Quote from above (Circuitrider):
“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.)”
Well, that’s not quite true. Harvard said they are bringing back 30-40% of their students (“up to 40%”), and it is sounding like it will be closer to the 30%. They are only bringing back freshmen, plus very needy students who have no where else safe/appropriate to take online classes (on a case-by-case basis). They are trying very hard to keep the minimum. They absolutely will have empty single rooms–they are only opening a handful of their 12 upperclassmen houses (dorms), along with the freshman dorms. They are leaving most of their houses/dorms empty. If they wanted to maximize room and board revenue, they would fill their housing. Additionally, they are giving all of the students on financial aid (55% of students) $5,000 per semester for living expenses at their homes. So if a kid on full financial aid, who doesn’t pay a cent to go to school, stays home and lives with their parents, Harvard will actually be paying them $10,000 per year that they can just have to use as they wish. Some kids may rent apartments with some of that money and pay for some food, but it is not required that they do so–the money is theirs to keep regardless.
Don’t get me wrong–I am not a fan of their plan. I think they could do better and educate more kids better and safely. But it is crystal clear their plan is not about maximizing their revenues.
Quote from SoCal:
“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…”
Well, it’s not really an “oops”, is it? This kid feels the Harvard experience is so special that they do not want to waste a minute of it, either abroad or doing online courses. They will do whatever it takes to get as close to 4 years of their Harvard experience in person in Cambridge as possible. This gap year/LOA choice seems consistent with that.
The obvious one is the UK. Very hard hit (though not as badly in terms of death rate as NY/NJ overall) but now getting back to normal relatively quickly. They still have some hotspots (much like the US) in places that were not as hard hit in the first wave, but the places that were hardest hit (particularly London) are starting to get back to normal, in fact they just started a campaign to get people to start eating out again (a two for one offer funded by the government), and schools have started going back, with all schools planned to be on a normal schedule after the summer break. Yes older people are being cautious and office workers who can are still working from home, but I’m working with people there who are in the office every day (and are already asking if I’m going to come over to work with them in person). Testing is at about the same rate per million people as here in the US, while their contact tracing app is acknowledged to have failed. Our neighbor’s D is going back to college in the UK and I’d be happy to do the same if we were in the same situation (finding flights is hard though).
So the real question is whether effective herd immunity may be reached in many places at ~20% average infected (some subgroups with high exposure will be higher and others lower), not the 50-60% that many feared. Not enough evidence for that as yet, but that’s one way to interpret the dramatic declines in New York. I’m leaning towards a view that the safest places for college (and for schools to return In person) in August will be in places like New York, rather than places that have still to experience their wave of infections. Also if that is the case then we will have a miserable summer in CA, TX, FL etc but then will potentially be getting back to normal by Thanksgiving.
My son has opted not to return for in-person classes at Berklee, and to stay home and take classes that can be done relatively effectively online (fortunately, he learned in the spring that his required private piano lessons work quite well that way–others, not so much) from here. Even though restaurants in our city are now allowed to have outdoor dining, with strict restrictions (which we’ve seen are not necessarily being adequately followed), he doesn’t even want to do that. He spent a month in Arizona (having left just before its cases began to spike, to see his girlfriend and get some outdoor time), and was fortunate to have tested negative when he returned (he said that he and his girlfriend were pretty much the only people wearing masks at the grocery store). I’m really gratified to know that he is so determined NOT to get infected.
If he were to return to Berklee, he would have to get an off-campus apartment, probably with roommates–not all of whom might be as concerned as he is, not to mention getting stuck with a year-long lease if everyone is sent home again. I’m very happy with his decision to stick around for a while, do what he can academically and musically, and stay well. I’m not sure where his discipline on this comes from, but I’m grateful for it, especially when I see so many young people in our very Covid-conscientious city out wandering or partying while taking no precautions.
I know that he is safer here, although I mourn the fact that he can’t get the “full Berklee experience” in the meantime.
I was in my 20’s once, a zillion years ago. I doubt that I would have followed my college’s guidelines for something like this very well back then. Remember the saying, “Live well, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse”? I doubt that attitudes among that age group have changed all that much. Hell, we can’t even get adults to follow the guidelines.
Well, let’s factor in how many Harvard students live off campus. About 40% of Yale seniors do. Why would there be any fewer at Harvard? That’s a good chunk of the student body that Harvard doesn’t house even under the best of circumstances.
And, let’s not forget that some of Harvard’s housing stock is unusable in a pandemic. Who in their right mind would want their child occupying a room in 19 story Mather House even if they had the entire floor to themselves (the same thing bothered me about Bowdoin’s 16 story Coles Tower), especially now that we know that the virus lingers in the air like measles? Think about how many people get on and off a nineteen floor elevator ride in the course of a day.
In fact, quite a few of Harvard’s famed houses are elevator buildings. So, IMO, the jury is still out in terms of whether their plan is strategy or necessity or some combination of both.
Circuitrider, you may not realize that 98% of Harvard students live on campus. Yale does have a significant portion of upperclassmen living off-campus (for some reason, this portion is apparently growing in recent years), but Harvard has basically everyone on campus. So don’t factor that in, it simply isn’t the case. Additionally, the vast majority of the rooms are singles (for example, 3 freshmen assigned to a 3 room suite: a common room, plus a double bedroom and single bedroom. This presumably will now house only 2 students.). On many campuses, most freshmen live in doubles, so providing them with singles means cutting housing in half. In the Harvard example, they only lose 33% of capacity by going to singles-only. So yes, it is true they are leaving the vast majority of their 12 upperclass houses empty, intentionally.
I think only Mather is a tall building. I can’t picture any others over 4 or 5 stories. I mean, I guess even a two story building could have an elevator (does that make it an “elevator building”?), but I believe other than Mather, the remaining upperclass houses can use stairs.
It’s pretty clear that this is not a plan designed to maximize revenue. They are leaving a boatload of revenue on the table by only inviting back freshman (plus a small group of the neediest students) and providing them all with singles, along with giving all the freshmen the option of staying home. Many schools are keeping doubles and bringing back all of their students–that would appear to be a plan to maximize room and board money.
However, there are a lot of complaints about them sticking with their original tuition plan (which had its typical increase), as opposed to a discount. That is galling to full-pay families.
I’d say the jury is out on the U.K. They just opened their pubs (available from 6am) on July 4th so it’s a bit early to predict how they’ll do. Scotland is going much slower and had significantly fewer cases.
I’m still not buying the noblesse oblige argument. If they had only closed Mather House because it is unsafe, Harvard would have been left with the problem of what to do with at least 350 students on a campus that, according to you, is home to 98% of all its students during normal times. The freshmen are already losing up to a third of their dorm rooms. So, under any other scenario but the one that they ultimately chose, they would be stuck playing musical chairs with hundreds of well-connected, highly motivated (and, mostly rich) kids, teed-off because they won’t be rooming with their assigned house next year (sound like anyone we know?) or trying to find hotel accommodations for them. Better to keep them all home.
Sometimes, there’s a fine line between maximizing profits and just, plain avoiding extra headaches.
You misunderstood my post. What I was saying is that parts of the United States have “gone through” rampant virus transmission- back in March/April and are at low infection rates now. These parts are comparable to European countries that also had horrible infection burn through their countries in the winter and spring. There is no evidence of huge NEW outbreaks in those countries. The parts of the US that reopened cautiously after big infections in the spring (even parts of northern CA) have not seen huge reinfection. Our crappy national infection rates are caused by the parts of the US that never really had alot the virus pass through AND reopened with some virus present and little restrictions.
Schools in the areas that have low infection rate need to open, and the areas that are having huge outbreaks need to delay opening or have very cautious school reopening.
I didn’t say it wasn’t. But your original question (“Feel free to point out a country that was hard hit, got infections way down, then re-opened without restrictions, testing and contact tracing“) didn’t specify whether it had to be a proven success. But we will know pretty soon (certainly by mid to late August) whether or not it is.
Incidentally I don’t hear any disagreement amongst UK family members (with a wide range of political beliefs) about the decision to reopen, and most regard the differences with Scotland as a politically driven dispute analogous to the ones we see here.
There is near unanimous support for a return to school as quickly as possible since schools are also the main source of childcare (they are obligated to provide after-school care for all who need it). And whether or not universities decide to do larger lectures online, the students we know are all planning to go back (this is helped by essentially all dorms being single rooms, mostly with en-suite bathrooms, and that they mostly start in mid-September not August). Universities are more worried about overseas students not showing up, as the UK is even more dependent on Chinese students than the US.
To get the UK deaths equivalent, the USA would see 222,736 deaths. Only 85,736 to die and the US can match the UK’s “success story”.
Don’t think I am not sure that the US will meet and exceed expectations, but it is unbelievable that you cite the UK as a model.
It is not at all certain the UK will have normal anything any time soon.
“CA, TX, FL … will potentially be getting back to normal by Thanksgiving.”
That is simply not going to happen. To get his infection through the whole population of public large schools starting say, August, will take months to get through them all. While contagious, it still took months to hit Florida and Tx and AZ like NY.
Also, here’s a scary, albeit anecdotal, story suggesting that the herd immunity theory may not work: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/12/21321653/getting-covid-19-twice-reinfection-antibody-herd-immunity I hope and expect that the schools will be doing their best to educate their students about the real risks, and continue to update them as new information emerges. It’s such a moving target.
I didn’t say the UK was a “success story”. I said the UK is a model for a hard hit country that is now getting back to normal. It was a disaster there, but the death rate (and overall infection rate) was less than half that in New York and New Jersey (~700 deaths per million vs ~1700 and ~10% infected vs ~20%, although London is higher). If the UK can get back to normal successfully (which is still very uncertain) then there’s no reason to think NY and NJ can’t too.
My point about FL/TX/CA is that they are also now tracking towards the same ~20% overall infection rate by October which we have already reached in New York. That’s awful news (albeit slightly mitigated by the fact that treatments are now better so death rates should be much lower). But if (and it’s still a big if) there is effective herd immunity at around 20% infection rates (because some people are naturally more resistant and because contact rates are non-uniform as was assumed in some early models of spread) then we should see a similar drop in cases in those states by Thanksgiving. It’s strange to think it will still take months to get to the same position as New York in April when we are basically at that crisis point today in large parts of all three states.
I think the key question is whether states like New York and New Jersey will have the confidence to open schools in the fall, like they are doing in Europe?
But there are also plenty of Central and Northern European who were never hit hard, have reopened cautiously and continue to keep the virus under control with TTI protocols. I posit it is about how cautiously you reopen and whether you’ve got the TTI down, not about how hard you were hit in the first place. I’d say we are only halfway to normal in my Central European country, big events still cancelled, bars and clubs still closed, masks mandatory in all public transit and all public buildings including retail an, schools hybrid with classroom “bubbles”. And there are still local outbreaks where authorities have to come down hard first, then do TTI and lift quarantine as appropriate after the scale of the outbreak is determined, see student dorms, quarantined for a couple days after three kids tested positive, quarantine lifted after no more positive kids were found. After the major outbreak in a meat processing plant two whole counties were locked down. When TTI determined there was very little community spread since the meat workers, a lot of them migrants in communal accommodations, mostly kept to themselves, the courts had to force the counties to reopen. It’s not opening up in the way Arizona or Florida are open.
I actually do understand college students in the US currently feeling hard done by. They’re expected to either stay home and do all of their schooling online or live in complete isolation on campus, take out all their dining, do all their socialising with masks on and at a distance. No one else in the whole of the US is currently forced to live like that. I understand that 18 year olds, who move out of their homes for the first time and are particularly vulnerable to social isolation and depression, are complaining that they should be forced to live like that.
If the various administrative levels, whoever is legally in charge of the various mandates, do more and expect the whole of society to do more, college students could do less.
In fairness to @homerdog, she let us take part in a huge emotional journey here, one that was constantly informed by what was actually happening IRL. The thread was started because her son and the whole family in extension loved Bowdoin so much. I don’t blame them for wanting to keep loving it. Whatever helps us go forward!
I don’t think NY/NJ (and CT/MA) got to where they are because of herd immunity. They got there through hard work, the most restrictive measures in the country, very high levels of testing and governors who accepted the facts. It didn’t just burn out. The states that are spiking now aren’t going to flatten or break the curve just by waiting a few months for this to cycle through, they need to put in the hard work and do it consistently and do it now.