The Risk Universities Can’t Not Take
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/16-weeks-and-5-days-university-arizona/616557/
Charles Fishman notes:
“The coronavirus pandemic left America’s colleges and universities, particularly its public ones, in an impossible bind. Shutting down campuses was the safe choice when it came to the virus itself, but carried the risk of alienating students and devastating brittle university finances: After Harvard announced that all its classes would be online, almost a quarter of undergrads opted to take the year off—a tuition hit only the richest institutions can withstand.
But opening campuses—even with rules, even with unlimited supplies of face masks and hand sanitizer, with testing, with dorms limited to one student per room—could create a runaway on-campus outbreak: dozens or hundreds of students catching the coronavirus, and then perhaps passing it not just to their classmates, but to the thinned-out ranks of campus food workers and instructors, not to mention people in the surrounding community”.
Related:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/us/colleges-coronavirus-success.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/16-weeks-and-5-days-university-arizona/616557/
Charles Fishman notes:
“The coronavirus pandemic left America’s colleges and universities, particularly its public ones, in an impossible bind. Shutting down campuses was the safe choice when it came to the virus itself, but carried the risk of alienating students and devastating brittle university finances: After Harvard announced that all its classes would be online, almost a quarter of undergrads opted to take the year off—a tuition hit only the richest institutions can withstand.
But opening campuses—even with rules, even with unlimited supplies of face masks and hand sanitizer, with testing, with dorms limited to one student per room—could create a runaway on-campus outbreak: dozens or hundreds of students catching the coronavirus, and then perhaps passing it not just to their classmates, but to the thinned-out ranks of campus food workers and instructors, not to mention people in the surrounding community”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/us/colleges-coronavirus-success.html