I wouldn’t say that ND went to remote classes and then cases have gone down, if that’s the school we are talking about. Yes, cases have gone down but so have the number of tests and the positivity rate was at 18% yesterday.
The problem with this start-stop-start approach is that it flies in the face of absolutely everything teachers know about effective instruction: it needs to be 1) continuous and 2) consistent in expectations. If institutions try this approach, they are prioritizing enrollment (tuition dollars) and R&B revenue over the academic mission of the university. They may not intend to do this, but it’s what they are in fact doing.
The semester is short. The clock is already ticking, esp. for those institutions that are ceasing “in-person” instruction by Thanksgiving.
Here is a good website for tracking schools that have changed plans.
Did the school not share a testing plan? Is that what you mean by you don’t know how much testing they are doing? Or maybe they are only testing symptomatic cases so that number is unknown if the college isn’t sharing?
@LakeWashington there’s already a mega thread going on called “school in the fall & coronavirus”. Maybe this discussion belongs there just to keep it all in one spot?
Butler flips to remote learning for two weeks due to non-compliance.
Love the idea of the president living in a dorm! It reminds me a little bit of what Yale tries to do normally, to have each residence assigned its own live-in dean. I don’t think you’ll be seeing a lot of large student gatherings in New Haven. But, let’s keep our fingers crossed. Wesleyan begins move-in tomorrow, too.
I like having a separate thread to specifically discuss colleges that are re-opening. I’m a little tired of being told by parents with kids in K-12 that CC is only interested in a handful of colleges where people go “away” for their educations. Well, this is the place for those of us that are.
They are doing random spot checks of kids moving into dorms. No testing of off campus kids. No pre arrival testing. Basically the opposite of what most of the discussions here have been claiming is needed. As of now, it seems to be working for them. As I posted earlier, neither my son or I have heard anything about any kids being positive or quarantined.
I see switching to online classes as yanking the faculty off the train track as the speeding train approaches more than manipulation, but we’ve established that I’m not always cynical enough.
I find pointing fingers at the ND finance bros a bit of scapegoating. I do not believe that the two parties which had spread were the only two large parties that happened in the first days, they just happened to be the unlucky ones.
If ND continues to keep the cases low, and the two week online crack down works it could be a great example for other colleges going forward.
Good news about the speedy Broad turn around, go Broad go!
At CU Boulder the plan is to test over 20 sites at a minimum of daily and hopefully multiple times a day. The collection can be done by students and the tests are run on campus with results immediately.
Whew! Good thing covid doesn’t spread asymptomatically, otherwise they might have a big outbreak and not know yet.
Saying colleges are going to online to punish their students is like saying doctors give chemotherapy to lung cancer patients to punish them for smoking.
Did the finance bros have a big party?
Did they know there was a moderate chance of spreading disease if they had the party?
Were such parties specifically disallowed?
Did the party spread disease, just as predicted?
All the opprobrium is deserved. The colleges should know that some students are going to be selfish jerks, and shouldn’t make a plan that requires students not to be selfish jerks. But that’s no defense for selfish jerks being selfish jerks. “Boys will be boys” is what we always trot out for bro misbehavior. It’s not an excuse.
Interesting that the change clusters are along the 95 corridor and Los Angeles area. Especially since the corridor runs thru states with pretty low case numbers. Does that suggest that flattening the curve results in remote instruction rather than f2f…the carrot and stick sort of reversed in that case.
One of our colleges sent a transparent refund schedule for fall and spring for cancellation period if they go remote. 10/26 the refund drops to 16% and 11/2 4%. The real drop down in refund percentages is in late October. I think each college has their own unique financial circumstances that no doubt their board of Trustees have examined before start of the semester.
The pattern also makes sense politically. Lots of blue states taking more precautions than red. Stating the obvious I suppose.
I agree that going from in-person to remote instructions for a short term makes no sense. I also believe there’s another motivation behind such a decision: the administrators of these schools don’t want to admit they made a mistake in their fall plans in the first place by shifting permanently to remote classes.
What does that mean to “test 20 sites at a minimum of daily”? How many kids are they testing each day and how? What kind of test is “immediate”?
This is waste water testing. They’re testing 20 sites to capture the on campus population.