in-person. Solitary confinement is clinically harmful to mental health. On GroupMe, there are lots of complaints about inequity, mental health, abandonment and using freshmen as lab mice this fall because they don’t want to have to send home suddenly upperclassmen who already experienced March exodus. That’s from a forum of 1,600 undergraduates within 24 hours of the announcement, still growing in size. Did they think it through or surveyed enough students to arrive at this decision? Doubt it…
Cornell launching offshore centers for internationals who can’t return.
https://thepienews.com/news/cornell-university-study-away-scheme/
Yes, Harvard and MIT filed a suit and other schools have joined.
That Cornell program doesn’t help grad/doctoral students who have apartments and are actually living here.
It’s happening already for internationals… very sad.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/7/9/freshman-stopped-belarus/
My question is why would anyone, not just international students, go to an airport in Europe or Russia to come to US at this moment? Ongoing bilateral travel bans are still in place, except for essential workers or citizens.
Harvard, if you plan to spend millions on legal fees to fight for internationals, please cut tuition for everyone. Princeton did 10%, you can too. Also, don’t forget you have a bunch of kids here on US soil waiting to be taken off WL…
I think Belarus is still subject to the Covid travel ban instituted back in March. All students from those countries will be denied entry to the US unless they’re US citizens.