There won’t be a vaccine by Feb. This week, I’ve heard numerous times that a wide spread vaccine won’t be likely until end of summer or early fall. Bowdoin planned all remote for the year back in June after working with a slew of experts who advised them that a vaccine won’t be available this school year. Remote isn’t ideal but at least the kids know what to expect and professors can plan. It allowed students to make their decisions about deferrals and gap years with good information. Lots of colleges said class would be in person, collected room and board, and then switched to remote.
A vaccine may not be available at the start of the spring semester but I would expect a vaccine and treatment drugs available during the spring semester. I would be impossible to make the students returning to housing get the vaccine. However, if available I would expect a vaccine to be required of all students living on a campus in the fall of 2021. My kids were required other vaccines to live in dorms so adding this to it is not anything new. Thankfully I have not heard of a school keeping room and board if they sent the kids home. It is honestly what I expected would happen but I know kids at 4-5 different schools that were refunded.
Yes. This is my guess as well. Vaccine by late summer. Students required to take it to be back on campus. College life goes back to a more normal existence. Not sure how much of the masking/distancing will continue in the fall but, from everything I’ve read, it seems that a vaccine could return us to normal life.
As for room and board and refunds, I’m not talking about last spring when kids got sent home. I’m talking about this fall when some students made decisions to return to campus dorms expecting in person classes and, instead, have all or most of their classes remote. That bait and switch allowed colleges to collect room and board because kids showed up with expectations of classes in person. Many of them might have chosen to gap if they knew the truth was their classes would be remote. Now they are stuck paying room and board and taking class on their laptop.
I wouldn’t really call it bait and switch. I truly believe the schools thought that we would be doing better with the virus than we are (the country as a whole, I mean) and made their plans accordingly. There was no intent to deceive.
For many students and parents, I think that if they had known all the classes would be online they would not have decided to take a gap year, but rather would have decided to stay at home and do classes remotely. There are angry parents at my son’s school who sent their kids back to the dorms thinking there would be in person classes and their kid has none. But some kids do have some so the school is trying.
There are people talking about pulling their kid out of the dorm and doing all remote for the spring. The problem is that I’m not sure how you tell whether the class will be remote or not. 4 of my son’s classes have classrooms listed yet are still remote because the profs have elected to stay remote. When picking classes for next term I don’t know if it will be obvious what is remote and what is not.
Colleges have been able to get their hands on tests so I would expect the same for the vaccine especially for anyone living in a group setting (dorms).
I am not sure there is a vaccine out there for anything that is 100%. The shingles vaccine that they gave for years was about 60% and the new one that came out a few years ago about 90%. The flu vaccine is never 100% and many colleges are requiring it this year. In previous years only about 50% of the population get it. But, I would hope that especially this winter even more colleges will require it for those living on and using the campus facilities.
I do agree that some adaptation to learning will need to be made in the short term but if anyone is waiting for 100% their grandkids will be in college before that happens.
Regarding remote and in-person learning, occurring at the same time: Yes, many colleges are doing that, though I have no details on colleges. I do have daily details on how our high school and 3 others in the area are doing it: every student is back, in person, in masks, 6ft apart or more. In our HS and the the others, there are students who are home learning virtually this year: the teacher has to teach to both. Yes , there are great discussions. This is a school that did full synchronous zoom last spring, so the virtual part is not “new” which may help. IS it ideal for the virtual learner? Maybe not. Heck the masks are not ideal for in person. But it is working and they are learning, they do labs too, have thorough discussions, and it is all going well.
Yes, if they have symptoms they have to stay home until results. If they get Covid or are instructed to quarantine as a close contact, they stay home and do all of their same classes remote for 2 weeks. Same with teachers! We have had a few cases, not many, and no spread within the school.
If high schools can do both options simultaneously and provide similar to the same coursework as prior years, then so can colleges, especially those with funding capabilities to support the extra tech and extra proctors required. The harder part of residential college compared to daytime HS, IMO, is the dorm/on-campus living with Covid. Regardless, many colleges are making this work.
My school isn’t, so assuredly not EVERY school.
@homerdog NESCAC cancelled all winter sports for the conference.
How is this different from any other semester, though (other than having a potentially worse disease)? Students who feel sick come to class or miss class all the time. As do the professors.
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Which is why how we did things in the past may not be the best way to continue to do things in the future. This pandemic is certainly forcing changes in thinking, whether people like it or not. The model of being able to deliver both remotely and in-person may be the preferred and better practice for the future, exactly so you don’t have some people who may be infectious but not quite sick (aka onset of flu, colds, etc) from coming in to class and infecting everyone else!
Really interesting what can be learnt from this pandemic.
ETA: this may even apply to some workplaces as people and companies learn how to work remotely effectively. There may be some abuse, but it may work out for the best too - how many of us who work are literally sick of the person with ‘perfect attendance’ but comes in a ‘little’ sick and makes everyone else sick!
SUNY Binghamtom is going virtual for 2 weeks in response to a spike:
Nothing is really different beyond that the disease is potentially worse. But that is why colleges and lots of other organizations are doing things a lot differently from what they did before.
First, in other semesters if your roommate was sick with a virus you still went to class, now you go to the quarantine dorm for two weeks. Second if you were sick, you might miss a class maybe two if you were really sick. Now you go get a test and are out for at least two weeks if positive. Third, if you have a symptom like a fever you are prohibited from going to class in the past you would might go anyway. Forth, if the school decides to quarantine your dorm, you are prohibited from going to class and leaving the dorm. I could probably give a few more examples but you get the idea, this semester is so much different that others. I must say I can not think of a much worse scenario than a school not offering an online version of the class even if it is only needed by a few and for a fraction of the semester. It would be the different of pass or fail and a lot of tuition dollars for many.
At Elon, kids had the option to go full remote this semester (and not live on campus). I don’t know if they had limits on the classes they could take, but I think I saw in the student newspaper that they are remote-ing those students in to the live classes. I imagine they use this for quarantine as well. One of my high schooler’s classes does this too, remotes the at home kids in (he is hybrid, students are split to either morning or afternoon.)
As for going to school this year sick, it’s much different this year! All 3 of my kids (2 college, 1 high school) have symptom screener apps that they have to complete daily before attending <note…my oldest="" at="" lmu,="" the="" entire="" school="" went="" all="" remote,="" but="" this="" symptom="" screener="" app="" was="" plan="" before="" that="" decision="" made="">). And the high schoolers’ temps are taken at entry. Another difference is that you if have a covid symptom, you are out of school until you have a formal alternative diagnosis or a negative test. So online options are even more important! For my two kids in school, there is NO pressure to attend when feeling a bit sick, there is the opposite pressure to absolutely NOT come to class if you are not feeling well, and the tools are in place to still keep up for the most part, at least way more than there have been any at any other time. </note…my>
Colleges had the money to buy up testing kits. Also the qualifying regs were waived so tests could go out on the open market without FDA approval and colleges (and governments) took their chances with the quality of the kits. One city (El Paso?) bought millions of tests from S. Korea that weren’t any good.
That’s not going to happen with the vaccines. The government is going to control distribution and they’ve already said priority is health care workers, and that includes everyone from doctors to pharmacists to EMTs to all the senior living workers. Then the seniors, and then elementary and secondary school students. College students are almost last in line.
Maybe schools can require the vaccines before school starts in fall 2021 (which in many cases is August), but I doubt all students can get vaccinated. And we won’t know if it is 50% effective or 80%, if the vaccine works the same in all groups, if it takes 2 weeks to kick in or if boosters are needed. Would you recommend getting rid of masks or distancing or hand washing if it was only 50%? The virus would still spread pretty quickly if only half the class was protected.
Elementary and secondary school students are not in line to get these vaccines. All of the Phase III trials are 18+ age only. This is typically how vaccine development works (adults first because of the higher safety hurdle for vaccines). Vaccines for under 18 age group are not in development, not close, not imminent.
College kids are not at the bottom of the barrel for getting the vaccine. Getting college students and faculty back to school is big business. Yes, nursing home residents, essential workers are first. I think our S19 and D21 would be in line before me and my husband in our early 50s with no underlying conditions and, again, I’ve read a lot lately that vaccines will be widely available by late second quarter, early third quarter next year.
The effectiveness by itself is not indicative of whether colleges can return to normal.
Vaccine “effectiveness” is defined as the percent reduction in illness among those who were vaccinated. In other words, effectiveness is only measured by how many more people do not contract COVID at all as a result of vaccination. However, vaccines also tend to significantly reduce the rate of fatality and serious illness (meaning those who are vaccinated will have a much easier time recovering than those who aren’t). We have seen this during some flu seasons as well.
So, in other words, vaccines work not just by reducing rate of contraction through “effectiveness”, but also by reducing the seriousness of illness in those who contract it. Therefore, having everybody on a college campus vaccinated will ensure that the virus both spreads to a much smaller extent and reduces the seriousness of the disease for those who contract it.
I’ve also seen that vaccines in pipeline now are not approved for children. Not sure when that means in terms of age of child. Assume someone on here is knowledgeable?
No covid vaccines are approved yet for any age. All of the ongoing Phase III trials are 18+. Vaccines have a higher safety hurdle than drugs/treatments because you are giving it to a healthy person, so typically manufacturers begin trials in adults.
Under 18 trials may be a long way off. We need to make sure any vaccine that gets approved is safe in the long term, and several of these developmental vaccines are novel vaccine technologies (so could be more uncertainty re: long term safety).
Once the manufacturer and FDA are comfortable with the safety profile, they could run trials in under 18 year olds but…there is not the insignificant issue of getting parents to enroll their kid in a vaccine trial to prevent an illness that is unlikely to harm the kid.