How college campuses can reopen safely
US colleges and universities face an existential crisis. Caught in the grip of an immediate cash flow problem, most schools believe they must reopen or face financial ruin from dropping enrollments if classes are taught entirely online in the fall. But reopening risks calamity…Our study, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that there is a way to manage the coronavirus and reopen residential campuses safely: All students should undergo a rapid, inexpensive Covid test every two or three days and follow safety precautions like wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. Isolating students who have tested positive is also critically important to preventing campus outbreaks.
College reopening plans already challenged by the coronavirus
Many colleges’ plans to bring students back to campus this fall are almost certain to crash and burn.
Why it matters: Many families may not be willing to pay full tuition for a semester they know will only involve online classes. But there’s no reason to doubt that bringing college kids back to campus will result in thousands of coronavirus cases, infecting both students and staff.
Covid Tests and Quarantines: Colleges Brace for an Uncertain Fall
This month, many colleges around the country plan to welcome back thousands of students into something they hope will resemble normal campus life. But they face challenges unlike any other American institution — containing the coronavirus among a young, impulsive population that not only studies together, but lives together, parties together, and, if decades of history are any guide, sleeps together.
Pandemic Revolt: Faculty, Students, And Families Challenge College Reopening Plans
Even as colleges across the nation backpedal on their plans to reopen campuses this fall, they’re facing a rising tide of resistance from multiple constituencies about those plans. The pushback typically centers on concerns that institutions cannot assure the safety of campus as the coronavirus continues to surge or that they haven’t made adequate pricing adjustments given all the reductions to typical campus experiences and amenities.
'The virus beat us': Colleges are increasingly going online for fall 2020 semester as COVID-19 cases rise
Call it coronavirus déjà vu. After planning ways to reopen campuses this fall, colleges are increasingly changing their minds, dramatically increasing online offerings or canceling in-person classes outright.
Tide Turns on Fall Reopenings
COVID-19 spread prompts many colleges to reverse plans to bring students back to their physical campuses.
Colleges Seek Waivers From Risk-Taking Students
As fall semester approaches, students are increasingly opposing liability waivers and "informed consent" agreements required by colleges as a condition of returning to campus.
Looking for the Remote
Reopening plans in many new coronavirus hot spots were drafted before cases surged. Faculty members in those states want a do-over, in the form of an all-online fall or at least a delayed opening.
The class of Covid-19: can US college students really go back?
Will university students ever get back to college? Can freshmen even start? These are the questions preoccupying many parents in the US and elsewhere. And, judging from the angst-ridden conversations I’ve had with my friends in recent days, the outlook is exceedingly mixed.
College Reopening Plans Include How Many Coronavirus Cases Would Close Them Again
Triggers that could make schools reverse course midsemester include increasing coronavirus infection rates, full ICU facilities, or even a student or staff death
Are Colleges Ready for the Fall Semester?
Students find the holes in universities’ plans to reopen.
Radical shift in COVID-19 testing needed to reopen schools and businesses, researchers say
…Smith says these and related studies have prompted UIUC to set up tests for all 60,000 students and faculty multiple times per week when the students return to campus this fall. The approach relies on an experimental fast PCR setup described in an 18 June preprint that bypasses some of the usual slow procedures for isolating viral RNA and tests saliva rather than throat swabs, says Martin Burke, a UIUC chemist who was one of the test’s developers. Smith says her team predicts that if the university tests everyone every 3 to 4 days, on average, it will detect positive cases half a day before those people reach peak infectivity.
Opinion: College back-to-school plans in flux
It is happening across the country. In a story Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal explored some of the strategies college administrators are pursuing. Spellman College in Atlanta announced July 1 that it would welcome students for the fall semester. Roughly two weeks later, the school said instruction would instead be online only. At Bowdoin College in Maine, first-year students will be among the only ones on campus for the fall semester. Duke University is doing something similar, limiting campus housing mostly to first-year students and sophomores. MIT's campus will include mainly seniors. The plan at Texas A&M University is for some students to return to campus for small, in-person classes while others will take them online. How big is the challenge? Michael Young, president of Texas A&M, told the Journal that helping construct a plan to unite East and West Germany, as he did while working at the State Department, was easier than figuring out his school's back-to-school plan. A faculty member who helped with Cornell University's reopening plan put it this way: "By the time the report is produced and a decision is made and announced, the situation has changed yet again." At Oklahoma State, where classes are to begin Aug. 17, students living in campus residence halls will be required to be tested at move-in. All students are being encouraged to limit their travel and self-quarantine for two weeks before returning to Stillwater. OSU is transitioning all classes online after Thanksgiving but not requiring students to move off campus at that time. OU's fall semester begins Aug. 24. The school's plan includes mandatory COVID-19 tests, before they arrive on campus, for students who are moving into campus housing. Both universities have implemented strict face mask policies and have made proper social distancing central to their classroom plans. Plans in Norman have met with some resistance. A group of faculty and staff collected about 1,800 signatures in July on a petition demanding more freedom for them and students to choose online courses. Last week, demonstrators held a "die-in" in front of the building where the regents were meeting, to protest reopening policies. The Journal reported that, per The Chronicle of Higher Education, 49% of U.S. schools plan to have in-person classes, 13% will offer online instruction and 35% will offer a mix. However, if the number of positive COVID-19 cases continues to increase, as has happened in Oklahoma and elsewhere, those percentages may very well change considerably. Welcome to the new "normal."
COVID-19 Roundup: Study Recommends Testing Every 2 Days
A new modeling study published Friday by researchers at Harvard and Yale Universities concluded that a safe way to bring college students back to campus this fall would be to test them for COVID-19 every two days using "a rapid, inexpensive, and even poorly sensitive" test, and to couple this testing with strict behavioral strategies to keep the virus’s rate of transmission (Rt) -- the average number of individuals infected by a single contagious person -- below 2.5.
Reopening Colleges During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic—One Size Does Not Fit All
In the midst of the deadliest pandemic since 1918, the question of how to reopen colleges safely after months of lockdown is of great concern. First and foremost, the strategy cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, the best-prepared colleges will use a multifaceted approach that leverages a range of public health strategies best suited to each institution’s resources, location, and culture. Containing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) requires testing; behavioral interventions to reduce the reproductive number (Rt), such as social distancing, masking, and contact tracing; and limiting the influx of new infections from outside campus.
Don’t Blame Colleges for the Coming Fall Debacle
…colleges were placed in an impossible position once the federal government walked away from the pandemic, as faculty members spent the summer reinventing their pedagogy and wondering about their livelihood.
As Safety Concerns Mount, Many Colleges Hold Fast to Reopening Plans
…That tug-of-war, between financial concerns and public health, is the tense backdrop of the looming fall semester across American higher education. And some faculty members and students are pushing back — organizing protests and petitions against what they describe as reckless and dangerous reopening plans.
California colleges in last-minute scramble to open without state guidance
Just days before the fall semester is set to begin, California colleges and universities are scrambling to finalize reopening plans that affect thousands of students as top leaders say the state’s lack of guidance for weeks has frustrated efforts to bring back limited in-person learning and dorm living.
Faculty and Staff Raise the Alarm Over Reopening College Campuses
With college students poised to return to campuses this month, faculty and staff across the U.S. are pleading with campus administrators and state lawmakers to end the “magical thinking,” and return to online learning until it’s safe to reopen physically.
What Will ‘Back to Campus’ Mean? Analyzing Universities’ Plans for Reopening This Fall
…As coronavirus infections continue to spike nationwide, and Congress slow-walks proposals to shield colleges from COVID-related legal liabilities, reopening college campuses for in-person instruction has become increasingly challenging. A growing number of colleges have simply given up, reversing course and switching to online education for the fall semester. And the many college leaders who remain committed to bringing students back to their campuses are having to adopt ever more expensive, innovative — and tough — strategies.
American Exceptionalism-- Under Trump
Leonhardt's reporting attributes the U.S. experience of the pandemic on "a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical outcomes-- including higher infant mortality and diabetes rates and lower life expectancy-- than in most other rich countries. …”
Three Bad Ideas For How To Reopen College Campuses This Fall
College leaders continue to scramble as they approach the fall semester and the looming health threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic. An increasing number of institutions have abandoned or revised earlier aspirations to bring students back to campus for face-to-face instruction.
Cancel College
Reopening universities will accomplish little and endanger many.
'An impossible situation’: U.S. colleges backtrack on reopening for in-person classes
American schools are faced with an unprecedented catch-22 amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic: Either reopen safely and undertake the risk of a coronavirus outbreak or play it safe and provide unappealing remote classes for their students.
Chaos coast to coast as a school year like no other launches
It’s going to be screen time all the time for kindergartners and graduate students alike. Teachers are threatening strikes. And students are already coming home with covid-19, the disease that has upended American education. The 2020-2021 school year has dawned and it’s more chaotic than any before.
Our Views: Huge dangers if campus safety plans don't work out
As America was consummating its love affair with the automobile a century ago, Robert Hutchins became president of the University of Chicago. There he learned: “The three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.” Only the last may be attenuated by the coronavirus pandemic. If more classes are online, it is not at all clear that there will be the traffic jams of old around campuses. But while the burdens of allocating parking may diminish, campus leaders will find new layers of complexity overseeing sports and socializing.
As criticism over college reopening plans mounts, Penn students who work in residence halls demand hazard pay, safer conditions Breaking up a crowded party in a student residence hall was never easy. Now, it could turn dangerous.
It’s just one concern that undergraduate and graduate students who serve as advisers in the University of Pennsylvania’s residence halls have raised as the start of the fall semester approaches.
Keep Campus Closed - What Higher Ed is Too Afraid to Say
What's in this post? Great question. For starters, it includes some absolutely heartbreaking quotes from people in higher ed. They cannot share their actual thoughts with their school leaders for fear of losing their jobs. Also, because I've been posting these all over Twitter, it seemed fair to include my action items for what higher ed should do to change course immediately. Lastly, I've added some amazing excerpts from higher education presidents/leaders who have made the right decision for the fall.
'Babar in the Room'
Faculty parents are once again being asked to perform a miracle: Get their students and their own kids through the semester in one piece. Does it have to be this way?
Some U.S. Colleges Stick to In-Person Reopening in Pandemic Despite Doubts, Pushback
Many U.S. universities are revamping campuses to resume in-person classes despite COVID-19, requiring students to be tested, wear masks and socially distance, but some college town residents and critics say schools are putting profits before public safety.
Don’t Make College Kids the Coronavirus Police
Many universities are asking students to wear masks and avoid parties — and to report on peers who break the rules. It could backfire.
Indian students believe online classes creating digital divide, universities put profit over children: Report
Another trend where Indians took a lead was in thinking that colleges and universities put profits over students. With 81 per cent Indian students take a lead in this belief followed by the US and Australia. In a clashing trend, 75 per cent of Indian students believe that colleges and universities are risking the lives of students if they re-open in the fall, but at the same time, 71% believe that reopening them is vital for the economy and society, as per the survey.
[For the basis of article, see: Global Learner Survey: 7,000 people in 7 countries. In the second annual Global Learner Survey, see what learners want from education and work in the COVID era: https://www.pearson.com/news-and-research/the-future-of-education/global-learner-survey.html].
Reopening Schools and Parental Dilemmas
America is embarking on an experiment of epic proportions: Reopening our schools, colleges, and universities. This experiment is taking place at a time when Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the trajectory of the pandemic and 7 out of 10 U.S. parents say it’s a risk to their health and well-being to return their children to school. A majority of American parents think it’s better to wait to open schools; parents of color are especially apprehensive.
August Wave of Campus Reopening Reversals
Hundreds of colleges announced early this summer they would be reopening for in-person instruction this fall. As start dates near, many backtrack, citing a worsening health crisis.
'Leaving us behind': High-risk students ask, why can't all college courses be offered online?
…Lynch is just one of the thousands of college students with weakened immune systems who are stuck inside amid the the coronavirus pandemic and navigating treacherous back-to-school dynamics. While many colleges and universities offered all classes online last spring, many aren't doing the same this fall, leaving immunocompromised students stressed out, rearranging schedules and locked in lengthy exchanges with accommodation offices.
Some U.S. colleges stick to in-person reopening in pandemic despite doubts, pushback
Many U.S. universities are revamping campuses to resume in-person classes despite COVID-19, requiring students to be tested, wear masks and socially distance, but some college town residents and critics say schools are putting profits before public safety.
How Many Would Die on Campus?
Without mitigation strategies, one model projected about 75 COVID-19 deaths at Georgia Tech -- highlighting the stakes as students move back to a campus putting several such strategies in place.
Police Report 400-Person Party on East Carolina U.'s Reopening Weekend
East Carolina University’s move-in has been accompanied by an uptick in large parties, The News & Observer reports, a worrying sign for colleges that hope to maintain in-person operations this fall. The police told the newspaper that while most parties last weekend were attended by 25 to 50 people, one lasted four days and was attended by 400 people. The campus police department’s head of emergency and event management told the newspaper that the social activity observed by the police had been “reasonable” and “manageable” in comparison to what the university has seen during past fall move-ins.
Editorial: Crazy debate about college football embodies broken coronavirus response
Whether to proceed with college and professional sports in the pandemic should be a fairly straightforward question. The risks of our activities have to be judged against their necessity, and given that no single season of a spectator sport is strictly necessary, any game that poses a significant danger of infecting and killing more people should be canceled. Alas, little can be judged so rationally in our time and place, much less a sport with a propensity to make so many grown Americans as emotional as football does. With all the controversy but none of the import of reopening schools, the parallel debate over whether to play the college game this fall has devolved from public health debate to partisan culture skirmish.
Philosophers On Reopening Colleges and Universities in a Pandemic
Six philosophers discuss various issues related to the operation of institutions of higher education this fall, in this edition of Philosophers On, guest edited by Lisa Fuller.
Hogan Partners, Law Deans Push For D.C. Diploma Privilege
The push to allow lawyers to practice without passing the bar exam in Washington, D.C. has gained some heavyweight support. Former Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal and Sean Marotta, another Hogan Lovells Supreme Court practice group partner, urged the D.C. Court of Appeals on Wednesday to adopt a “diploma privilege.”
Law School Grads Hit 12-Year Employment High Before Pandemic
The last law school graduating class before the coronavirus pandemic notched a near record high employment rate, a new report found, but it warned that the virus is likely to squelch similar outcomes in the coming years.
More than 90% of 2019 law school graduates landed jobs after finishing school, according to preliminary findings by the National Association for Law Placement, which collected data from 196 schools in mid-March of 2020. That percentage of employed graduates was the highest recorded by NALP in the 12 years since the Great Recession.
'Hundreds dead' because of Covid-19 misinformation
At least 800 people may have died around the world because of coronavirus-related misinformation in the first three months of this year, researchers say. A study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene also estimates that about 5,800 people were admitted to hospital as a result of false information on social media. Many died from drinking methanol or alcohol-based cleaning products.
INSIGHT: How to Handle Employees Who Refuse Mandatory Vaccines
What can employers do if employees refuse to participate in mandatory workplace vaccination programs? Mintz’s Jen Rubin says employers need a built-in procedure that permits employees to opt-out for medical or religious reasons or perhaps even social or political reasons, including those associated with the “anti-vax” movement.
What you need to know about coronavirus on Wednesday, August 12
As schools reopen across the US and children attending school test positive for the coronavirus, getting students back into classrooms safely is at the forefront of many people's minds.
A group of experts from Stanford University School of Medicine have offered a number of suggestions on how the guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association (AAP) can be used in schools to make reopening as safe as possible:
School districts should create Covid-19 task forces that are made up of key stakeholders, including superintendents and parents, to develop procedures and policies for safety.
Authorities should embrace a three-pronged testing approach which would see all students with symptoms tested, schools conducting random staff and student testing to identify asymptomatic patients, and students from high-risk households being offered testing more frequently.
Schools should be flexible, with plans in place for virtual learning and the potential need for extra nurses, psychologists and social workers in schools.
'Boring and awkward': students voice concern as colleges plan to reopen – through Minecraft
Like many college students in the throes of what feels like an endless pandemic, students of Johns Hopkins University will not be returning to campus this fall. But there’s still a way for them to visit school, albeit a fantastical one – via the video game Minecraft. The Baltimore-based university is giving every enrolled student free access to the game, in which players interact in a digital world that they build collaboratively.
UNC fiasco reveals truth about reopening colleges
…A week after the experiment to see whether college kids could live on campus and keep socially distanced began, it's over. UNC's leadership announced a return to fully remote education and full refunds for students who leave the dorms and go home. UNC-Chapel Hill's chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz told local news he was "surprised at the velocity and magnitude" of the spread of the virus. In the wake of the UNC fiasco, we have to reckon with the price of failure. Students at Chapel Hill are going home now and they are taking their viral load with them. As a result, to be blunt, more people are going to die. College students can die from Covid-19. They also risk spreading the virus to the people with whom they live and their communities. These deaths and illness will be directly attributable to the decisions of our leaders in the higher education community.
‘Frats Are Being Frats’: Greek Life Is Stoking the Virus on Some Campuses
Universities are struggling with how to prevent tightly packed sorority and fraternity houses from turning into virus clusters.
As Colleges Move Classes Online, Families Rebel Against the Cost
Schools face rising demands for tuition rebates, increased aid and leaves of absence as students ask if college is becoming “glorified Skype.”
COVID-19 will hit colleges when students arrive for fall semester. So why open at all? Money is a factor.
Colleges that are reopening campuses this fall know they’re bringing a higher risk of coronavirus to their community. The questions aren’t really about if or when, but about how bad outbreaks could be – and whether having an in-person experience for students is worth the cost. With so much at stake, some students, parents and faculty are asking: Why take the risk at all? In many cases, it comes back to money.
Alabama’s High Stakes Experiment: Reopening Universities as Virus Looms
The state is betting its robust student testing and technology program will be enough to hinder campus outbreaks, even as universities in other states abruptly close.
The virus isn’t going away. That’s why campuses need to reopen.
…At Northeastern University, we announced in May our intention to reopen, after consulting with epidemiologists, biologists and network scientists on our faculty. Their work convinced us that bringing students back to the university would be crucial — not because the covid-19 virus isn’t a serious, highly transmissible threat, but because it is. The pandemic, we realized, is going to be endemic: an ongoing threat to manage, not a brief blip in history, cleanly wiped out by a miracle vaccine. The science will take time. But the world cannot.
Party Like Your Life Depends on It
To safely reopen this fall, faculty and staff must reinforce social norms that capitalize on students' natural tendency to want to do the right thing, argues Brendan Cushing-Daniels.
Pressure Mounts on In-Person Holdouts
The incidents at UNC Chapel Hill and Notre Dame are unlikely to dissuade some college leaders from holding classes on campus.
Higher Ed's Moment of Truth
Colleges confront what it means to bring students back to campuses as their fall plans become realities. Will many institutions make it through the fall without outbreaks?
Facing a Risky Fall, Students Ask: How Much Do I Trust My Classmates?
…Others have criticized colleges for going ahead with in-person plans this fall, knowing full well the likelihood of viral spread. “Relying on the self-control of young adults, rather than deploying the public-health infrastructure needed to control a disease that spreads easily among people who live, eat, study, and socialize together, is not a safe reopening strategy,” write Julia Marcus, an epidemiologist and professor at Harvard Medical, School and Jessica Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, in an Atlantic article entitled, “Colleges Are Getting Ready to Blame Their Students.” The article continues, “And yelling at students for their dangerous behavior won’t help either.”
Excitement. Fear. Resignation. Welcome to the Fall Semester.
The Chronicle spent three days on the University of Kentucky’s campus, in Lexington, interviewing more than 50 people about returning to college in a pandemic that has killed more than 160,000 Americans and sent higher education spiraling. There was an eerie dichotomy between the normalcy of move-in — forgetting to pack a toothbrush, a red cup outside an apartment, listening to a cappella “Hakuna Matata” — and what has become the new normal. A Q-tip in a nostril. A parent reminding a child to put on a mask when talking to someone. The acceptance among several students that they are likely to be infected.
Colleges' best-laid coronavirus plans quickly come undone
Schools are scrambling after experiencing an uptick in infections within days of students returning to campus.
Millions of students are returning to US universities in a vast unplanned pandemic experiment
Despite COVID-19 infections running rampant in many states, nearly 1,000 academic institutions are welcoming people back to their campuses.
Freshmen waited for their schools to share reopening plans. Then things got complicated.
They’d be in remote classes for only about two weeks. Soon, they’d be back to cheer on friends playing spring sports, plan graduation parties and shop for prom dresses. Or so they thought. Those milestones, of course, never came for high school seniors. But for many who had college plans, the fall offered a second chance — an opportunity to make things right after a botched senior year.
Universities Wave the White Flag in the Face of Campus Coronavirus Outbreaks
THE NUMBER OF COLLEGES and universities reversing course and returning to remote learning is growing as clusters of students contracting the coronavirus – largely through off-campus social activities – overwhelm school safety plans just days after they return to campuses.
SCHULMAN: The weak spot in Vanderbilt’s reopening plan: parties
Vanderbilt’s reopening plan, while robust, lacks a legitimate process to enforce violations of social gathering guidelines.
Tennessee Governor Signs Covid-19 Business Liability Shield
Tennessee joined at least 10 other states in broadly limiting liability lawsuits related to Covid-19 exposure, under legislation Gov. Bill Lee signed into law.
The new law sets up legal hurdles for anyone filing a lawsuit over exposure to the virus, broadly protecting businesses, health-care providers, nonprofits, and others including schools and churches. For a lawsuit to avoid dismissal, the plaintiff must show the defendant’s actions amounted to gross negligence or willful misconduct and provide a signed statement from a doctor attesting that they believe the plaintiff’s injury or sickness resulted from the defendant’s actions.
The simple reason why colleges are reopening
…The answer, according to education experts, is simple: their options are limited. They can reopen, and impose safety measures to try and curb the spread of the virus, or they can continue to conduct remote learning only, and risk financial devastation.
Grad students challenge university-mandated COVID-19 agreements
On Saturday, Lauren Pope—a biology Ph.D. student at Stanford University—received an email detailing a “graduate student compact” she’ll be required to sign before she can register for the fall semester. The document lays out expectations for how students will behave on campus given fears of COVID-19 transmission, as well as punishment procedures for those who don’t follow the rules. Pope—who returned to the lab in June to resume her research and lives in on-campus housing—is concerned about the one-sided nature of the agreement. “I would be more comfortable signing this … if there were more precautions and transparency on how [the university is] going to keep us safe.” She isn’t the only one who objects. “By Sunday, students all across campus had come together to … counteract the compact and demand certain things from the university,” she says. “We don’t … understand the extent of how this could impact us legally; we’re just scared because we know it could.”
Will Shame Make Students Stop Socializing?
Shame and fear aren't the best motivators for public health campaigns, experts say. But colleges take that approach amid COVID-19 outbreaks as campuses reopen.
Disparities in Testing
Colleges are planning a wide range of COVID-19 testing strategies, ranging from frequent universal testing to no campus-based testing at all. Variation of approaches raises questions about equity.
Our kids are still at home while universities reopen? That’s backward.
Blame a lack of planning — and funding — at the federal level.
Coronavirus updates Friday: Kids who seem healthy may be more contagious than sick adults, study says
A new study adds to growing evidence that children are not immune to COVID-19 and may even play a larger role in community spread than previously thought.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mass General Hospital for Children found that among 192 children, 49 tested positive for the coronavirus and had significantly higher levels of virus in their airways than hospitalized adults in intensive care units, according to the study published Thursday in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Study author Dr. Alessio Fasano said some children exhibited symptoms, but others showed no symptoms and were brought in because they had been in contact with an infected person or lived in what was considered a high-risk area.
The college covid-19 mess: It was all so predictable
This week, some universities that decided to reopen campuses during the covid-19 pandemic realized it wasn’t going to work within days of welcoming students back to campus. They announced they were switching to remote learning. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Notre Dame were among them, while other schools that had planned to reopen abruptly changed course. Surprised? Of course you aren’t — because, as Liz Willen, the author of the post below explains, it was all predictable and even preventable.
Colleges Closing: University Outbreaks and Parental Angst
Coronavirus clusters have been linked to fraternities, sororities, and off-campus parties.
Chapel Hill and Notre Dame Are Just the Beginning
…These early experiences suggest that learning in person this fall may be harder to pull off than some college leaders anticipated. Should other colleges take the experiences of UNC and Notre Dame, which started their semesters relatively early, as a warning? Public-health experts interviewed by The Chronicle responded with a resounding “yes.”
Verdicts in Coronavirus Law Suits May Soar, But There's a Remedy
Moreover, "companies face a daunting choice of either staying closed and risking bankruptcy, or reopening and risking a business-crippling lawsuit," says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and that risk of ruinous litigation also exists in law suits by residents in nursing homes, students in colleges and universities, passengers on planes, trains, and buses, and elsewhere.
…
In other words, the overwhelming majority of otherwise-healthy non-elderly adults who survived COVID-19 nevertheless suffered from serious medical complications. Another study of 416 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 found that 20% of the patients had heart damage during hospitalization. Perhaps even more ominous, a study of millions who had COVID-19 and survived suggests that 10%-15% nevertheless have long-term illnesses.
…
If schools which teach rock climbing, parachute jumping, or even motorcycle riding can and usually do require students to acknowledge the inherent risks and to assume sole responsibility for them, colleges and universities can (and many already are) require their students to sign waivers acknowledging this new risk, and likewise absolving the school from legal liability for any coronavirus infections they might acquire.
America’s Terrible Internet Is Making Quarantine Worse: Why millions of students still can’t get online
In countries such as South Korea and Sweden, governments built out broadband infrastructure and opened it up to internet providers to use, much like the interstate highway system in the U.S., says Roberto Gallardo, the director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development. But the U.S. mostly left this up to the internet companies themselves, and parts of the country got overlooked. Typically, internet companies say there aren’t enough customers in certain areas for them to feel financially incentivized to go there. This occasionally leads to what advocates call “digital redlining,” in which wealthy areas get online, while lower-income neighborhoods don’t. Similar to residential redlining, this has a disparate racial impact: Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to have a broadband connection at home.
College Reopening: The Outlook for In-Person Classes
A look at how U.S. colleges and universities are starting the semester, and the challenges for students with special needs.
Tracking Coronavirus Cases at U.S. Colleges and Universities
As college students and professors return to campus in the midst of a pandemic, coronavirus cases are turning up by the thousands. A New York Times survey of more than 1,500 American colleges and universities — including every four-year public institution, every private college that competes in N.C.A.A. sports and others that identified cases — has revealed at least 26,000 cases and 64 deaths since the pandemic began.
…
With no national tracking system, colleges are making their own rules for how to tally cases. While this is believed to be the most comprehensive survey available, it is also an undercount. Among the colleges contacted by The Times, many published case information online or responded to requests for case numbers, but at least 600 others ignored inquiries or refused to answer questions.
Elite U.S. Colleges Lose Favor With Lucrative Asian Students
In a typical year, more than 1 million students come from all over the world to study at U.S. colleges and universities. They’ve never had more reasons to reconsider. The coronavirus pandemic has brought health concerns, travel restrictions and shifting immigration rules; online classes and social distancing promise a diluted college experience at a full-strength price. Students from Asia, who make up three quarters of foreign nationals on U.S. campuses, have yet another concern. Anti-Asian bias and hate crimes are at an all-time high.
Stop Campus Partying to Slow the Virus? Colleges Try but Often Fail
Coronavirus outbreaks at colleges reopening for fall classes underscore the difficulties of policing student behavior.
Crummy College Quarantine Food Goes Viral: A Lemon as a Side Dish?
Students arriving at N.Y.U. and other campuses are flooding social media with complaints about meals they are given as they isolate.
Should Children Go Back to School? It Depends in Part on Your Politics
There’s a large partisan divide in parents’ views on whether it’s safe for students and teachers to return to school, several new surveys find.
Young Adults’ Pandemic Mental Health Risks
In a new C.D.C. survey, 18- to 24-year-olds reported the highest levels of symptoms of anxiety and depression, and a quarter of them said they had seriously considered suicide.
College Reopening vs. Reality
Students discuss how their schools’ plans have fared after first contact with the obstacles.
Schools Have No Good Options for Reopening during COVID-19
Bringing students back into classrooms or keeping them home can both have negative consequences
Colleges need COVID-19 tests to reopen, scientists say. Some don't have much of a plan.
COVID-19 outbreaks already are interrupting colleges’ plans to reopen across the country. But just how big those interruptions are – and whether the outbreaks can be contained – hinges in part on colleges’ plans to test students rapidly. And some campuses don’t have much of a plan at all.
Franks, Mary Anne, Protecting Privacy and Security in Online Instruction: A Guide for Students and Faculty (April 6, 2020).
COVID-19 forced educational institutions all over the globe to shift abruptly to online instruction. Online instruction presents many challenges to both faculty and students accustomed to in-person learning. Among those challenges are serious equity concerns, including wide variation among students and faculty in terms of technological literacy, access to reliable Internet service and related “digital divide” issues, time zones, caretaking responsibilities, and personal situations that may make remote learning difficult or impossible (e.g. unsafe home conditions). Another serious category of concern are privacy and security issues, which are the subject of this memo. The privacy and security issues raised by this memo are not exhaustive. This memo is only a preliminary and necessarily incomplete set of concerns and recommendations.
The Corner That State Universities Have Backed Themselves Into
For schools to do the right thing would be financial suicide.
Running Numbers or Running From Numbers?
As colleges moved to reopen classrooms this fall, groups of researchers were forthright with statistical modeling showing likely COVID-19 infections on campus. That's more than some public flagship universities can say.
Cases Spike at Universities Nationally
Most colleges and universities have now begun classes and brought students to campus all over the country. Several of those institutions, especially large ones, are now seeing outbreaks of COVID-19 among students. Many of the most visible and serious outbreaks are in the Southeast United States.
Will Students Show Up at Private Colleges?
Some institutions are having record years, but many others are starting the year with 10 or 20 percent of students not there. And some have lost more.
Blame Game
As more colleges threaten punishment for risky student behavior that can spread the coronavirus, experts suggest either providing students alternatives for safe social interactions or keeping campuses closed.
Universities sound alarm as coronavirus cases emerge just days into classes — 530 at one campus
More than 500 cases at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Nearly 160 at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Dozens at the University of Southern California. Colleges and universities that brought students back to campus are expressing alarm about coronavirus infections emerging as classes have barely started, raising the possibility everyone could be sent home.
Student papers say administrators share blame for virus outbreaks: ‘Don’t make us write obituaries’
“Don’t make us write obituaries” and “Blame Admin” are the latest blistering stances campus editorial teams are printing as their colleges and universities reopen for in-person instruction during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Colleges Are Making Late Calls to Shut Campuses. Is It All About the Money?
…But as students cancel their plans to study on campus, nearly all of the money they spent for tuition will stay with the university. The change in instructional plans in some cases came too late for students to get full refunds of their tuition if they withdrew. And it made it nearly impossible for them to attend a different college. Some observers have eyed campus leaders’ decision-making with suspicion: Were these late decisions all about securing nonrefundable tuition?
Colleges Lost the Moral Authority to Blame Students
Institutions have always profited off risky social behavior. Complaints now ring hollow.
The Student-Blaming Has Begun
…At the same time that blame and responsibility were piling on, critics were questioning whether it was fair to fault college students for doing what students naturally do, especially when they’ve been cooped up with their parents for months, away from their friends and eager for a “real” college experience. And should college administrators shoulder much of the blame for bringing students back in the midst of a pandemic and expecting radical changes in their behavior?
An Ethical Opening for Higher Ed Institutions
If a college's reopening were an experiment, David Grant and Mark Meaney ask, would it be approved by an institutional review board?
University of Alabama ordered faculty to keep quiet about COVID-19 outbreak: report
Administration officials at the University of Alabama reportedly instructed professors to keep quiet about the outbreak of more than 500 coronavirus cases, instructing them in an email not to tell their students if someone in a class tests positive.
Shut Up and Work: Covid Gag Rules Leave Everyone in the Dark
In the past few months, U.S. businesses have been on a silencing spree. Hundreds of U.S. employers across a wide range of industries have told workers not to share information about Covid-19 cases or even raise concerns about the virus, or have retaliated against workers for doing those things, according to workplace complaints filed with the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
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Teachers say they’re getting gag orders, too. At the end of July, as Florida prepared to resume in-person classroom teaching, the school district in Jacksonville’s home county of Duval emailed a warning to employees. Any social media posting that would “reflect badly” on the district’s reputation “may lead to disciplinary actions,” according to the email, later viewed by Businessweek. The school district says the email wasn’t meant to prevent employees from expressing views on reopening.
In many cases, workers say their bosses have cited employee privacy to justify the gags, including federal privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. But such laws don’t require companies to silence employees on safety matters. On the contrary, federal laws, including those that created OSHA and the NLRB, guarantee employees the right to communicate about and protest their job conditions. The federal bodies have failed to make companies obey the law. Many thousands of OSHA complaints about coronavirus safety issues have yielded citations against just two companies—a health-care company and a nursing home—totaling about $47,000.
Blame Pollyanna Presidents When Covid-19 Plans Fail
As the pandemic rages in many states, some college presidents are engaging in wishful thinking and hubris, believing they can keep the coronavirus at bay by relying on piecemeal responses. Sadly, we’re already experiencing outbreaks on campuses and retreats to remote learning: the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are the first major institutions that have seen the virus outwit their best plans. There will be many more over the coming weeks.
Will Covid-19 Revive Faculty Power?
The pandemic has spurred professors across the country to organize. Are they too late?
10 Ways the Coronavirus Has Shaped Higher Ed and Its World
New lawsuits, more hunger, fewer jobs, and shaken local economies
New York Tries to Reassure Test Takers About Online Bar Exam
The New York Board of Law Examiners is trying to allay concerns that the many strict rules surrounding the state’s online bar exam in early October are navigable, and won’t result in false allegations of cheating.
Coronavirus in the classroom? New UCSF study calculates the odds
Using public data and a simple equation, researchers came up with a method of calculating the percentage of children in a local community infected with the coronavirus who do not show any symptoms. “Knowing what the rate of asymptomatic infections among children is the first step you need to have to understand the risk of COVID transmission in any congregate group setting, whether it’s a classroom or child care or children’s hospital,” said senior author Dylan K. Chan, a pediatric otolaryngologist at UCSF.
The big takeaway? There’s a relatively high chance of spreading coronavirus when you gather groups of children together in schools, even if they’re not showing symptoms. The percentage of asymptomatic individuals under 18 consistently falls in line with the number of confirmed cases in the general population, according to the study published by JAMA Pediatrics on Tuesday.
For example, the asymptomatic pediatric prevalence in San Francisco for the first few weeks of August was around 1.1%, based on data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center. Based on the equation presented in the study, in a classroom of 22 students — even if all the individuals are screened and asymptomatic — that means there would be about a 24% chance that at least one child in that group is infected and showing no symptoms. In a region with a higher case count, such as Merced County in California’s Central Valley — where the estimated pediatric prevalence is 4.6% — that number bumps up to 64%.
New York makes the example to avoid a second wave of COVID-19
Every day between 60,000 and 80,000 tests are carried out in the state that allow to have a daily control of the evolution of contagions and analyze the "hot zones" in order to be able to tackle quickly and avoid a [loss of?] control of transmission. In the city, where the pandemic has developed with higher virulence, the infection rate is slightly higher than in the rest of the regions, between 1 and 1.2%, but is still a lower number than other U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, where it stands at around 7%; Miami, 13%; or Houston, which last week recorded 15%. "New York is like our South Korea," Dr. Thomas Tsai, of Harvard University's Institute of Global Health, came to compare. University of Michigan epidemic historian Howard Markel told the New York Times that in his opinion New Yorkers have taken this matter "much more seriously than elsewhere."
Latest on the worldwide spread of coronavirus
The pandemic is still expanding, but the rise in cases and deaths has slowed globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, while a Hong Kong man and two European patients were confirmed to have been re-infected with the virus, raising concerns about people's immunity.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.
* For a U.S.-focused tracker with state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser.
Citizens' adherence to COVID-19 social distancing measures depends on government response
According to researchers, governments who instilled fear instead of providing important, knowledgeable information, are less likely to be trusted. This fear can lead to panic and limited adherence to policies implemented later. For example, in the United States, some citizens are hesitant to follow masks orders because they believe it will take away their freedom. Khuntia believes governments should have stated early-on that mask-wearing does not infringe on your freedom, but rather saves lives.
"The sole argument of this research is that the government should have given citizens a much better informative story, channelized through 'more personal' broadcasting and media sources than it was handled," says Khuntia. "Rather than focus on political ramifications, and media-driven 'sensational breaking stories', a positive, well put-together message should have been formed."