Brown Prez: Campuses Must Re-Open

Christina Paxson: "The extent of the crisis in higher education will become evident in September. The basic business model for most colleges and universities is simple — tuition comes due twice a year at the beginning of each semester. Most colleges and universities are tuition dependent. Remaining closed in the fall means losing as much as half of our 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. It’s not a question of whether institutions will be forced to permanently close, it’s how many." "Institutions should develop public health plans now that build on three basic elements of controlling the spread of infection: test, trace and separate. These plans must be based on the reality that there will be upticks or resurgences in infection until a vaccine is developed, even after we succeed in flattening the curve. We can’t simply send students home and shift to remote learning every time this happens. Colleges and universities must be able to safely handle the possibility of infection on campus while maintaining the continuity of their core academic functions." "All campuses must be able to conduct rapid testing for the coronavirus for all students, when they first arrive on campus and at regular intervals throughout the year ... Several states are working to adapt mobile apps created by private companies to trace the spread of disease, and colleges and universities can play a role by collaborating with their state health departments and rolling out tracing technology on their campuses ... Testing and tracing will be useful only if students who are ill or who have been exposed to the virus can be separated from others. Traditional dormitories with shared bedrooms and bathrooms are not adequate. Setting aside appropriate spaces for isolation and quarantine (e.g. hotel rooms) may be costly, but necessary."

Online Tools Iterate College Experience

The New York Times: "The disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted cobbled-together responses ranging from the absurd to the ingenious at colleges and universities struggling to continue teaching even as their students have receded into diminutive images, in dire need of haircuts, on videoconference checkerboards. But while all of this is widely being referred to as online higher education, that’s not really what most of it is, at least so far. As for predictions that it will trigger a permanent exodus from brick-and-mortar campuses to virtual classrooms, all indications are that it probably won’t." "There will be some important lasting impacts, though, experts say: Faculty may incorporate online tools, to which many are being exposed for the first time, into their conventional classes. And students are experiencing a flexible type of learning they may not like as undergraduates, but could return to when it’s time to get a graduate degree. These trends may not transform higher education, but they are likely to accelerate the integration of technology into it." "Real online education lets students move at their own pace and includes such features as continual assessments so they can jump ahead as soon as they’ve mastered a skill ... Conceiving, planning, designing and developing a genuine online course or program can consume as much as a year of faculty training and collaboration with instructional designers, and often requires student orientation and support and a complex technological infrastructure."

Colleges Amplify Enrollment Incentives

The Washington Post: "Free classes! Free parking! Prime dorm rooms! More cash! The more they worry about whether students in this year of the coronavirus will show up in the fall, the more admissions officers responsible for filling seats at colleges and universities" sweeten the pot. “The gloves have come off ... You’re talking about a scenario where colleges need to enroll students at any cost,” says Angel Pérez, vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College in Connecticut. "All of this is driven, of course, by the existential danger that too few students will sign on for college this fall because of the pandemic, which is wrecking family finances and raising fears that campuses will not reopen anyway, forcing a continuation of online teaching." "In a twist of timing, some of the inducements are a consequence of a Justice Department action that forced college admissions officers to drop key parts of their professional code of ethics, which prohibited many of these kinds of appeals and banned colleges from pursuing each other’s students ... The ethics rules had blocked colleges from offering inducements to anyone who had committed to another institution or from trying to get students already enrolled at one to transfer." "About a quarter of high school seniors who already picked colleges are reconsidering where to enroll, a survey by the higher education research firm SimpsonScarborough has found; 20 percent say it is likely or highly likely that they won’t go at all ... Even before this year, institutions were collectively handing back more than half of the tuition they collected from their full-time freshmen in the form of discounts or financial aid, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers ... Many colleges are already making overtures to students who had applied in earlier years but went elsewhere, asking them whether they would like to transfer and offering much more generous financial aid and no loss of credits."