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That one solution works for many classes, but labs such as chemistry or biology do not lend themselves to remote education.
It is complicated.
Then why NOT use that solution for classes that it does work for, and that is the overwelming majority of college classes. (Keeping the the safety of students, staff, and faculty as the top priority,) this is a temporary problem that calls for a temporary solution.
While there is certainly some of that going on, I think this is just a genuinely tough choice to make and the lack of unanimity among universities reflects that.
UPenn has one of the largest endowments in the world at $14B. It is not cash starved by a long shot so the idea of putting money above health is not as much a factor there. They could weather a year without students if the data suggested that they had to. Here is their most recent message:
Just because they have a large endowment doesn't mean they want to lose revenue from on-campus students. I have little doubt that lost revenue from on-campus students and the impact on institutional viability/survival are playing a significant role in many universities' decision to bring students back to campus.
Then why NOT use that solution for classes that it does work for, and that is the overwelming majority of college classes. (Keeping the the safety of students, staff, and faculty as the top priority,) this is a temporary problem that calls for a temporary solution.
Sure, and where allowed that seems to be what colleges are doing. But it does start to trigger another set of decisions. If you are going to have students on campus, food service, parking, campus transit etc all have to step up to support. If you are going to have on campus labs, do you have tutoring to support that discipline?
If your chemistry, biology and similar classes are going to hold labs on campus, what about music? Is it ok to have piano practicums because you can play the piano with a mask and keep distance? Makes sense, but what if you are a trumpet major?
How about Allied Health (radiology, x-ray tech, physical therapy...)? We need this profession, but it is inherently high risk as you must practice on actual people to some extent, and students by definition are learning, including sanitation practices. They are going to be bad at it.
The problem is that many disciplines need to be dealt with as unique entities, and once you start having some on campus activities, it triggers the need for support services.
It is not impossible, just really complicated, and somewhat risky no matter what path a college decides to follow.
Sure, and where allowed that seems to be what colleges are doing. But it does start to trigger another set of decisions. If you are going to have students on campus, food service, parking, campus transit etc all have to step up to support. If you are going to have on campus labs, do you have tutoring to support that discipline?
If your chemistry, biology and similar classes are going to hold labs on campus, what about music? Is it ok to have piano practicums because you can play the piano with a mask and keep distance? Makes sense, but what if you are a trumpet major?
How about Allied Health (radiology, x-ray tech, physical therapy...)? We need this profession, but it is inherently high risk as you must practice on actual people to some extent, and students by definition are learning, including sanitation practices. They are going to be bad at it.
The problem is that many disciplines need to be dealt with as unique entities, and once you start having some on campus activities, it triggers the need for support services.
It is not impossible, just really complicated, and somewhat risky no matter what path a college decides to follow.
I agree that many disciplines should be dealt with has unique entities, but in the majority of cases I've seen, I don't see this happening. For example, I don't see universities moving disciplines like history, business, etc., to remote, while keeping things like nursing, music, etc., on-campus.
Just because they have a large endowment doesn't mean they want to lose revenue from on-campus students. I have little doubt that lost revenue from on-campus students and the impact on institutional viability/survival are playing a significant role in many universities' decision to bring students back to campus.
Again, I agree that some universities are thinking about this, but institutional viability is not a consideration for a school like Penn and you can see what they are doing.
I agree that many disciplines should be dealt with has unique entities, but in the majority of cases I've seen, I don't see this happening. For example, I don't see universities moving disciplines like history, business, etc., to remote, while keeping things like nursing, music, etc., on-campus.
That is exactly what we are doing at my college.
We did a survey of the students at my college and the results were:
50% preferred in-person class
10% preferred online class (which at my college means asynchronous)
40% preferred some combination of in-person and online (unclear what they meant by this, likely not all the same thing, my thinking is in-class instruction and online assignments)
The policy at mine is that we will have socially distant "high-priority" in-person classes. Basically this means vo-tech, especially medical field. A few academic subjects like languages get some in-person classes. Since social distancing and cleaning effectively halved the available classroom space, the department chairs were asked to prioritize which subjects really need in-person classrooms. Most academic subjects that are reading-writing intensive will be online/remote for Fall.
In the meantime, we have laid of 18% of our classified staff and the president offered buyouts to all faculty and staff who want to retire early; many took them. Their positions' renewal is very much in question. Covid is causing a major contraction that we will not recover from for years.
Online takes away most everything that's fun and also valuable about college. God knows I would not pay full freight for a "remote" class.
We did a survey of the students at my college and the results were:
50% preferred in-person class
10% preferred online class (which at my college means asynchronous)
40% preferred some combination of in-person and online (unclear what they meant by this, likely not all the same thing, my thinking is in-class instruction and online assignments)
The policy at mine is that we will have socially distant "high-priority" in-person classes. Basically this means vo-tech, especially medical field. A few academic subjects like languages get some in-person classes. Since social distancing and cleaning effectively halved the available classroom space, the department chairs were asked to prioritize which subjects really need in-person classrooms. Most academic subjects that are reading-writing intensive will be online/remote for Fall.
In the meantime, we have laid of 18% of our classified staff and the president offered buyouts to all faculty and staff who want to retire early; many took them. Their positions' renewal is very much in question. Covid is causing a major contraction that we will not recover from for years.
Online takes away most everything that's fun and also valuable about college. God knows I would not pay full freight for a "remote" class.
Would be interesting to see if the survey results were different after the recent skyrocketing of cases. I suspect they might be. Also, suspect Covid is going to cause a major change in higher education. Most universities will never go back to what they once were, no matter how much they are trying to.
Also, many professors are reluctant to return; even for those that return, I can't begin to imagine how much this is going to negatively impact the quality of instruction. I think many universities are seriously underestimating not only the number that may not return but also, the impact on teaching quality from those that do return. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/u...?smid=em-share
Would be interesting to see if the survey results were different after the recent skyrocketing of cases. I suspect they might be. Also, suspect Covid is going to cause a major change in higher education. Most universities will never go back to what they once were, no matter how much they are trying to.
Also, many professors are reluctant to return; even for those that return, I can't begin to imagine how much this is going to negatively impact the quality of instruction. I think many universities are seriously underestimating not only the number that may not return but also, the impact on teaching quality from those that do return. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/u...?smid=em-share
That survey was done about 3 weeks into lockdown, about the 2nd-3rd week of April.
I saw that article too. It made a good point about many profs being in their 60s and above, an older working age population than normal, who rightly should not be exposed.
I fear for the entire education sector. Our education philosophy is based at a basic level on being able to congregate in groups. If we can't do that, what we know about educating humans goes out the window. We do have plenty of evidence that online education only works well for a small slice of learners who needed the least help to begin with.
Thing is, work-from-home jobs are inherently are higher education jobs. Done best by the same people who excel at self-directed online education. Eveyone else is left behind.
The inequality gap is going to be enormous.
I'm not sure how this ends, but I can't think of many positive outcomes.
With the spike in cases, things change by the week. But my school is talking about masks, face shields, 6ft. between desks. I don't see how any of this works. If I have a mask on for an hour I sort of want to take it off. How can students and faculty do it all day? And what kind of interaction can you have with a classroom full of people masked up and behind face shields? An outbreak - what do you do? Send everybody home or quarantine on campus? The whole thing would MAYBE work if the pandemic was sort of in decline. With it spiking I don't see how colleges make it work. Not now. Go online for a year and sort through the ashes in fall of 2021. By that time we might have a new president, a national response, and a vaccine.
With the spike in cases, things change by the week. But my school is talking about masks, face shields, 6ft. between desks. I don't see how any of this works. If I have a mask on for an hour I sort of want to take it off. How can students and faculty do it all day? And what kind of interaction can you have with a classroom full of people masked up and behind face shields? An outbreak - what do you do? Send everybody home or quarantine on campus? The whole thing would MAYBE work if the pandemic was sort of in decline. With it spiking I don't see how colleges make it work. Not now. Go online for a year and sort through the ashes in fall of 2021. By that time we might have a new president, a national response, and a vaccine.
Exactly. I studied public health in graduate school. It seems high risk with clusters growing already - notably one at a fraternity network in Washington. Others have involved athletes. And they aren't even back on campus "full-time" yet with massive numbers of other students.
To be fair, most cases will likely be mild or mid-level given the youth, but there are many exceptions to that. In addition, given the economy there are often older students going back to update credentials for a job or switch fields. This is especially true during a recession like now. In addition, many faculty and staff are older. Plus the students still often visit older relatives on weekends or breaks. This is a high risk scenario going forward.
It really seems safest to wait for a vaccine. Right now the curve is no longer "flattening" but skyrocketing in many places.
The "forgotten" demographic seems to be the graduate students. When courses were put online, many more responsibilities were thrown on graduate TAs and RAs to teach online impromptu while their labs were blocked off. This effectively stalled research, and now their funding is being cut. PhD admission offers were rescinded - or some international graduate students were blocked from coming in. It's going to be an interesting fall when the actual numbers of enrolled graduate students versus projections are determined.
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