We are looking into tuition insurance for the very first time. Michigan has a plan for like $400/year for 75% BUT it’s only if the kid completely withdraws from college not if you just get sick. You have to get sick and then withdraw out of the college. It seems most of them work this way so just getting covid and going home but still taking online classes the insurance would not kick in. At least this is my understanding of it.
Rumor has it that it was pushback from the (extensive) elderly professor population. I’m guessing they also didn’t have enough returning students to make the room and board worth it. Alot of kids moved off campus. Did internationals all go home? Their testing excuse makes no sense.
Well in your area (of Canada), aren’t these students missing close to 3(!) semesters of practicums and labs? Are they leaving in droves?
I have it on good authority that Wesleyan will put up a dashboard (“or, something along those lines”) as well. Move-in period starts this Sunday. According to the Office of Res Life, 2550 students are expected back over the next week and a half (RAs and “student leaders” are already arriving.) By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, that’s a 90% return rate (not sure how many are distance learning versus taking gap years?) The initial quarantine period could be for as long as 14 days, so that’s a high level of expectation for what could be a protracted period of non-physical interaction with another human being. OTOH, the food services people managed to make boxed meals sound pretty appealing. I know a lot of students will be eating breakfast for perhaps the only time of the year.
Yeah, well, 5 faculty/staff at UNC tested positive last week, so perhaps that optimism is ill-founded. And I am confident that more UNC faculty/staff will test positive this week, because that is what happens when the disease spread is uncontrolled, as has been happening at UNC.
I will advise our D22 to strongly avoid applying to any school that keeps “student athletes” on campus while sending others home.
If parents don’t want to send their kids to F2F, there are online options (K12 Connections type) and most states or school districts are offering an online option for this year or permanently. They don’t have to fight for that option or protest schools going back as they have a choice.
@circuitrider how does the move in period work? Do you think they do it by dorm? Not sure why they wouldn’t get everyone in at the same time and start the two week clock. (Well, not exactly same time but maybe move in times throughout the same day.)
or maybe they tested positive because they got it from their spouse or went to a party themselves and got it.
Davidson College leadership is aware of what is happening in Chapel Hill but so far so good with first year orientation. Classes start Thursday mostly online but small sections scheduled to meet in person. The campus is sprinkled with outdoor chalkboards and chairs. Testing kids before they arrive and then weekly once on campus. Davidson has a defined campus that borders the small Town of Davidson, and students have been asked to limit trips into town.
My S reports 100% mask compliance on campus though a couple town residents have been spotted jogging on campus or walking their dogs without masks even though signs have been posted throughout campus to mask up and social distance while on grounds. There have been absolutely no parties or even gatherings outside with more than 10 kids. A few unfortunate first years are stuck in quarantine not b/c they tested positive but b/c they either had invalid test results (took the test too early before arrival) or are waiting for results b/c they tested on arrival. Upperclassmen phased move in was pushed back to this weekend and the following weekend. There will be about 1600 students on campus by month’s end. Still cautiously optimistic…
Why would they refund tuition if you continue attending school and get the credits for the courses? If you get sick from non-covid things, say appendicitis, and you miss 2 weeks of school but don’t drop out, tuition insurance is not going to pay for your tuition.
Here’s the thing about having all students take tests before they get to college, and then only testing symptomatic students after they arrive on campus: it’s risky. The risk is that students do their tests a few days or a week before they leave for college, and then in the last few days before they go there’s a round of parties and goodbyes, and a few students get infected.
Those infected students will most likely be asymptomatic because most infected college-age kids are asymptomatic. So they’ll bring their infectious selves to campus and spread their infection, and by the time someone is sick enough to need health care (and thus gets tested) there will already have been several rounds of infection and the outbreak will be well-established.
A college that depends on pre-arrival testing and symptomatic testing thereafter might be lucky. They could be lucky. Or, they could turn out like Notre Dame. It’s boringly predictable that some colleges that do what Notre Dame has done will end up with outbreaks, like Notre Dame has.
What part of “asymptomatic spread” does Notre Dame not understand?
ND must KNOW that the virus is spread asymptotically but either (a) doesn’t have the resources to test more or (b) thought they could keep cases under the number of quarantine beds they have without having to spend money on testing everyone on a regular basis. They’ve been working on this plan for months.
Since February, a total of 45 faculty members and staff tested have positive for covid at UNC. That’s more than 24 weeks. Yet you’re telling me that just by the greatest coincidence, 5 of those faculty members tested positive last week, the very same time when students (coincidentally) arrived on campus? They just happened to test positive, but didn’t catch the virus from the returning students?
Ithaca College has flipped.
With this tremendous responsibility front of mind, I am announcing today that Ithaca College will be extending remote instruction for students through the fall semester. This means that we will not be welcoming all students back to campus this fall as we had hoped.
@homerdog asked:
It’s all about crowd control. There doesn’t seem to be any particular order by which the students need to move-in so long as they pick an available one-hour slot. Apparently, they have it divided up so as to cut down on the number of people passing each other back and forth and the general hubbub of family waiting around with nothing to do. The only caveat is that they have to allow for their covid-19 test to be administered since they won’t receive their cardkey without proof and for that, they are encouraged to come about a half-hour early. That’s mostly for frosh and sophomores, though. People who live in apartments (not Fauver or Hi-Lo Rise), program houses or so-called “woodframes” - mostly upper-classmen - can get tested and move-in at any time during their assigned day.
.
Since NC had 1,263 new cases yesterday, off campus exposure shouldn’t be discounted.
200 people testing positive in a city is very different from 200 people testing positive on a giant cruise ship. It’s the communal living, asymptomatic spread, and availability of quarantine for 5+ close contacts of each case that will lower the threshold for what number is acceptable.
I have to applaud the schools who are transparent enough to post their info, no matter the heat they are getting for it. Safe to say this is happening elsewhere.
I don’t think we have enough information to really know how those 5 cases were contracted. I can imagine several scenarios…
Classes began August 10th. When you say that 5 faculty tested positive last week, it sounds like you mean they received a positive test result between Aug 9-August 14th. If that’s the case, it seems unlikely that they would have been exposed so quickly and tested so quickly to have caught those cases in class sometime after August 10th and received positive results back so soon. I could imagine other scenarios, in addition to the fact that North Carolina has a lot of virus circulating in the community so of course those professors could have caught it from friends and family and other places, but I’m wondering if they had any staff meetings the week before classes began without taking proper precautions. Maybe a mini-spreader event if they weren’t social distancing and had a bunch of faculty together, and one of them had Covid that they brought in from the community. Faculty could have had lunches together and caught it from a colleague. I also wonder if in the 24 week period, the faculty/staff was doing so much testing. Only 45 Known cases over 24 weeks, but perhaps none of them were getting tested during May, June, July. Now maybe they all have on-campus access to testing so the number is greater this week. I am also not sure about the mask-wearing-politics in North Carolina…is this one of the states that has a lot of rebellion among people of all ages to wearing masks and SD-ing? If so, it is more likely that there will be general spread.
Look, I’m not saying that it’s impossible for professors to catch it from their students, but I’m not nearly as suspicious as you are that they definitely caught these 5 cases from their students.
Maybe the 5 Covid positive professors infected some students that then went to a party…