Discussion in NYT today re College in Fall included this snippet about what would happen in a full-blown outbreak.
Levin: Talking to public-health officials in Connecticut, we concluded that in a full-blown outbreak, you don’t send home students who are sick or in quarantine because they were in contact with sick people. That would be a public-health risk, so you wait until they’re not infectious. But you might test the rest of the students and send home the people who were negative.
Richard Levin, an economist, is a former president of Yale University and co-author of a report on gradually reopening higher-education campuses in Connecticut, written for Gov. Ned Lamont.
Or perhaps it is precisely because LACs have neither financial nor credentialing clout of HYPMS+ that they are chomping at the bit to restore their experiential component.
The speed and certainty with which universities announce their intention to reopen campuses appear to be in inverse proportion to the strength of their brand and financial position.
Have you looked at the endowments of the top LACs? Williams College, for example, has an endowment close to 3 billion. My MITer would find your statement about LACs lacking credentialing clout to be quite humorous considering he has fellow MIT friends who lost out on job offers that went to Amherst and Williams kids instead.
I agree with @TheVulcan that LACs depend more on factors that are negatively affected by distance learning. Therefore, they’re more incentivized to bring, or attempt to bring, students back to their campuses. Many of them are also among the best positioned to bring their students back due to their sizes and locations.
I wasn’t picking on Amherst specifically, but I just looked them up, and their yield rate is under 40% - and that is including binding ED that fills a third of their class. That means that for RD students their yield is less than one in three.
At the same time HYPSM (you know, those schools that provide “mere certification”) enroll anywhere from two out of three (YP) to four out of five (HS) students they admit (M enrolled three out of four previously and announced record yield this year).
And that is without using any binding rounds, mind you.
So I think it is pretty clear which schools stand to suffer more “summer melt” if the on campus experience is called into question. Heck, we even see this right on this board!
I’d take that bet.
With this proviso: That it include all the Harvard and Yale students jetting home rather than spending another hour within the strict confines of their fortress-like campuses - testing or no testing. I bet half of them don’t make it to Thanksgiving.
Stanford is starting to post framework for fall. All posted on their web site.
Expecting students on campus one week early and taking finals from home over Thanksgiving. Graduates students housing unchanged. Max class room 50. Expect online to be default for many classes.
Interesting for undergrads:
“…Our default plan is to have half of our undergraduates (that is, the equivalent of two class years) back on campus for the fall quarter and each subsequent quarter, changing each quarter. It may need to be a smaller number in a given quarter if health conditions require it…”
“…We also intend to have a four-quarter year, including the summer of 2021…”
“…Assuming that public health conditions allow, we intend to have undergraduate first-year and transfer students among those on campus for the fall quarter, to allow them to get to know our campus, form community and begin their Stanford careers in the most positive way. We also intend to have graduating seniors on campus in the spring. Beyond that, we have not made decisions about which undergraduates would come to campus in which quarters…”
@Rivet2000 I don’t understand Stanford’s plan. How can they have sports or clubs or classes that have a mix of grades if only some kids are on campus for any given quarter? The college experience isn’t divided up by grade like that.
@homerdog perhaps you have answered your own question? Maybe they don’t intend to have these things available to the student body in same way as they have been historically . For clubs they may offer virtual and in person participation. For sports… well, I am not sure if anyone has even communicated their intent as it relates to sports be it club or NCAA…
Stanford’s plan is the most convoluted thus far. Who’re going to take classes in the summer quarter? It can’t be the seniors. Juniors likely want their summer set aside for internships. That leaves freshmen and sophomores for the summer quarter, which means no summer internship next year for sophomores.
@Rivet2000 : “…our default plan is to have half of our undergraduates (that is, the equivalent of two class years) back on campus for the fall quarter and each subsequent quarter, changing each quarter.”
Rivet, so freshman and transfers arrive in fall for one understood term, not precluding a successive term after Thanksgiving, but no word yet as to which dedicated term the freshman/transfer return will take place inside of.
Can’t wait for the details. I expected them to be ultra conservative, so details should reflect that. They always had a “summer quarter” but not in a big way. Internships in 2021 are an interesting question in general, but way too far out for any certainty. Most internships in 2020 shifted to online, many with the hope of f2f in July perhaps.
@Waiting2exhale My reading has freshman and transfers pegged for fall and seniors pegged for spring. Subsequent quarters for freshmen/transfers and seniors are not set and quarters for soph or juniors are not set.