I’ve been wondering how other countries have managed, if they are testing like we are here. Here is an article on China. They are not testing. A very different gov’t system of course, but interesting nevertheless. And yes, lockdowns on campus. Unhappy teachers. But no outbreaks. And K-12 back in school. Looks like taking temperatures is one of the keys.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/world/asia/china-schools-reopening.html
In the UK, Unis restarted the semester without much preparation (events mostly online, lectures online or in person depending on the schools, dorms open etc, basically no testing unless you’re symptomatic, and even then…).
No control whatsoever on social activities outside of school (most are). Obviously UK drinking age is 18 so pub visits/parties abound. Single rooms (the norm here) appear to have made no difference.
It’s been an absolute disaster.
Thousands of cases, some schools up to 30-40% of students in quarantine. Unis seeded towns, particularly in the north (Manchester, Liverpool, Scotland). harsh restrictions coming into place in large parts of the country, and Unis have a great responsability in many cases. Definetely not a model to follow.
I went to university in London and the halls of residents ( dorms) there are mostly huge tower blocks. Even with The students in single rooms, about 20 of them share a floor, mingle in the halls, share kitchen, bathsrooms and Laundry rooms. I am not surprised that Covid would spread in those.
The university’s should have highly encouraged its students to rent smaller properties. The halls where overpriced anyway and a nice detached house rented with a few others cost less for a longer contract and since they are bubbled they wouldn’t have to wear masks indoors.
My S19 says his workload is definitely more than when he was on campus. His grades are fine, but he believes they would be better if he were able to have hands on labs - that is his biggest frustration.
He says exam score averages are down about 10% according to a TA.
DS is looking at his courses for next semester and is debating on changing a few given he thinks he will be remote and some of the classes will not be nearly as interesting without the in-person labs.
He also indicated the workload is higher this semester, but so far grades are good.
Re : testing. i think the wastewater testing is a good way to see where more detailed testing needs to be. This seems to be working good for those on campus . The problem is for those who are off campus and come to campus. Then individual testing makes more sense.
I agree. The “success” of various campuses cannot be just due to testing. Our campus has done about 2000 pool/batch tests and about 100 individual tests for around 9000 students, 8 weeks in. Eight positives from the campus testing and 52 cases overall. We’re hanging on, but I hardly think that it’s because of our massive testing regime.
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I asked a few pages back about cold symptoms. My LAC son got sick last Friday night - fever of 100, aches, chills, mild headache. The weekend nurse call service told him not to worry because he had no respiratory symptoms, and he should just wait to be tested on Monday. It felt irresponsible to him to potentially expose his roommate and others in the dorm, even if he self-isolated. He had to seriously argue with the school to get their agreement to move to isolation. And after all, he was negative luckily. But it seems to us that the school was far too relaxed.
I don’t agree. They have only so many beds. No treatment at this point but to treat the symptoms. He should of isolated the best he could then go get a rapid test if symptoms persists. The cold season is now here and the flu season is quickly approaching. I have been sneezing all night and my allergies are crazy. Going to get allergy medicine now… It’s going to be a looong winter for us parents for sure.
“Harvard reports $10 million deficit as costs of COVID-19 add up”
True. And, until and unless there’s a widely available vaccine, people will have to judge for themselves how much they are willing to pay for in-person versus online and remote classes. It will become equivalent to the “student/faculty ratio” arms race (which is similarly subjective.)
@curiousme2 - To answer your question, Vanderbilt’s number is just for students not the larger campus community. Their positivity rate had been mostly been hovering under .5 for a number of weeks but was up to .67 this past week.
Harvard’s endowment for fiscal year ended June 30, 2020 went up 7.3% (approx. $3 billion dollars!) and sits at almost $42 billion. Harvard is not hurting for money and is the most solvent of any university in the U.S (if not the world)…
Fear not…Harvard received $8.655M in coronavirus relief (as reported in the Crimson - April 15, 2020) from the federal government. The endowment is safe!
Yeah, but the article makes it clear that those are costs from the early Spring semester closure, a remarkable $138 million for just a few weeks worth of R&B refunds. What does that augur for an entire year with only a couple thousand students on campus?
I’m confused by the reports that college students are seeing an increased workload with their classes being hybrid or all remote. Why would that be? Have instructional minutes been reduced?
My son is a first year, so he can’t compare the workload to pre-pandemic levels, but as far as I know the number of instructional minutes he’s receiving for his remote classes is the same as before. For example, his 5-unit Latin class, which would normally have five one-hour in-person meetings per week, now has two synchronous Zoom meetings for questions/discussion, and three one-hour pre-recorded lectures. Another class, a large intro class, still has two professor lectures per week, sometimes synchronous, sometimes pre-recorded, and one TA discussion group, via Zoom; it still adds up to about 4 hours for the 4 units. There definitely have been some changes in assessments due to the online format; for example, the large lecture course would normally be graded mostly via a final exam, but now grading will be based on a final paper.
Now, at the high school level, my daughter’s hybrid situation has resulted in a reduction of instructional minutes by 40 percent. So, not surprisingly, she is seeing more homework to make up for that, especially in her two AP classes.
^During the spring semester, younger S said there was a large increase in the amount of busywork outside of the lecture hours. He complained a bit at the time, but later said he was glad because it gave him something to do at home all day.
I can’t say for every case, but from what I’ve been hearing from DS’s school, it mostly relates to the online content rather than virtual lectures. Some students are seeing increased instructional time and/or more material being covered with the online content vs what they would have had in-person. For my son specifically his courses were supposed to be half online and half virtual but of his virtual courses I think only 1 is having a traditional live streamed lecture. Instead a couple of his professors have gone to a “flipped classroom” model. Under this model the professors records the lecture and then during the time slot that was supposed to be a live streamed lecture it is instead being used for question/answers and group work assignments which then would be double the instructional time. This model also puts far greater onus on the students to be self-directed in their learning judge for themselves how much time they need to devote to the subject. It’s a much less structured framework and some students, especially those in first year, can find it difficult to properly gage the amount of time they need to devote to studying (on the other hand there are many students who find this format far more time efficient and far prefer it. It depends on their time management skills and how quickly they can grasp the material).
DS is in 2nd year and has no problem judging his necessary workload so he has not been having an issue and his marks have not been affected. As an example he generally finds he doesn’t need his math tutorials so he doesn’t attend and that’s a couple of extra hours he can devote to other things. With recorded lectures he can decide what he needs to view and what he can skip which he can’t do that with live lectures. He can also schedule the online only portions of his courses as it suits him. As a result his time is being used more efficiently.
Having said that, he would still prefer to have in-person lectures.
So there was more than a bit of sarcasm in the stating that Harvard and their $40B endowment was taking anything from anyone. They can afford to make difficult decisions. The school has $5.75B in revenue per year, and made $500M-$600M per year in 2017 and 2018. $140M is a lot for most organizations…it’s not for Harvard.
@socaldad2002 True but the $10 million deficit is compared to the $300 million surplus the year before. But of course that is a rounding error to Harvard.