@AlmostThere2018, I agree. Do you know who is going to lose from this Immigration decision? The US! Talent will go elsewhere. According to friends in other countries who are professors, that is already happening.
I think there are just different preferences. Some at any given school would prefer to have online classes right now given current situations. Others would prefer to have in person classes (even if that means limited experience on campus and possibility that classes will go online at some point). In that regard, colleges are in lose-lose situations.
We feel that the campus experience this fall (which will largely consist of eating takeout meals in a single room) is worth neither the risks of learning disruption nor the associated costs.
Seniors have bona fide reason to assume those risks that go well beyond their mere wants, as eloquently expressed in their open letter to MIT Senior Leadership.
https://thetech.com/2020/06/28/co2021-council-letter
The rest can wait and see.
Very proud of MIT’s sober, measured approach to making these difficult decisions and, at the same time, doing right by the students and families.
I would lie if I didn’t say Vandy’s full tuition merit offer seemed attractive in the spring, especially considering the 3hr drive proximity.
The radically different way in which the two schools handled the situation further reassures us we made the right choice.
Will be also waiting with interest to see what Caltech will decide. Even though it ended up not being DS’s choice, I am pleased to see they, too, did not rush headlong into promising a full return, and are taking the time to make their decision.
There’s a lot to like about Brown’s plan for this upcoming year compared to the plans of MIT, the other Ivies and many LACs. Moving to a 3 semester model allows all students to have 2 full semesters in residence (with possible exception of 2nd years). And starting the entire first year class together in person in the spring and keeping them together through the summer seems like a good solution especially w/offering the free optional online class in the fall. I’d think few Brown students would be requesting gap years with this plan. Wonder how they got the faculty to buy in to the extra semester…
MIT had announced a while back that everything that can be taught effectively online, will be taught online. Only small group experiential/lab based activities will be in person for on-campus students, and 1st semester course load can be easily navigated around those.
These plans are interesting. All classes with more that 20 students will be online. I wonder if, at the end of this whole thing, we’ll ever see a return to traditional lectures.
Hmm… the lack of distancing goes against the CDC’s guidance on school readiness: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/community/School-Admin-K12-readiness-and-planning-tool.pdf
I wonder if a school district opens itself up to legal action by ignoring this guidance, and then finding itself with sick students.
@TheVulcan - I’m not caught up on this forum yet - but my kids just told me that MIT announced a few things: only those students in great need, and rising seniors are on campus; 5K discount on “whatever portion you pay” and no tuition increase. Other info?
This part of MIT President’s letter covers it perfectly:
"We appreciate the thoughtful position of the 2021 Class Council that seniors should be guaranteed space on campus for both semesters, and we know it must feel sharply disappointing that so many elements of the typical pre-pandemic senior class experience are out of reach. However, given the tight Covid-imposed limits on the number of students we can responsibly house, committing now to having the senior class in residence for both Fall and Spring would have the unintentional result of keeping many other students from having any campus experience this academic year.
As a matter of equity, we believe it is important, in this academic year, to enable every student to spend at least one term on campus. Our current hope is to offer every first-year, sophomore and junior the opportunity to be on campus for the Spring semester.
To help make that possible, we will spend the Fall term studying how to make campus residential life work best in the shadow of the virus and will closely track medical and policy advances that could help protect against it and control its spread. What’s more, with new housing coming online by the start of the Spring term, we also expect to have more beds available."
https://president.mit.edu/speeches-writing/further-decisions-about-fall-semester
Between the 5K discount and the 4K off-campus room and board allowance the net effect should be approx. equivalent to pocketing room and board for the semester for those receiving financial aid. For full pay families it amounts to receiving a $5K discount on top.
They hope to bring years 1-3 to campus in the Spring, and guarantee a semester of paid work.
All the details are in Reif’s letter here:
https://president.mit.edu/speeches-writing/further-decisions-about-fall-semester
and this FAQ:
https://covid19.mit.edu/fall-2020-faq
We are very pleased both with the decision and with the open way they conducted their deliberations.
Smith College announce plans yesterday and it’s not what we were hoping for. DD is a Senior coming off a year of study abroad (cut short by 2 months with remote learning) and will not be allowed to stay on campus for the first semester. We live on the west coast so it doesn’t appear she’ll be able to find off-campus housing before classes start. And she doesn’t particularly won’t the campus experience that will be offered this fall.
As a result, she is leaning towards taking a gap year and letting this all shake out. I told her it’s her decision and we completely understand and support her decision. She realizes that remote learning is not the way she learns and is not willing to pay to take classes from her bedroom with no other college experiences. I have to agree and I know the physical isolation from people is very depressing for her.
In addition, because she changed her declared major during sophomore year, there are specific courses she needs to take and those classes may not be available to her due to the reduced number of classes that will be offered. And of course the final course listing will not be available before you have to commit to attending in the fall.
Bottom line, this is such a mess and very sad for this generation of college students.
Decision has been changed.
https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/university-system-georgia-require-masks-classrooms-after-all/VyTlGue4hfyynzl2snRHqK/
MIT has the most comprehensive plan so far.
The only thing unclear to me is how they can accommodate at least three classes of students for on campus living in the spring semester.
A minor quibble to this–the weather. I went to Brown for a master’s degree that was supposed to go approximately 12 months–September to August. Opted to leave during the summer and work, then come back in the fall to finish the degree, because Providence in the summer is not very pleasant. Hot and humid. I lived off campus, but I believe I heard that most dorms at Brown do not have AC. Maybe they will add it. I know for many this is not an issue, but for me it would be.
To be honest with you, it’s really hard to compare each colleges approach to this pandemic as they are all in different environments and have different needs. Vanderbilt (Davidson County) has "only’ had 122 death while MIT (Suffolk County) has almost 10x that at 1,008 deaths.
In addition, we do not know if Vanderbilt’s approach to bring students back on campus is wise or not and they waited until June 16th to make their announcement after much discussion with health care providers and their faculty and administration. They also have access to their top Medical Center and have the housing to accommodate and de-densify dorms.
Again, way too early to say that one college has a better approach than another until we see the results come fall. I give colleges like Vanderbilt a lot of credit for trying to balance public safety with the goals of an institution of higher learning.
I know other schools considered the option for summer semesters but decided that (1) students shouldn’t give up their internships or research that happens in the summer and (2) the student who go to school in the summer will have no break assuming that fall 2021 is in session and it will be a very long time to be stressed out taking class - spring, summer, fall, spring…
Stanford’s plan includes 4 full quarters including summer:
Stanford is prioritizing low density and internships for Juniors as the most important:
I don’t teach at Brown, but I can see how this might work.
My guess is faculty are keeping the same course load over two terms. That means even though classes are running for three terms, faculty only have to teach in two terms, with the same course load. You usually don’t have first years and seniors in the same courses anyway. By junior and senior year, most students are not taking many (if any) intro courses. Departments could set up their course schedule to have the bulk of the lower level courses and first year seminars in the last two terms, and the upper levels in the first two terms. I would imagine you can cover the needs of almost all students this way. Of course, that is a logistical nightmare for departments! I would hate to be Chair this year.
For non-tenured faculty they might offer an adjustment to their tenure clock. Many institutions already offered delays after the spring disruption.
The catch would be finding faculty that are okay teaching in the summer. As @oaktown78 noted, Providence summer weather is no fun. Maybe offer them a one-time course reduction? That would be worth it!
MIT President Reif writes in his letter that the hope is based on a combination of improved understanding of what works best to protect their community and the new dorm building projected to come online:
"As a matter of equity, we believe it is important, in this academic year, to enable every student to spend at least one term on campus. Our current hope is to offer every first-year, sophomore and junior the opportunity to be on campus for the Spring semester.
To help make that possible, we will spend the Fall term studying how to make campus residential life work best in the shadow of the virus and will closely track medical and policy advances that could help protect against it and control its spread. What’s more, with new housing coming online by the start of the Spring term, we also expect to have more beds available.
Under our current plan, given the facts we know at this time, seniors would not be on campus next spring. If conditions change fundamentally – for example, if an effective vaccine or treatment becomes widely available – we would be delighted to offer seniors the opportunity to be on campus for the Spring term as well."
https://president.mit.edu/speeches-writing/further-decisions-about-fall-semester
They are also not just leaving the incoming first years hanging:
“To attend to the incoming Class of 2024, we are working on innovative strategies for delivering a special MIT first-year experience. First-year students will receive more information about these efforts next week.”
Their online version of Campus Preview Weekend (CPW, called this year CP*, or CPWhat?) was widely considered a smashing success
http://news.mit.edu/2020/in-light-of-pandemic-virtual-mit-campus-preview-weekend-0511
and the online orientation is already off the ground.
I think it is important not to confuse strategy with outcome.
It is, of course, true that we do not know what the outcome will be at each of the schools, but it is also evident to me that schools are not always making decisions based on what is best medically.
The correlation I noted in this thread (and got some flack for) on June 3 (post #5622) seems to generally hold:
“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.”
The truth is, right now MA has about ten times fewer new daily cases than TN (their population is almost exactly the same).
And no, like any other college, Vandy does not have enough housing to de-densify. They just push students off-campus - an approach that MIT outright rejected for its obvious epidemiological complications.