Is Boulder having in-person classes? The two kids I know there don’t have any. All of their classes are remote.
It would be great to have a grip on what schools are having any classes in person and what percent. I keep seeing people post things like their school is “open” or having in person classes but then, upon further questioning, it ends up very few classes are in person. For in-person classes, I’d also like to know if students are always six feet apart or if any colleges have students in masks but not necessarily distanced in class.
I think chances are slim for winter sports for Nescacs. Indoor tracks are like Petri dishes even without a pandemic. Can’t see basketball indoors happening either. Plus winter sports start in November and that’s not going to happen.
At the moment CU Boulder is still 100% remote having switched to that format on 9/23 for at least 2 weeks.
Approximately 2 weeks before the start of classes the following was announced regarding in person classes:
Data from the Office of the Registrar indicate about half of CU Boulder’s fall 2020 classes are fully or partly in-person in teaching modality. As of July 30, CU Boulder had 6,062 classes scheduled for fall 2020 (not including thesis/dissertation hours, field experiences, internships, independent study, research sections, classes at Colorado Mesa University and Continuing Education and B3–Coursera for-credit–sections. Of these, 1,379 (23%) are completely in-person; 1,498 (25%) are hybrid in-person; and 3,185 (53%) are completely online or remote. (Percentages do not add up to 100% due to rounding.) In other words, 48% of fall 2020 classes include an in-person component and the rest are entirely online/remote.
As of July 30, about 90% of undergraduate students already enrolled for fall 2020 were signed up for classes with an in-person component as part of their course load. About 10% were signed up for exclusively remote/online courses.
No idea how that played out in the intervening time.
I don’t understand why though. The university of phoenix and other online providers universally charge less money than residential colleges. Yes at the moment it is costing schools money to convert to online learning but from precedent it seems like once the infrastructure is in place it’s cheaper to run than in person learning. That makes sense because less building space and support staff are required to operate it. So why won’t schools just embrace it and widen their scope as educators?
To protect their brand and the kind of residential college experience they’ve been providing for 150 years. If someone wants something different, there are plenty of other options.
When you’ve got a sub-10% acceptance rate, you don’t need to start changing things up.
@mom1720, good point! @homerdog , my understanding anecdotally is that many CU Boulder professors teaching hybrid classes were teaching to a computer while alone in a very large room. My neighbor who is a prof said at first some kids showed up and then it got to where very few or none were, presuming that they prefered to attend class from home. (Probably to do what my high school son is doing with his remote schooling - waking up 12 seconds before class begins and rolling over to turn on the computer.)
Per @mom1720, CU is fully remote now due that case surge. They changed the classes to remote and they decided (or the County Public Health decided for them) to start having consequences for breaking Covid rules and 3 students have, in fact, been suspended. Will be interesting to see what they do at the end of the 2 weeks which is soon - because the cases have now come WAY down (oddly way down). Note that the community cases did end up going up, putting the whole county in the red. And this is all before winter! Since CU just wants to make it until Thanksgiving, it will be interesting to see what they choose to do.
@murray93 , that may have been my post about Elon U. They’ve had an uptick in cases lately and had to increase “alert levels” and make some new rules that decrease socializing. The email about these changes said that due to contract tracing, they have determined (and I think this was all along, not just this uptick) that the spread is coming from social activities outside of the classroom, and not from in person classes, and no changes will be made at this higher alert level in how they are holding classes. I assume this means as they contract trace the positives and test the contacts, they can see how/who are transmitting it, and it’s not coming from fellow in-class members.
I don’t have a ton of details about how classes are being held, only that my sophomore son has at least 50% in the classroom, in masks, no eating/drinking/removing mask during class, 6 feet apart. I’ve seen some student newspaper articles with pictures of classes and the kids are VERY far apart in the larger lecture rooms. There are tents set up for outdoor classes but I don’t know if he has any of those. I’m not sure if he has any classes 100% online. I do know that at least one of his in person, twice a week classes, early in the semester, changed to one-day in person, one-day remote.
We also had a minor high schooler COVID frustration. Bottom line, due to the school policies and slow testing here, my son had to miss four days for a minor sore throat that lasted one day. But he was allowed back as soon as he had that negative test result; so I’m trying to line up faster testing resources for the next time he has a symptom. Good luck with your battle. And surely they can audition him over Skype or zoom? I understand the reason for all of the vigilance but it is making for a bumpy road and it’s only the start of cold/flu season.
Yet another example of how currently available tests are ineffective for public health measures. Because testing is that slow, your kid had to go though a useless quarantine.
Because states are different. There are significant differences amongst the states with a whole host of things. Just like different colleges are taking different approaches to Covid. Some kids are getting tested 3x a week and kids on other campuses haven’t been tested at all.
The discount issue is decided on an annual budget basis, so I would not expect a mid year change of course. NESCAC schools that invited all class year back and provided a discount like Tufts and Williams made an exception just for this year. It was anticipated that it might be an incentive for students to return vs. take a gap year.
Taverngirl I think you might be conflating testing available from the DPH which is dependent on state and federal funding based on severity, versus what each college has contractually paid for with testing labs. That being said there is also a range. It depends on what the colleges are willing to pay for.
Trinity (NESCAC) did not increase tuition, general fee or room rates for 2020- 2021.
Board rates were discounted 5%.
All students invited back on campus for de densified hybrid of remote and f2f.
The lower cost of online / distance education exist because the cost of buildings, infrastructure, and labor to maintain all of that is not present at colleges based around an online / distance education business model. Colleges based on an in-person education business model are not going to have these costs completely disappear when doing an emergency switch to online / distance education, so their costs are probably higher now due to the costs of adding online / distance education infrastructure while still maintaining their in-person education infrastructure.
In addition, there may be a lower need for instructional labor for some types of online / distance education, but colleges based on an in-person education business model are not going to alter their faculty staffing instantly.
Hamilton just had it’s first positive Covid test for a student. They also had one more employee test positive (total of 2 employees cases so far this semester). Last week they had announced to ease restrictions further and allow students to leave campus and go into town. That has now been rescinded.
I agree and also don’t think there is any way that Spring sports will happen either for the NESCACs. Spring schedules show an abbreviated schedule similar to fall with spring break cancelled limiting spring travel for sports and I don’t see any of the NESCACs allowing outside teams on campuses to participate in games.
@HamSBDad@circuitrider Yesterday Williams reported their first student case in weeks on their dashboard. They reported a staff/faculty case last week. Hoping that the Williams Record will post a story soon. The college had just loosened travel and some other restrictions last week. Since my D is taking a gap year, I don’t get emails from the college. @shuttlebus@TennisParent have you heard anything?