Harvard is only having freshmen. They are giving up a lot of room and board. They are inviting freshmen so they can get to know the school better and meet each other. And those freshmen aren’t required to go. They can take class from home if they want. It’s the schools having everyone back that likely need the room and board. And, I keep saying it, but a lot of those schools are going to have kids in dorms taking exclusively remote classes. Maybe it will take a week or two but that’s where this is going.
No we are in the Chicago suburbs.
I say all colleges
Honestly, I think that that school should go online only as should all schools where the students have that attitude.
Watch the local news and you can see that everywhere our public transport drivers, emergency sector staff, grocery store workers are catching and dying from this disease. A lot of them earn barely above minimum wage. They risk their lives to provide our essential services.The CDC guidance is to protect them as well as the sick and elderly.
intelligent adults are more then capable of getting an adequate if not optimal education online. I have no desire to bend over backwards to cater to them and provide more just to endanger society.
@homerdog
Fair enough I stand corrected about Harvard.
@homerdog thanks for the reply. I have a lot of family in the Chicago burbs. They seem to think they are safe there, that the virus is a “city” problem. Sounds like they are misinformed.
I don’t see us having a big spike here. People know. It to gather in big groups. My point is that the virus is out there and people will get it and then there’s the contact tracing and the isolation. There’s a lot of space so it’s easier to make safe choices here. No crowded sidewalks, etc. No area of the country that I know of has zero cases.
And this survey was conducted by U Conn profs/researchers of U Conn students, most of whom are CT residents where mask wearing is mandatory indoors and phase three of opening has been postponed indefinitely. I can only imagine what the responses would have been if this survey had been conducted in one of the sun belt states.
A clarification on Twitter from the prof who conducted the study:
To clarify! This work was part of the Behavioral and Social Sciences #COVID19 Working Group convened by
@UConnleadership, and led by @UConn_InCHIP. We conducted surveys of 1000’s of students, did an Ideas Lab with students, faculty & staff, and interviewed countless students.
UConn doesn’t really need to worry about going online-regardless of what they do, there will be some public college for CT students. Many of the private schools which do so will not open back up. At all.
I have naively been thinking that my son’s school, in CT, with the majority of students from New England, NY & NJ, would be better off since those areas are used to wearing masks and dealing with slow and careful openings. Now I just feel depressed and wonder if at this late date he still has the option of living at home.
Based on what I’ve been reading regarding school reopening plans (vast sample in size and geography), it looks like the majority are planning for primarily online. Many speak to “in person, hybrid and online modalities” but as we get closer, you read their current plans and they say most classes will be completely online.
It will likely be this way for the whole school yr. I wish we as a society would just say no school this yr (including grade school). Everyone come back in a yr. No issues regarding recruiting for sports or jobs or college; just a pause. I know that’s a fantasy as the schools need money. The government would have to bail the schools out.
Would hate to be a college freshmen or senior (I have one of each).
NY Times article, similar to WaPo article:
“As school districts across the United States consider whether and how to restart in-person classes, their challenge is complicated by a pair of fundamental uncertainties: No nation has tried to send children back to school with the virus raging at levels like America’s, and the scientific research about transmission in classrooms is limited.”
And that’s the problem: Schools can plan carefully and thoughtfully, but it’s not going to work if transmission rates remain as high as they are.
And now San Diego County, where I live, is cutting back on testing, due to nationwide shortages of materials and lab capacity. No more “anyone can get a test.” You need symptoms, or if no symptoms to be a member of a specific high risk group like health care workers. Of course if there are testing shortages, it’s appropriate to ration, but this doesn’t bode well for colleges that plan to bring students back to campus with frequent testing.
My younger child will be a sophomore at a private high school, and masks will definitely be required, they have made that crystal clear. But from what I hear our local public middle/high school district as of now will just recommend, not require, masks. Any student/parent who doesn’t like it can lump it and do the online option. The State of California needs to mandate standards for public school districts immediately. It really seems to be a free for all, and I don’t blame teachers, like those in LA, for being up in arms about reopening plans.
The problem with a one year “pause” is that a shockingly high number of students, particularly in poor districts, will then never return to school at all. And quite a few will die or be irrevocably harmed by the violence, drugs, mental health problems, and general social dysfunction they will encounter while out of school. The AAP had a reason to recommend children go to school.
Could a state Governor conscript an unused college dorm from one of the online only state schools and convert it into a dormitory for at risk high school/ middle school kids? Hire a social worker or trained foster parents to chaperone them and follow all the social distancing measures like only have single room occupancy. That could be a good way to allocate resources. Get at risk kids away from dangerous homes and give them education, structure and use of computers.
More than half of all public school children qualify for a free lunch. Many have associated social dysfunctionally environments. That is something like 25 million kids.
So it’s too dangerous to have these kids in school because of virus spread, so instead we are going to take them away from their families and stick them in dorms? Yeah, that will work. There will be lawsuits and virus spread. And where is the money going to come from to pay to keep these dorms open and pay these social workers or chaperones?
Homerdog wrote:
Let’s be clear. Harvard is bringing back 40% if their students. That’s a lot more than just freshmen. And, let’s be even more clear, it isn’t out of the goodness of their heart. Like other HYPMS universities, they are inviting back as many students as they can safely make room for. Take my word for it, there will be no empty single rooms at Harvard or Yale or MIT (or, Brown, Bowdoin and Amherst, for that matter.)
And then she wrote:
That sounds an awful lot like Middletown, CT. People drive in from other parts of the county; they dine out of doors for the most part. The restaurants and bars along Main Street would love dearly to go to the next phase of reopening so that they can serve food indoors. But, they know they won’t get to that point, if there is another spike. There’s a high degree of compliance with mask wearing. Even the Wesleyan bookstore has reopened for business. The biggest difference is that now you can’t sit and drink your coffee inside anymore.
So there may be a significant percentage of students that will be better off attending class in person. But, there may also be a significant number that will be better off studying remotely at home (my D for sure). So why not offer both options?
I was thinking about the situational difference in risk/ benefit for different kids and what would be the lesser of two evils in some cases.
In a typical school, most of the kids have stable home lives and they will be better off at home than risking catching the virus at school. But the at risk kids might be better off away from a dangerous home life. They obviously haven’t been taken away from their families and put in the foster care system so a temporary dormitory set up might be a good middle ground solution for them. It would be on a voluntary basis and flexible in-terms of how many nights a week they stay there. Obviously the funding would have to come from somewhere but I don’t want to break the no politics rules so will stop there.
Regarding Harvard, they have $5 billion dollar operating expense each year that they need to meet. They are a huge business just like every other private university and much of what they do is about driving new revenue and less about giving students a break. Remember they are planning to keep their 3.9% tuition and fees increase this year as planned even with less than ideal conditions.
One full pay family we know well had a freshman two years ago at H and the college asked them to pay an additional (minimum) $25,000 at a fundraiser dinner!
Well fast forward two years and their junior is taking a gap year because no on-campus housing and all online classes. This was a family that a year ago would not entertain a semester abroad because the Harvard experience is so “special” on campus. Oops…
I think my college student will actually be safer in his college community where there is testing upon arrival, sample testing throughout semester, test results in 24-48 hours, mitigation, and space for quarantine. None of that is happening here at home. At home he is working, no testing, no random sampling in our community, and mitigation is within a larger demographic than his school. With that being said I am grateful he has his own room and bathroom.