@fretfulmother - My D’s major is quite small and almost all the upperclassmen are taking the same classes. The course sequencing is very tight because there are so many major specific graduation requirements. It would definitely work for her to do a pod like model but I don’t see how that would work across the board.
Does anyone have any thoughts about clubs and club sports or intramural sports taking place? Or do you think kids will be in classes (and class related activities) and outdoor personally directed recreation only?
housing them by major? I do not like that. Why should the 1/4 of the kids in campus housing at CU have to live with kids in their majors when 3/4 of the kids are living with whoever thy want off campus? I don’t think that rule will make much of a difference since it’s only 25 percent of the kids. Plus, do first years all have majors? What about undecided kids?
yes i committed to Duke. 
hoping to have live classes now, at least some hybrid form of it. i can’t do more online classes from home. otherwise thinking of deferring.
@gkunion, I wasn’t talking about your comments. I’m sorry I gave you that impression.
My post was in response to comments displayed across CC on various covid threads. I get that people are confused and don’t always know the right thing to do, and I understand some comments are hypothetical. But there have been some not quite nice opinions expressed too, especially in regard to low income workers. And they weren’t hypothetical.
The little pods of students is not new to CU this year. They have a lot of LLC and have been doing these groupings for years. My nephew was in an engineering one his first year (only year on campus) and he took an engineering seminar class in his dorm with his fellow first years, and then took calc, algebra, and chemistry with a group from that dorm. They were not the only kids in those classes, and in fact I think there were 200 or so other calc students. That only left him with one elective class, so not that hard to pick a class they all need and make that the ‘elective’ of the semester. The honors college already has its own dorm and seminars. The school could make a few different groups of classes and let the students pick what they want from those groups. Do you want English comp, bio and French or do you want history, German and chemistry?
It won’t be perfect and maybe they’ll give more options, but they think this will work. I don’t. I don’t really think the LLCs work that well. At my daughter’s school, all the students were really sick of their pod of students with living on the same dorm wing and taking 3-4 classes together. Same kids, all the time. My nephew didn’t really like his dorm roommate either and didn’t stay with his pod of students for studying and socializing, and that’s the purpose of creating the pods, so that the group of 30 or so kids stays together. My daughter was very glad she didn’t do the Freshman Interest Group (FIG) program, but if that had been the only option, she would have done it. Better than online classes.
I think it will be a bigger issue for schools to make classes smaller. Are professors going to want to teach 2 sessions of 15 kids each rather than one of 30? Where will they find the extra classrooms? How will they redo the schedule and have 30k students re-register? Who gets the original section and who has to take the new section at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon? Are students turned away from class if they forget a mask? Can they change pods?
Interesting. By bringing the first years in early presumably placing them in singles temporarily, could Davidson then pair them up into doubles after 2 weeks if all’s well and free up the usual housing for upperclassmen?
It’s important to remember the CU announcement was lacking in details. I assume they will do pods where possible and it will mostly be freshmen and sophomores. They already have separate dorms for engineering and a few other majors.
They also said CU would be changing the student code of conduct to include compliance with COVID-19 public health requirements. No details on enforcement or punishment though.
I get this. I notice I retain much more when I read a real book, for example, rather than on a screen. I suppose it’s a question of being more used to books, but I can see that there may be a loss of retention if you change the way you learn something.
@twoinanddone I’ve decided that we here won’t be able to “help” our kids’ schools figure out the details. That’s for the colleges to figure out. Only they know all of their options and restrictions on their campuses when it comes to dorms and classes. We can “wonder” and some posters like to say they don’t see a lot of this stuff “working” but who knows? These colleges have been working on this for months already. We won’t have to wonder much longer. We should all know the details in 2-4 weeks.
@homerdog Agree, and it should be very interesting. Lately I’ve been thinking about what schools should NOT do rather than wondering what schools should do. Here are two things I think that schools should avoid (and yes, these will be unpopular ideas 
).
- Sports. Forget sports. Sports are problematic in themselves and are also a major influencer in parties and high density gatherings. Forget about sports and focus on your core mission - academics.
- Freshmen. This is going to be very unpopular, but don't bring freshman on campus for the first semester. Freshmen require extra care and handling, they don't know the ropes, and will siphon resources needed to get campus back up and running. If everything runs smoothly, bring freshmen on in spring quarter.
Release the hounds.
My girls took irons to school but didn’t use them. They did use hair straighteners ?. They used them to touch up collars and hems. They get pretty hot and could be used on masks. So - pro tip for those with long hair that still use them.
Back to important worries…
@homerdog My understanding is at some large universities, you have to apply to be a major going in and all classes you can take are heavily restricted by your major. For example, I am aware that at NC State, your schedule for the entirety of your four years must be carefully planned out at the beginning of your college career to satisfy all major requirements and general education/distribution, with a number of “restricted” electives (courses that are yours to pick but have to be somehow related to your major), and only a few “free” electives. Many of the schedules are very similar.
That would NOT work at ALL at LACs like Amherst and Bowdoin, where the curriculum is so unrestricted.
As I said my daughter and nephew didn’t like the LLC/pod programs, but it would be a lot better than online learning. If that’s the only option, the students will adjust. My daughter still had all the classes with the pod group (all first year theater majors had the same classes) but she just didn’t live in the dorm with them and she didn’t get the 1 credit for the course they took in the dorm. NBD.
I think by the spring there may be fewer choices in the cafeterias too. The price of food has gone way up, and the schools are going to have to re-budget. Maybe there won’t be as much bacon served or only 3 entree options instead of 5. Still, I think most kids would rather be eating at school with limited choices than eating at home while doing online courses.
The CU announcement was thin, but I think they wanted to get the ‘Go/no go’ out there, and get the calendar set. They also want to get the message out that things will be changing, that no one should expect everything to be like it was last fall, and that it will be okay.
Great pictures of schools reopening in South Korea:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/05/26/pictures-say-it-all-how-south-korean-schools-are-reopening/
Lots of separation, masks, disinfecting, plexiglass.
Are you trying to provoke us!
Re: #2 - colleges and the surrounding communities make a lot of money (R&B board, food, school fees, etc.) from freshman being on campus. They need the freshman to make their money, they already lost a ton by bringing last year’s freshman home 3 months early.
Second, freshman are the life blood of your college. You treat them like second-class citizens and they might not stay all 4 years and it looks bad in attracting new freshman in the fall 2021.
Re: #1 - too much money in sports, especially the Power 5 conferences to not have football in the fall. Can you imagine telling Notre Dame students and alums that students are allowed on campus but we are axing football for at least a year. Good luck with that one! These alum are the ones that give a ton of charitable giving and contributions to the colleges at a tune of 10s of millions of $$ each year. They want their football…
Secondly, sports is one way of keeping alum invested in their alma mater and more relevant. Think Clemson, how they are a national brand now, when 10 years ago few outside the southeast region, barely knew the college or even what state it is in!
A friendly wager. My prediction: the students in the Power 5 conferences will be back on campuses in the fall and they will be be cheering for their favorite college players from the friendly confines of their dorm room.
Generally not even close to “all” classes for most majors. Even though engineering majors may have requirements that can consume up to about 3/4 of your first two years’ worth of courses, (a) different students may start at different levels of placement (e.g. starting in calculus 1, calculus 2, or calculus 3 for math), (b) may choose different options for in-major courses (e.g. honors physics versus regular physics for engineering majors), and (c) may choose different out-of-major courses for general education requirements and free electives.
Of course, if the student’s major is a liberal arts major, then usually half or fewer of his/her courses are specified by his/her major. But any student in any major does need to plan his/her course work to satisfy prerequisite sequencing for his/her major and fulfill general education requirements in order to graduate on schedule. Note that LACs can have general education requirements ranging from none (Evergreen State) to extensive (Harvey Mudd).
@socaldad2002 I understand your points, but they do not actually refute mine. Freshmen, as a group require more support when resources are scarce. Also, to say they are the “life blood” is a little much. Sports represents $$ to only a few schools and they do bring more issues with managing density. For many schools, I think that the value they place on sports rivals that, or in some cases is greater than the value of the academics. If you believe in the “covid second wave” then anything a school can do to reduce density should be considered.
A few majors (Engineering, Architecture) are rather restricted, but not the traditional liberal arts disciplines (apples to apples). And that is bcos the professional certification (for engineering, say) requires a bunch of courses so electives can be few and far between. So, yes, little flexibility if you want to get out in 4 years. But a humanities/lit majors has all kinds of flexibility on course selection during 4 years.
But for most majors at most large Unis, I would argue that course selection can be even easier as one of the benefits of a LAC is small classes, but once that class hits 20 students, it’s full. And the class may only be offered once a year, or once every other year.
Rivet: re 2: TV contracts are worth millions to each team in the Power 5 conferences. (And don’t forget, the student athletes are still on scholarship, so the Uni incurs that expense regardless of whether they play.) Even if the stadiums are empty, the colleges cannot afford to walk away from that kinda cash. The P5 will play football if there is anyway possible.