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Education Dive Brief
Colleges factor flexibility for students into fall reopening plans
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
June 2, 2020
Dive Brief:
Many colleges continue to announce plans to reopen campuses for the
fall term, though potentially on a shortened or altered schedule, or
with a mix of face-to-face and online classes.
Some institutions have said if they offer a hybrid model, they will
allow students to choose whether to take their courses on or off campus.
Whether operations can resume, however, hinges on health conditions and government restrictions.
Dive Insight:
A major concern among college administrators is whether they will be
able to reopen their campuses for the fall. Institutions have not been
immune to the economic turbulence the pandemic has caused. Many have
taken significant hits to their budgets.
About two-thirds of institutions that have shared fall plans say they
intend to restart campus operations, albeit with some limitations,
according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Those include requiring
people to wear facemasks in public and reducing class sizes to maintain
social distancing.
So far, the California State University System is the only major higher
ed entity to say definitively that it will hold the majority of classes
online this fall.
Some institutions are considering a blend of traditional and online
classes. Boston University said Monday it would permit students to pick
either.
Students "now have the option to either be in the classroom in person
or to participate remotely from their dorm room or off-campus home, and
they can exercise that remote option at any time during the semester,"
President Robert Brown said in a statement.
Lasell University, a private college in Massachusetts, will give
students similar flexibility, allowing them to take classes in-person
or online, even if they opt to live on campus.
Other colleges have said they will adjust their academic calendars as a
way to host in-person classes but avoid an anticipated second wave of
the virus. The University of Notre Dame, a private Catholic institution
in Indiana, said it will start classes in mid-August, two weeks ahead
of schedule. The university will forgo a fall break, ending the
semester before Thanksgiving.
The University of South Carolina, the state's flagship, intends to
follow a similar timetable, finishing in-person classes before
Thanksgiving break, with students taking their final exams remotely.
The University of Virginia also plans to wrap up in-person classes by
Thanksgiving.
Other schools are dividing the term in half to give students time to travel to or from campus if needed.
Campus officials fear if they can't restart traditional classes, they
will lose students who are reluctant to pay regular tuition for online
courses. Brown University President Christina Paxson opined for The New
York Times in April that colleges that remain closed in the fall could
lose as much as half their revenue.
"This loss, only a part of which might be recouped through online
courses, would be catastrophic, especially for the many institutions
that were in precarious financial positions before the pandemic,"
Paxson wrote. Some colleges have also already been sued for tuition
refunds, with students claiming they weren't getting the experience
they paid for after campus operations went remote this spring.
Paxson outlined ways campuses could open safely, many of which have
been floated by other institutions: regularly testing for the virus,
using technology-enabled contact tracing to reduce the spread of
infection and isolating people who are infected. But this would likely
prove too costly for some colleges, and coronavirus tests are not yet
widely available.
A trio of college presidents, including Paxson, are set to testify
before the Senate's health and education committee Thursday about
reopening campuses. They are expected to discuss options for campus
administrators, as well as liability issues associated with the spread
of coronavirus.
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