If you’re at all confused about how colleges and universities are coping with the dangers posed by COVID as they plan and adjust their fall schedule and beyond, you’re not alone. The playing field shifts daily as the virus calls the tune to which higher education must dance. As we went to press, CNN reported on September 9 that more than 40,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported from colleges and universities in all 50 states. This, after only a handful of weeks since school reopening began. So, with that in mind, here’s a look at the challenges facing colleges and universities in the age of COVID and how schools are addressing them in a variety of ways.

What’s the schedule for students?

Anyone who has followed the twists and turns of scheduling a baseball season can just imagine the tortured thinking that goes into coming up with a schedule for higher education instruction. Schools are attempting to deal with this by shortening up and eliminating some school terms to avoid student in-person activity during the height of flu season.

At Brown University, plans for 2020-21 focus on pursuing a three-term academic calendar that provides for a “de-densified” approach for the transition of students to campus starting in fall 2020. Graduate and medical students were invited to come back in August with the goal to bring most returning undergraduates to campus by late September.

Another school opting for three terms, fall, spring and summer, is Columbia University.

For the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan the last day of in-person classes for the semester will be Friday, November 20. After a nine-day-long Thanksgiving break, classes will resume remotely on Monday, November 30 and continue until December 8.

What will be classroom and school capacity?

Smaller class sizes and limits on who can attend in-person classes are two of the ways schools are trying to insure social distancing and small gatherings on campus.

At the University of Washington, in-person instructions is only permitted so far for “essential clinical instructions” which must be pre-approved.

Georgetown had intended to limit on campus students to 2,000, but are starting classes in virtual mode, first. No one from the class of 2024 will be in-person students, at this time.

Johns Hopkins has limited seminars to 10 people, with social distancing and masks. Rice University has limited classrooms to only 25 students at a time.

At the University of Texas, Austin more than three quarters of students will be taking courses solely online, almost 20% are hybrid students taking classes on line and in person. Only 5% are taking all course in person.

Will the dorms be open?

Some schools have decided that the best option is to keep dorms closed, others have decided to limit the number of students in their housing units. Those that will have some dorm students have established safeguards to make sure they don’t produce super spreader events.

CalTech intended to have a scaled back dorm presence with only one person per room, but later decided to keep them closed for the fall semester.

UCLA has limited on campus housing to student athletes, students who are taking hybrid courses and have no local housing options and any other students with no local housing option.

At the University of Chicago dorms will be filled at limited capacity with only one person per room. Stanford’s reopening model will also mean that students will have private rooms. They are planning to accomplish that by dividing their student body into four terms. In the fall and summer semesters, freshman and sophomores will live on campus. In the winter and spring, juniors and seniors will.

At Harvard, students were scheduled to share bathrooms, but not bedrooms. Only 40% of the student body was expected to live on campus.

Will students be quarantined?

In the age of COVID some governors have required out of state visitors to quarantine for a number of days before going out into the community. Colleges and universities have a similar concern about students joining their exclusive communities. Some schools have incorporated a quarantine plan to keep their communities virus free.

One of the most regulated quarantine plans exists at Harvard where any individual moving into on-campus dorm or House residences will be quarantined in two phases. In phase 1, which lasts 24 hours, students must stay in their room until the results from an initial viral test are in. Food is delivered to phase 1 students. A negative test allows the student to move onto phase 2, which lasts seven days. Students are finished with phase 2 when they test negative.

Caltech requires students to affirm that they have been virus free for the previous 14 days and keep a record of where they have spent 15 minutes or more at any campus location.

At Carnegie Mellon students are required to quarantine on campus for 14 days before they can attend in person classes.

The University of Chicago was considering planning a quarantine period for students after moving into their residence halls.

What other safety measures are schools taking?

From reserved spaces to COVID dashboards, schools are promoting safety and community involvement to enlist the cooperation of their population to prevent the spread of the virus. Students congregating outside of classes are a major concern for schools.

At The University of Washington, gatherings of more than five people are not permitted.

NYU has established student seating spaces on campus and nearby, along with a seating reservation system through the NYU Mobile app (Apple and Android). They have two types of reservable seating spaces to support students. Remote learning spaces are seating areas set aside to make it easy to participate in remote classes and where speaking at a low volume is permitted. Remote Learning spaces are meant to support students who have a remote class right before or after an in-person class, as well as for commuter students who cannot easily go back to their living space to take a remote class when on campus. The reservation system is being provided so that students can secure a place on campus to make that remote class on time. In essence, the Remote Learning space is a different type of classroom.

Yale has instituted a mandatory informational program for students and faculty returning to campus.

Cornell and UC Berkeley have created a digital dashboard, which keeps track of COVID cases on campus and provides other important information about how to stay safe.

At MIT students who intend to be on campus have been told to expect to be “tested regularly.”

Stanford has established outdoor zones to promote social distancing. They are called Campus Zones.

The most dangerous super spreader activity

A school can take all the precautions to present a safe and clean learning environment, but all that goes out the window when students decide to bust out and party without any regard for mask wearing and social distancing. Based on the early actions of students’ behavior on campus, the CDC predicts 30,000 more deaths by the end of September as a result of the unsafe practices on campuses (and elsewhere). Here is just a sample of why they have concluded this.

Syracuse University officials were appalled recently by large student parties which resulted in 23 students being suspended for reckless behavior.

After just one week of in person instruction, North Carolina University at Chapel Hill had to go virtual when 130 students tested positive.

Boston College is so concerned about weekend parties at that school that they have hired police to break up the parties.

At Iowa State University, continued partying despite administrator warnings has resulted in more than 175 new COVID infections, two weeks ago.

Purdue University suspended 36 students for hosting a party during that same period.

After local officials expressed fears recently about students holding large social gatherings, 972 new infections were found at University of Alabama at Birmingham and 538 were at University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

According to the New York Times, a similar infection rate is evidenced at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Central Florida (Orlando), Auburn (Ala.) University, North Carolina State University (Raleigh), University of Georgia (Athens), Texas A&M University (College Station), University of Texas at Austin, and University of Notre Dame (Ind.).

And the list goes on and on with no prospect of things slowing down or improving.

While schools are continuing to do their part and fine tune their plans to be conscientious about keeping students safe in a quality learning environment, students have to do their part or risk losing their opportunity for a robust in person educational experience. Students need to police themselves and their actions. If that’s not possible, suspensions are in order. It’s not just a question of education, it could be a matter of life or death.  •

Sources: Official websites of colleges and universities referenced in this article