Dorm living is more dangerous than Lollapalooza. At many large state schools, it’s contact with a thousand or more students via cafeterias, classrooms, libraries, student groups, etc plus tight living quarters with shared bathrooms and roommates for a much longer time. You are going to have more cross-contact vs a one-time event.
People are talking like the schools would set up quarantine wards or buildings and care for the students, but I don’t think they will. The question may be how the students could deal with it on their own. Will friends help? Will friends/roommates run for the hills? When my daughter had the flu, I offered to go there (2000 miles) but she didn’t really want that (she just wanted to be miserable, and she was very good at being miserable and sharing it with me on the phone). A friend picked up some medication and a vaporizer, some take out Chinese soup, tissues. I was really worried about her not getting medical help if she needed it and did not think it was her roommates’ responsibility to nurse her. She got Flu B about a month later but immediately went to the health center and got Tamaflu and the second round only lasted a few days. Her biggest worry that time was not dying but if the coach would let her ride the bus to the game 3 days later. It was about 4 games from the end of the season and she had started every game for 4 years. I think she would have walked the 100 miles if she had to to make that game.
Getting Tamaflu isn’t possible for this illness. There really isn’t any treatment but time.
I think if schools do open the student will have to accept the risk of getting the virus and all that comes with it. The school may banish the student for 14 days, the school may let the student quarantine in the dorm (and move a roommate?) but I don’t think the school will take responsibility for the care or the cost of care. If the student misses 2 weeks of classes? Maybe the school will allow medical withdrawal or a liberal make up schedule.
So we should all live like Bubble Boy?
At popular universities there is seldom empty dorm space. That is certainly true in the Boston area.
Most college students commute to college from where they lived before college, and most colleges have predominantly commuter students. So most colleges could do a hybrid format before a vaccine is available, with in-person instruction (modified with social distancing) for those class components that do not adapt as well to distance education (e.g. labs, arts) and distance education for other class components. Some non-traditional students trying to schedule college around work and family obligations may prefer the distance format if it is more time-flexible, even though most here dislike it.
Of course, this forum focuses on residential colleges that draw students from beyond the local area, so the problem looks a lot bigger when that is the universe of colleges in view, since they have to deal with students living in crowded dorms and who would have difficulty self-isolating if they got a contagious virus that causes serious or deadly consequences just enough of the time to be feared.
Isnt that what has been decided by world gov’ts? Based on conversations with friends in NZ/Australia, they believe they are going to go on complete isolationist lockdown as countries.
It will be interesting to see what happens here, but I dont think most leaders even know, yet.
I feel bad for every student and every parent having to make a decision for Fall 2020…neither of my kids are in a decision year right now…but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t commit to a school that doesn’t plan to start back in the fall…if, say, BU were one of the finalists (as it was for one of my kids), no way we would choose it over a college that plans to have the students back on campus…$70,000 a year and sitting at home would be too hard to take (all of this assuming, of course, that there are no issues in China and Italy and the other early countries that would show backsliding).
I’d set up up like they do with the Meningitis vaccination…you have to show that you have it before you can enroll. I believe COVID test results would have to be shown before enrollment as well. (and there should be provisions for online for kids who have underlying conditions).
@SouthernHope Huh? If a student chooses BU and the university decides to start in January, that student is still getting two full semesters for that $70k. The two semesters just starts in Jan and goes into summer. Yes, the students will not be in school in the fall but you don’t pay tuition for that time.
My thought: Make it simple and clean. All higher education institutions should be closed for the entire 20-21 year. Everyone start again in Fall 2021. In the meantime, college students could be required to do some sort of independent research project with a mentor.
@brantly Yep that would be perfect. Seriously.
The return to campus in Fall 2021 would be epic.
What would that mean for the next year’s applicants?
Vulcan logic strikes again.
Would your average pre-frosh or frosh/soph college student studying a pre-professional non-research-oriented subject at an open admission community college or less selective four year college really come up with a worthwhile research project and execute such research effectively? Particularly those who come from families of limited financial resources and no connections to any research activities.
Most college students are not like the common stereotype on these forums who have published research papers while still in high school earning A+ grades in all of the hardest possible courses.
Everyone is a year off.
And there will be a year delay in getting otherwise-anticipated new physicians, nurses, other health care personnel, and research biologists and chemists who would be waiting out a year of college closure. Would that really be helpful when we have a virus crisis?
For perpetuity?
Who would pay the professors’ salaries and the other massive costs of keeping the college afloat while all the kids are sitting home for the year?
——Make it simple and clean. All higher education institutions should be closed for the entire 20-21 year. Everyone start again in Fall 2021——
Students who already got accepted and like my son who is currently a freshman at college have less problems with it but what would happen to students who apply for next fall? Unless all colleges agree with two sets of freshmen to start in fall 2021, it would be big disadvantage for current high school juniors. Very unfair…
I can visualize that there are tents in grassy field or parking lots or turn a gym in campuses into a mass quarantine space if clusters happen in middle of fall semester. But city and county most likely would step in much quicker in 2nd wave. Infected students will need to remain at dorm (there will be RAs at least) or be taken to a local hospital.
I wonder if I should switch my son’s health insurance plan to his university-provided health insurance plan next year if his school opens campus…
There might be an objection from the high school class of 2021 (and 2022 and 2023 and…). No thanks.