I agree. Though the group I am most concerned about is incoming freshman heading to campuses with extreme social distancing in place. My D is a rising sophomore but if she had to live in a single last year, eat in her room, and socializing was near impossible, I’m not sure she would have made it. Especially if parents weekend and mid-term break were cancelled. She LOVES her school but dealt with quite a bit of homesickness and such at first. Being around others was the only thing that made it bearable!
I know the IHME Model has been off (under predicting) but considering how popular it seems to be with policymakers and the White House is anyone troubled that the current prediction with today’s update is 201,129 deaths by October 1st?
Do we believe at a certain amount of death on the model schools will pivot to closed campus (before moving students in) or is this all about getting bodies on campus to pay room and board?
@roycroftmom I’m really surprised too; back in April, I thought it was going to be all-or-nothing, with either virtually all colleges returning or virtually all colleges (except those who needed to reopen to avoid being closed) remaining closed.
Add Colby to the list of NESCAC schools planning to bring back students; according to this email sent out on Friday, they are very optimistic about bringing students back.
UC Berkeley still hasn’t formally announced yet. But rumor has it that Classes/discussions/labs smaller than 25 people will be in person, the rest will be online. IF this is true, I really like it. Although most of the classes will be over 25, but labs and discussions are usually around or less than 25. So most students will have some kind of F2F. Upper division classes tend to be small as well. I remember my upper division quantum chemistry class at Cal had only 10 kids.
I also think this approach is smart and simple. They should announce any day this week now. The above could be completely bogus. Will see.
Conn College is bringing students back. At the very least, they are bringing back freshmen, because they said in an email which was only to freshmen that they are bringing them to campus. “Will you be here on campus? Yes! We are making plans to welcome students to campus in late August, the details of which are still being worked out by our re-population task force.” They didn’t say anything about nor to upperclassmen.
UCLA just announced. Only 15-20% of classes to be offered on site or hybrid. Earlier in the day it was announced that first priority housing will go to Pell Grant recipient students. I read online that 35% of UCLA students are Pell Grant recipients; that first priority alone will fill up the de-densified dorms very fast. Students should find out this Wednesday if they got a spot in housing.
*edited online to hybrid
Looking at https://classes.berkeley.edu it appears that many common lower division courses like MATH 1A, CHEM 1A, ECON 1, etc. have discussions in the 25-30 range. But some other courses like HISTORY 7A, PSYCH 1, PHYSICS 7A have discussions of 24 or less.
Reading and composition courses like ENGLISH R1A and beginning to intermediate foreign language courses like SPANISH 1 appear to be in classes under 20.
Of course, many labs or arts would have to be in person to be effective.
It’s easy to think that the students are flattering themselves, asserting that they are following the rules, while accurately assessing the other students’ failure to follow them.
But with drinking, when questioned. students vastly overestimate their classmates’ drinking. They think other students drink much more than other students actually drink.
It could be the same with social distancing. The students who aren’t social distancing are the ones people see; they’re perceptually salient. Meanwhile the ones who are staying at home are invisible; nobody can see them obeying the rules by not hanging out in large groups. So students might be overestimating the other residents’ noncompliance.
So NESCAC colleges that have announced intentions to bring students back now include Bates, Colby, Hamilton, and Conn College.
At first it sounded like good news that colleges are opening back up. But as I digest what they are really offering (no activities, events cancelled, eating in rooms, many classes still online etc.), I’m beginning to think that this is essentially about making money on room and board.
I’m not suggesting I have the answers, just that opening no longer seems as great to me as it did initially.
i think most institutions, despite their sincerest efforts, will adopt a hybrid model that, in retrospect, will appear poorly advised and clunky. No one wants to attend college under these conditions, but few students will pay full freight for a fully remote semester. So that’s how we end up with an ugly hybrid model.
At D20’s school, Barnard, the plan seems to be to stretch one year’s worth of classes over three semesters (fall 20, spring 21, summer 21). This is to facilitate social distancing and lighten the classroom load. It isn’t a terrible idea, but By Fall 2021, burn-out is almost certainly going to be an issue among this population. Without all the fun perks, school will feel that much more like an endless grind.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I have had to delete a lot of off topic posts. Please stay on topic so the thread can remain open. There is another thread for posts not related to school.
I jokingly mentioned the South of France a few (hundred?) pages ago, and I was only half joking. My D might lose her merit scholarship if she takes a gap year, so she’s thinking about all online from somewhere cooler than here. My spouse found her and her roommates a house in Southern France through a coworker, so they’re thinking about 4-5 months there and 1-2 months near a ski resort if they’re open.
For my D and her friends it’s going to come down to the universities plan and whether they think the plan is doomed.
The fall term is going to be far from normal on any campus. If a college promises you near-normal student life, I’d seriously question its motivation. At the minimum, I’d ask for all the details of its plan and closely examine its viability under various scenarios. Since no one can predict what would happen in the fall, promises aren’t worth anything. I’d rather a college starts off with strict rules and gradually loosen them if the threat of the pandemic diminishes.
@Empireapple where have you seen a plan with “no activities”? I think colleges are planning on students having their extracurriculars as much as they can in person with masks as long as the groups are under the allowed number of people gathering. Certainly, meetings can be small enough and could be done “remotely” but there’s also no reason to believe kids can meet in person. I mentioned above that one of the reasons Bates states for planning only two classes at a time is so students still have 4:30-9:00 free to participate in the clubs etc. If the college had the students taking the normal four classes, they’d have to add class sections to that late afternoon and evening time.
I think colleges will do their best to offer as full of an experience as they can. They know the reasons kids prefer the residential model and it includes all of the “extras” one can’t get from home. Sure, no giant parties in the streets and likely no spectators for football (if football happens) but, hopefully, we will all get more details all what actually will be happening on campuses as plans get more detailed. Maybe anyone concerned about a particular activity should reach out to the leadership of that group and find out if they know how they’ll meet this fall.
That’s a lot of ifs. What are the chances that hundreds of students can travel through airports and train stations all over the country and every single one of them will test negative? Are they all quarantining for 14 days after move in? Where would they get their food if they have to stay in the dorms?
How are colleges planning to track temperatures? I haven’t heard much about that in any communications from the schools. At least one plan we’ve seen called for students to monitor themselves. I don’t think that every student will monitor their temperature on a daily basis. Do we know when temperatures go up in relation to when someone becomes contagious?
I haven’t seen any guarantees of testing either, much less guaranteed testing of every person on campus every single week. That’s going to be prohibitively expensive. Are parents willing to have a fee added to their tuition bill to cover it? Who’s supplying all these tests, and which labs can process the massive number of tests that will be required?
We don’t know that students will wear masks when nobody is looking. It sounds like many won’t, and social distancing will probably fly out the window too.
I don’t think colleges are going to say students can’t leave town. I think it will be more restrictive. The plans I’m hearing about locally are talking about closed campuses. If that happens, no travel between dorms is the least of students’ worries. Students who live in campus housing would have to agree not to leave campus and no off campus visitors would be allowed. The only people coming and going would be staff, faculty, and commuters. It means life is more restricted for those who live on campus, but colleges can only control so much in their effort to limit the chance of community transmission.
Yesterday seems to have brought a raft of updates, including one from Wesleyan. Seems pretty whitebread compared to some of the plans I’ve read about on this thread: A late August opening for the entire campus (with phased move-in days) and a home-before-Thanksgiving end of the semester.
No mention of tents being erected outdoors although I’ll wager they will be since the campus is set up perfectly for that (athletic fields alternating with academic buildings.)
What I found particularly interesting was Wesleyan’s approach to quarantining. It’s actually much more specific than anything I’ve read on this thread so far AND has been their policy since April (click on the link underneath “Health and Well-Being”):
https://www.wesleyan.edu/reactivatingcampus/index.html
Temperature isn’t the best indicator of covid-19 infection. As we know a not-significant proportion of those infected are asymptomatic and for those who have symptoms, some studies show only 50% have fevers (100.4 or above). Some schools have discussed providing every student one of those Kinsa thermometers, but I haven’t seen that be a done deal anywhere.
This could definitely be a problem in some areas where testing is still lagging. I am sure schools are working with state health departments on this, as well some are developing their own testing capabilities, like Purdue and U Miami.
What college is talking about having a closed campus? Do you mean just for on-campus residential students? So off campus students, staff and faculty can come and go, and those who live on campus can’t?
Not sure how that would work, students will have to leave campus to go to the work jobs, go to the grocery store, go to healthcare appointments, and it looks like some schools will be offering at least some sports so athletes will be going to and from campus.
Most campuses also can’t be physically closed off from the public, so people will still be visiting campuses to tour, even if there aren’t official tours being given. Everyday more schools are opening to tours as well. Denison, Tulane, Ohio Wesleyan are just a few I know that are welcoming students to campus right now.
South of France and a ski resort with friends? Is that the lesser option?