Which would seem to me a really good reason to rethink the purpose of college, not attempt business as usual.
The authors write “universities can operate remotely with only minimal disruption to their mission”
Of course, the mission of college is a big subject, and debated.
Has her university extended her funding to allow an additional year on campus?
“The sports issue is intriguing. I went to a large school with ~ 100,000 people at the football games, and crowded bars before and after. I sincerely doubt that this version of sports will occur in the fall”
Lot of that will depend on the state and college. I could see that still happening in the south and possibly midwest, but would agree that maybe the tailgating and socializing after the game could be curbed. The biggest stadiums in CA are in the Los Angeles area and there is very little chance they allow fans into those. LA is the worst hit right now and the numbers aren’t getting better.
Michigan will be interesting as I can’t see the governor allowing people in stadiums at public universities like UM and MSU, but they may still decide to do it.
Which is what I said in this thread last week. All the hand wringing going on here about if they/will they etc… Colleges will attempt to open. With testing/tracing with apps/isolation of positives and masks and social distancing where possible. Like others said, this is happening at home now. Not sure if you all have been able to keep your teens and adult children locked up at home, but I have not in the past few weeks. We are doing our best to have a life and still be safe. That means small group outdoor gatherings, trips to the beach and park, allowing some people into our quarantine bubble etc. Wild horses could not stop my kids from going back to campus, even in the most stringent circumstances - if colleges are open. Wait and see how few parents are going to keep their non-gap year college students home if colleges are open. Very few…even the most vocal here will cave.
The core mission of delivering education and certifying a student’s completion to a recognized level (conferring a diploma or degree) is commonly recognized. It is the optional missions like the experience, socialization beyond the classroom, networking, etc. that some students and parents pay extra for that are the ones lost or equalized when every college goes to distance education.
im still trying to catch up, so sorry if this has already been addressed. But what about having the kids come back to campus 2 weeks early and isolate in their rooms during that time, and during the entire semester not go off campus into the community (but community stores/restaurants could drop off delivery)? Combine this with significantly reducing the number of workers on campus, and enact protective measures for them when they are on campus. I could see a prof giving a live lecture from their house and being projected onto the blackboard, and at the same time the prof sees a live video of their classroom so they can interact with the kids. Indoor janitorial service can be performed by the students. Cafeteria split between kitchen area, and serving/sitting area separated by heavy duty plastic sheets, with fresh air pumped into the kitchen, and all dishes/utensils are disposable.
Also, in an earlier post someone was stating the death rate for the various age groups, which shows the most impacted group is over 65. While that is clearly the case, now that Covid patients aren’t being sent to nursing homes where elderly folks are residing, the Covid death rate for over 65 should come down somewhat.
Excellent question! I don’t know - it hasn’t occurred to me to ask - partly because at this point she doesn’t think she’ll need an extra year.
She thinks her last year – this academic one, fall 2020-spring 2021 – will just be more intense. OTOH, it’s likely a couple of science conferences she expected to present at will be cancelled, and that will free up some time.
A piece of bad news from Sweden: There was a school outbreak in a K-12 school in Skellefteå, mostly among the teachers of high school aged kids. A teacher died. Indefensibly, the authorities didn’t test the kids. We could have learned a lot about transmission, but we didn’t. This infection might have been teachers passing the virus around among themselves, or maybe the high school aged kids were also involved. We don’t know.
We don’t have much evidence of young children transmitting the virus, but that might not be true of adolescents.
(in Swedish. I used Google Translate)
https://www.lararen.se/nyheter/coronaviruset/efter-larardoden–nu-oppnar-kageskolan-igen
The police here where I live actually did just that last week, although the party was outside in a backyard, not inside the house.
It was a group of service academy students who had just had a socially distanced graduation (they were coming back in groups over a two week period to move put and graduate). One particular friend group proceeded to have a small graduation party but it exceeded the 10 person limit that was in place by governor mandate. Someone in the neighborhood called and the police came and broke it up. To be clear, it wasn’t a wild party, but it was a group of less than 20 having a backyard cookout in daylight after graduating. This led to another neighbor posting on a Facebook community forum chastising the unknown neighbor who called the police. That started a huge disagreement about whether police should have been called; some were vehemently saying to give the grads a break as they are about to go out and serve our country whereas others were up in arms that they were disregarding not only the state mandate but also the Academy’s rules for social distancing.
Meanwhile, just days later there were hordes of people hanging out downtown on the waterfront enjoying beautiful weather, not social distancing nor wearing masks, but sitting on the benches in large groups, also along the seawall, crowding the sidewalks, etc.
This assumes everyone lives on campus and the campus is separate from the surrounding community. It may be true for some small LACs, but certainly not for large publics where many kids live off campus. It could work for some schools but not for all.
I’m in the funny situation where one of my kids did stay at school, while the other had to come home. My oldest stayed in her off campus apartment, while my freshman didn’t have that option and came home. I feel a little badly that she has been able to stay with and hang out with her roommates, while S19 has been stuck at home with us, not seeing any of his friends. However, all of his college friends went home, so unlike your son, he’s not seeing them hanging out together without him.
Most of my daughter’s friends headed home. She has only mostly seen her two roommates. She did tell me that last week, several of her friends met in a big parking lot and positioned their cars in a circle and then sat on the trunks, etc and hung out for a while talking. There haven’t been any parties, though until yesterday, those who were still around were busy working and finishing up finals which ended yesterday.
This is her first summer staying at school, and with restrictions lifting, school over and the beach a couple miles away, I’ll be curious if she and her friends start hanging out together w/o social distancing. They’ve been following the mandates so far, so hopefully they wont disregard them now.
I’m hoping my son is able to go back to campus this fall but so far his school is still in planning stages. To make matters worse, he is a fall athlete so he most likely will lose this season. At least your son has work to keep him busy. My son is still jobless at the moment!
@me29034 you are right that it won’t work if kids live off campus. My D’s school is seriously looking at switching to three 15 week semesters, with kids attending 2 out of the 3 semesters, in order to reduce the number of kids on campus. If schools did this, then at most schools all kids could live on campus. This would be tough, though, on kids who already signed leases for off campus housing. It seems like there are no good solutions, just less bad ones. And what’s less bad depends on your individual situation.
Those “trunk parties” are big in my area.
I wonder if this is true? I really don’t know how housing works at most schools. I just checked numbers for my kids school and 60% live off campus so it wouldn’t work there. I know many schools we looked at only guaranteed housing for freshman and some didn’t even do that. I do wonder what the norm is.
Bite your tongue… Lol
I need to have college football especially Big Ten! ?.
I have been watching bean bag world Championships (Cornhole??) and I didn’t turn it off and actually watched it! Think I am losing my mind.
Then Championship Bull riding. ?.
Good thing I grew up in Detroit and we got Windsor TV channels
Curling to me is cool ??.
@ucbalumnus, as you yourself aptly noted in this thread, not all colleges are delivering the same education and not all degrees are certifying completion to the same level.
One can obtain nominally the same degree from a range of schools from a commuter “directional” college to HYPMS.
How much each increment is worth with and without the extra experiential component is a question each family will have a different answer to.
Colleges that don’t house all of their students just have less control. There’s all there is to it but, again, they will control them as much as they can when they are ON campus. I suppose campus or local police could police parties but they won’t do anything about smaller get togethers where the virus could still spread. Students will have to wear masks if that’s the rule to go shopping or enter a restaurant like everyone else who lives around a campus. I think some of the plans suggested here just are not going to happen. Sorry, but no college, even a small one, is going to have all students quarantine upon arrival. That’s pie in the sky and unrealistic.
So how is a university going to make it “work” when kids live off campus? I don’t even know what that means. They will control their campus and the kids will do what they will off campus.
I do think that LACs with a lot of tradition MIGHT be able to sell the kids on the whole “shared sacrifice” thing. The majority of kids on those types of campuses have drank the Koolaid and love their school and what it stands for. If most of them can be convinced that they need to act a certain way to save the school and keep things as open as possible on campus, then they just might do it. Even if it’s 80% of the kids, that would be something. At a giant university, I don’t know that thy can rally the students exactly the same way. I almost see these small schools pushing a big marketing campaign to the kids about how they are all in this together in hopes that it will affect behavior.
I think schools will do the best they can, and I think some will be more successful than others due to a variety of factors…size, location, weather, student cooperation, social scene etc. Some won’t open at all.
Living off campus in a rural college town looks very different than living off campus in a city.
I do think we will see cases crop up on campuses, and when that number approaches a certain level the college will go back to remote learning once again.
Just my opinion. Time will tell.
Yes, but it appears that most posters here are feeling that they “are not getting what they paid for” due to the loss of the experience, even though the educational content and prestige remain the same (and may differ from that of the cheapest college that they could otherwise have chosen).