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The outbreak has unleashed a rash of phone calls and emails from anxious families.

Following new legal enforcement that restricts travel and public gatherings across Italy, all International Association of Language Centres schools in Italy have suspended in-classroom activities and have adopted distance learning classes for their students.

The Italian governmentÔÇÖs restrictions on travel and public gatherings that were initially imposed on the northern regions of Italy have now been extended to cover the entire country as of March 10 and will remain in place until April 3.

“All IALC language schools in Italy have followed the rulings of the Italian government”

“This current situation inevitably affects all IALC-accredited language schools in Italy that focus on the value of in-classroom teaching as well as placing great emphasis on the importance of treating the classroom as a place for cultural and social exchange,” a statement from IALC read.

“All IALC language schools in Italy have followed the rulings of the Italian government authorities precisely during this initial period.”

IALC explained that all of its Italian members agree that this is a challenging, complicated and worrying time, but being part of┬áthe association gives them “the energy, support and service that is unique within the study travel industry”.

“Furthermore, once the outbreak of COVID-19 has been contained, IALC will play an invaluable role in aiding member schools to return to normality.”

The coronavirus outbreak has impacted language schools in Italy greatly in terms of decreasing enrolments, cancellations and course postponements.

“This is undeniably a difficult moment for all IALC members from Italy, China and the wider association, but our schools recognise that sharing experiences, best practices, knowledge and ideas in these times is the best way to prepare for a bright future once this period has passed,” the statement concluded.

IALC president, Giorgia Biccelli, added that quality is the central ethos of all IALC schools worldwide.

“This special quality shows in difficult moments as all schools in Italy, China and across the world are facing right now and is reflected positively in all relationships with students and partners worldwide, even in these challenging times.ÔÇØ

The post Italy: IALC schools to offer distance learning appeared first on The PIE News.

The law used in Hungary to bar the Central European University from operating there has been termed a ÔÇ£disproportionate restrictionÔÇØ and an exercise in ÔÇ£arbitrary discriminationÔÇØ that ÔÇ£cannot be justifiedÔÇØ by advocate general Juliane Kokott of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Viktor Orb├ín’s government introduced lex CEU in 2017, a piece of legislation that made it illegal for foreign colleges based in Hungary to operate if they didnÔÇÖt also have a campus in their home country.

“We now await the final judgment of the Court itself, which is expected in the fall”

It also introduced requirements that those from countries outside the EEA had an international treaty with Hungary.

CEU is backed by billionaire George Soros ÔÇô whose views on migrants and refugees in Europe have led to clashes with Orb├ín and his government ÔÇô and formerly offers US-accredited degrees in Budapest without having a campus in the US.

It was the only university in the country impacted by the legislation.

ÔÇ£The Advocate GeneralÔÇÖs opinion affirms, in every detail, the case that CEU has been making since lex CEU was passed in April 2017. We now await the final judgment of the Court itself, which is expected in the fall,ÔÇØ said CEU in a statement.

Since January 2019, the university has been unable to offer its US-accredited courses in Hungary and has instead opened a campus in Vienna which will begin accepting students this autumn.

ÔÇ£The AGÔÇÖs recommendation does not change the universityÔÇÖs plans. Until the government withdraws the legislation, we have no choice but to proceed with plans to transfer all US degree instruction to Vienna,ÔÇØ the university added.

ÔÇ£At the same time, CEU will never allow the government to force us to abandon our home in Budapest.

“We will continue to maintain a vigorous public presence, with an Institute of Advanced Study, an Open Society Archives, a Democracy Institute, our cognitive science labs and teaching in our Hungarian accredited programs.ÔÇØ

While the opinion of the AG is not legally binding, the final judgement expected later this year by the Court will be.

If it’s decision is in line with that of the AG, the government will be required to repeal lex CEU and allow the university to once again operate domestically.

The post Hungary CEU expulsion “cannot be justified” appeared first on The PIE News.

A new parliamentary group has been launched to promote the UKÔÇÖs continued participation in Erasmus+ and hold British prime minister Boris Johnson to account over his promise that there is ÔÇ£no threatÔÇØ to the scheme.┬á

Erasmus+ is the EU’s program to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. Its budget of Ôé¼14.7 billion is set to provide opportunities for over four million Europeans to study, train, and gain experience abroad.

ÔÇ£IÔÇÖm hoping that he is a man of his wordÔÇØ

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Erasmus+ was started by a member of Parliament for Coventry North West, Taiwo Owatemi, after the government failed to provide formal reassurances that the UK will continue to participate in the scheme after leaving the EU. 

Over the next year, the new APPG will seek to create an open dialogue between universities, EU institutions and the UK government to ensure that all the parties are speaking to each other. 

It will also set up meetings with the minister of state for universities Michelle Donelan to establish a timeline for the governmentÔÇÖs plan around Erasmus+.┬á

During the APPGÔÇÖs inaugural meeting, Owatemi spoke to MPs about the importance of Erasmus+ and how it helps improve social mobility.┬á

ÔÇ£I look forward to working with you all to safeguard the scheme that does so much to expand young peopleÔÇÖs horizons,ÔÇØ she said.┬á

ÔÇ£After all, the scheme provides means-tested support to over 70,000 people at the UKÔÇÖs universities every year.

ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs not just for those at university but also for learners at colleges and in continued education. Fostering aspiration and opportunity amongst the next generation is something that we need to get behind,” Owatemi added.

The UKÔÇÖs position on Erasmus+ is still uncertain- earlier this year the UK parliament voted against a clause which would have required the government to seek to negotiate continuing full membership of the scheme.

However, then minister for universities, science, research and innovation, Chris Skidmore, said that the vote did ÔÇ£not end or prevent the UK participating in [Erasmus+] after leaving the EUÔÇØ.

Boris Johnson has verbally supported the UKÔÇÖs continued participation in the scheme, although the government is yet to make any formal commitments.┬á

Responding to a question about the future of the scheme from Scottish National Party MP, Douglas Champman, during prime minister’s questions, Johnson said “there is no threat to the Erasmus scheme”.┬á

ÔÇ£We will continue to participate. UK students will continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of exchanges with our European friends and partners, just as they will continue to be able to come to this country,” the prime minister explained.

Owatemi told The PIE News┬áthat the new APPG will put pressure on the government to stick to this promise and that she is ÔÇ£planning to hold Boris to his wordsÔÇØ.┬á┬á

ÔÇ£The prime minister said in January that he plans to continue with the Erasmus program so IÔÇÖm hoping that he is a man of his word,ÔÇØ she said.┬á

ÔÇ£If he isnÔÇÖt, then I hope to ensure that he is held accountable for his decisions and the policies he makes for the country.ÔÇØ┬á

The APPGÔÇÖs inaugural meeting was attended by Deputy vice-chancellor international of Coventry University, David Pilsbury, and University of Warwick vice-chancellor,┬á Stuart Croft.┬á

Both spoke at the meeting about Erasmus+ and how important the scheme is for their institutions. Two students from Coventry University also spoke about their experiences of Erasmus+. 

Pilsbury told The PIE that Coventry University has a long tradition of widened participation and social mobility. 

“[Erasmus+] is transformative for young people, but it is particularly transformative for students from non-traditional backgrounds,” he said.┬á

“We are very fortunate in Coventry that we are disproportionately over-represented from students from non-traditional backgrounds because we put a lot of effort into promoting these opportunities- mobility in general and Erasmus in particular,” he added.

“We see the evidence day in, day out. It is the best investment a university or a government can make in its young people.”

Croft explained that while the UK has left the EU, it will continue to trade with Europe, just as it will trade with China and other countries around the world. 

“If we donÔÇÖt have these networks that are in place in Europe, weÔÇÖre going to have to build them”

ÔÇ£What we all believe in, I think, is that these mobility options give people great opportunities to develop themselves and create really important links with companies for the future.┬á

ÔÇ£ThatÔÇÖs the case in Europe as well as anywhere else. So if we donÔÇÖt have these networks that are in place in Europe, weÔÇÖre going to have to build them.┬á

ÔÇ£If weÔÇÖre building them in Europe weÔÇÖre not building further ones in China, or AmericaÔǪ So letÔÇÖs build on the platform weÔÇÖve got rather than taking away the platform that is already there.ÔÇØ┬á

The post UK: New APPG will hold PM to account over Erasmus+ promise appeared first on The PIE News.

Institutions should not resort to relying on income from international students to fund research and development projects, a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute has indicated ahead of this week’s UK budget announcement.

Instead, the UK government must reconsider the amount of funding it has budgeted for research and development at universities in the country, the paper suggested.

“Universities roughly break even on teaching home students but make a big loss on research”

“If policymakers simultaneously wish to hold down ÔÇô or reduce ÔÇô tuition fees, oversee further improvements to the student experience and increase spending on research to levels that are unprecedented in recent times (to 2.4% of GDP), then they are likely to need to find considerably more than the ┬ú18 billion they have currently assigned,” the paper outlined.

“Universities roughly break even on teaching home students but make a big loss on research. They fill in part of that gap from the surplus on teaching international students,”┬áNick Hillman, HEPI director and the author of the report, said.

Were the government to introduce a fee cap of ┬ú7,500 for UK students as the Augar report recommended, universities face a “looming large loss”, he added.

“If that happens, they will have to use international student fees to subsidise home students and there will be less money for covering gaps in research funding,”┬áHillman warned.

According to HEPI, in 2017/18 around 272,000 non-EU students in England and Northern Ireland each paid £5,100 more than it cost to educate them.

Around £4,250 from each student went towards reducing the deficit on research. International fees also support some of the cost of teaching domestic students.

The report warned that there is a danger the UK university sector will become over-reliant on other countries at a time when there are already fears of over-exposure to fluctuations in geopolitics affecting how many students ÔÇô especially students from China ÔÇô wish to pay high fees to study in the UK.

If the government meets targets to increase education export earnings to £35 billion a year and host 600,000 international students by 2030, cross-subsidising research from international student fees may still be possible, it read.

However, the document highlights that previous targets on international students “have been missed”.

“Moreover, relying more on international student fees to bolster the teaching of home students will always make it harder to realise the R&D target than if all the available cross-subsidies were spent on research,” the report suggested.

If international fees are used to fill gaps in research and development funding caused by drops in domestic fees, the annual research deficit in England and Northern Ireland alone could rise to £4.9 billion from £3.7 billion, it added.

The paper comes a week after the Russell Group urged the government to┬á“make a commitment to ring-fence sufficient funding” for future research projects.

The post UK gov’t must reconsider R&D budget – HEPI appeared first on The PIE News.

International House World Organisation has launched a career web service for prospective teachers as the provider reinforces its teacher training provision.

IH Teach English offers students initial teacher training and professional development course options, as well as helping them to find teaching jobs and continued development during their teaching careers.

Since its launch in January, 37 International House schools in 18 countries have signed up to offer the courses through IH Teach English.

“Our mission is to help teachers at every step of their career feel part of a much bigger community”

“Teacher training has always been at the core of what we do, and this website was designed to reflect this,”┬áBeccy Wigglesworth director Member Services and Client Experience at IHWO said.

In 1962, IH founders developed the IH Certificate in Teaching English ÔÇô a course that became a standard for language teachers and formed the basis of what is now the CELTA, according to the company.

“We have a fantastic network of teachers around the world who have a wealth of experience living with a TEFL career, so there are contributions on this site about what itÔÇÖs like to work in different destinations, how to approach the classroom, and advice on how to progress your career,”┬áWigglesworth added.

Prospective English language teachers can use IH Teach English to search for CELTA courses offered by IH schools. According to the provider, all information can be found in one platform where trainees can easily compare types of courses, destinations, and prices.

“Our mission is to help teachers at every step of their career feel part of a much bigger community which IH stands for,” said┬áGiuliana Faldetta, Brand Engagement and Marketing coordinator at IHWO.

“A teacher who feels supported will glow and this transforms in having great lessons and very happy students.”

Professional development courses the new service offers include skills specialising in young learners, academic management, and business English.

Those who book a course through IH Teach English can also benefit from free grammar course, discount on books and CV and careers advice.

A bank of teaching resources created by IH teachers can also be accessed.

 

The post IHWO launches ELT teacher career service appeared first on The PIE News.

Disruptions due to the coronavirus outbreak continued to ripple across higher education Monday, with more cancellations of in-person courses and meetings.

Known cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus, topped 700 in the U.S. Monday. Public health authorities are encouraging colleges and other institutions to encourage “social distancing” in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.

College and universities are focal points for this effort because many people who travel internationally are on campuses, which also feature dining halls and other public gathering spaces where people face higher odds of being infected.

Suspension of In-Person Classes

A growing number of colleges on Monday moved to either cancel classes or to hold all classes and exams remotely, some of them doing so around spring breaks. Most of those institutions are located in California, New Jersey, New York or Washington. However, the geographic range of colleges that are suspending in-person courses is expanding, with some timing those suspensions around spring breaks.

Hofstra University, which is located on New York’s Long Island, on Monday said a student with flu-like symptoms contacted the university’s health center the previous day. The student had traveled to an off-campus conference where an attendee tested positive for the virus.

The university announced that it was canceling all in-person classes this week and through its scheduled spring break next week for undergraduate and graduate classes on its main campus.

The University of New Haven, located in Connecticut, announced Monday that it was suspending all in-person classes and exams through March 24 after people on the campus were exposed to a confirmed case of the virus after attending a conference.

Fordham University, also located in New York, which declared a state of emergency last weekend, announced Monday that it was suspending face-to-face instruction at all of its campuses. The university said classes were canceled Monday and Tuesday and would resume Wednesday with faculty members teaching online or electronically.

“Though this is an undeniable disruption of the academic enterprise, we feel that it is the best way to minimize the risk of spreading the virus within the campus community,” the university said in a statement.

New York University announced Monday evening that it was transitioning to remote instruction until March 27, a period that includes the university’s spring break. Amherst College said it would cancel classes later this week and that all students were expected to leave campus by next Monday. And San José State University announced it was suspending classes this week, giving faculty and staff members time to prepare to move classes to "remote modalities" next week.

On Monday afternoon, the University of California, Berkeley, said it was suspending face-to-face instruction beginning Tuesday. That change will remain in place through the university’s spring break, which ends March 29.

“There are no confirmed cases on our campus at this time,” the university said in a statement, “however, as local, national and global public health recommendations shift to include mitigation of transmission, the campus is proactively taking steps that will help to protect the community.”

Berkeley said it would decide what to do on March 30 and beyond based on the latest information about the outbreak.

The University of Florida said on Monday it was recommending that instructors move their face-to-face courses to electronic delivery wherever possible. The university’s provost, Joe Glover, said the recommendation was not yet a requirement. But he said there was a strong probability it would be one before the end of the semester. Glover included resources for faculty to help them make the transition.

Princeton University, citing the “community spread” of the virus, on Monday announced a move to virtual instruction after the university’s spring break, with policies the university said would be in force until April 5.

On Monday Vanderbilt University, which is located in Tennessee, announced it was canceling classes for the rest of the week and moving to distance or other alternative delivery methods next week through at least March 30.

Ohio State University announced late Monday that it was suspending face-to-face instruction and moving to virtual instruction, effective immediately, until at least March 30.

College leaders increasingly discussed how to cope with disruptions to final examinations as they move online. Likewise, some wondered about commencement ceremonies. Western Washington University, for example, over the weekend announced the cancellation of its winter commencement, which was scheduled for March 21.

Academics this week were tracking college closures and creating guides to help faculty members teach online.

For example, Bryan Alexander, a futurist and senior scholar at Georgetown University, created a list of institutions that had suspended face-to-face instruction. His spreadsheet, which he created with help from others, on Thursday night included roughly 35 colleges and universities in the U.S.

Daniel Stanford, director of faculty development and technology innovation at DePaul University’s Center for Teaching and Learning, created a spreadsheet with links to remote teaching resources from more than 130 colleges and universities.

Princeton University’s president, Chris Eisgruber, described why his university made the decision to cancel face-to-face instruction despite no cases of infection occurring yet on the campus.

“While much remains unknown about COVID-19’s epidemiology and impact, our medical advisers tell us that we should proceed on the assumption that the virus will spread more broadly and eventually reach our campus,” Eisgruber said in a statement. “They also tell us that the best time to put in place policies to slow the spread of the virus is now, before we begin to see cases on our campus, rather than later.”

Conference Cancellations

Following decisions to cancel SXSW EDU and the American Physical Society’s annual conferences, the American Council on Education and the American Association of Community Colleges on Monday announced the cancellations of their annual meetings, both of which were to be held this month.

ACE, a membership group of college presidents and higher education’s primary lobbying group, was set to host roughly 1,500 college presidents, provosts and other senior administrators in San Diego next week. AACC’s annual meeting had been scheduled for the end of the month in Maryland’s National Harbor, near Washington, D.C.

The American Educational Research Association also announced Monday the move to a virtual version for its annual meeting, which had been slated for April in San Francisco. The University Professional and Continuing Education Association and the Association of Community College Trustees announced they were postponing or canceling events. And the Association for Asian Studies on Monday announced the cancellation of its annual meeting, which was set to be held in Boston later this month.

Some higher education associations rely on annual meetings for a substantial portion of their annual revenue. Questions swirled Monday about whether groups would issue refunds. AACC, for example, said it would issue full refunds.

“This is an unprecedented health emergency which we must all take very seriously and act to protect the health of our community,” the community college association said in a statement.

Testing for Employees, Paid Leave and ICE on International Students

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday issued guidance on flexibility and rules for international students who attend colleges and universities that are suspending face-to-face instruction.

The department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program said colleges must inform the feds of accommodations for international students within 10 days after announcing such an operational change.

In addition to requiring colleges to submit information on international students and programs, ICE said it was focused on ensuring that nonimmigrant students were able to make normal progress in a full course of study as required by federal regulations.

“SEVP recognizes that the COVID-19 crisis is fluid and rapidly changing,” the guidance said. “For that reason, SEVP is not requiring prior notice of procedural adaptations, leaving room for schools to comply with state or local health emergency declarations.”

College and university employees who work in health care are on the front lines of dealing with the impacts of the virus.

In Seattle, which has had a relatively large number of confirmed coronavirus cases and most of the related deaths, the University of Washington's UW Medicine system has turned a hospital garage lot into a drive-by clinic to test employees every five minutes for the virus, NPR reported.

The White House on Monday night was reportedly mulling a range of options to blunt the outbreak’s impacts on public health and the economy. And the Trump administration said it would release guidance on how to keep workplaces, schools, homes and commercial businesses safe from the virus.

One idea that reportedly was on the table was paid leave for workers. Some colleges already are fielding questions about their leave policies amid the outbreak.

The University of Connecticut, for example, over the weekend was cited in a viral tweet alleging that employees were told they would have to use vacation days or personal leave if they took more than three allotted sick days to recover from the virus this semester.

A spokeswoman for the university pushed back on that interpretation, calling it a misunderstanding. She said UConn’s message to students and employees is that, if they get sick with any illness, they should stay home to rest and recover.

“UConn has the discretion to allow additional leave time beyond what is set out in union contracts, and in keeping with the university’s bylaws,” she said via email. “In addition, during unusual or extraordinary circumstances such as a pandemic, UConn would of course use maximum flexibility to help ensure the health of our employees and community.”

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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday that it would soon stop approving the enrollment of new students receiving GI Bill benefits at the University of Phoenix, Temple University and three other institutions based on information from the Federal Trade Commission or state attorneys general that these institutions misled students about the value of getting a degree from these universities.

The move, hailed as long overdue by veterans' groups, will not immediately affect current students. But in a press release, the VA said it will stop approving new GI Bill enrollments at the universities in 60 days unless the institutions, including the Career Education Corporation’s Colorado Technical University and American InterContinental University, and Bellevue University, take corrective action.

However, the agency held out the possibility of stronger action if problems aren’t fixed by then, saying the matter will be referred to a VA committee on educational allowances, which will help regional agency directors decide "whether educational assistance should be discontinued for all individuals enrolled" at the institutions named "and, if appropriate, whether approval of all further enrollments or reenrollments" at the universities "should be denied to veterans, servicemembers, reservists, or other eligible persons pursuing those courses under educational assistance programs administered by VA."

The move was supported by veterans' education advocates, who said they’ve been asking the VA for years to crack down on institutions for violating a federal law barring the use of advertising, sales or enrollment practices that are erroneous, deceptive or misleading.

“This sends a powerful message, one we’ve been advocating for VA to exercise since 2012, that the federal government and taxpayers will no longer tolerate schools that seek to defraud veterans and other military-connected students out of their hard-earned federal education benefits,” Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, said in a press release.

“Today’s decision by the VA is more than justified based on the years of mounting evidence against University of Phoenix and Colorado Tech for maliciously defrauding veterans,” she said.

In its letter Monday to University of Phoenix president Peter Cohen, the VA cited the FTC investigation that led to a settlement last December in which Phoenix and its private investment group owners agreed to pay the FTC roughly $50 million. The university also agreed to forgive another $140 million in fees owed to the university by former students who allegedly were harmed by deceptive advertising.

That case focused on television and radio advertisements that Phoenix ran from 2012 until early 2014, featuring employers such as Microsoft, Twitter, Adobe and Yahoo!, that gave “the false impression that UoP worked with those companies to create job opportunities for its students and tailor its curriculum for such jobs,” the FTC said at the time.

The FTC, though, had announced it was launching the investigation in July 2015, when Phoenix was a publicly traded company worth more than $3 billion. Since then the university has changed owners and is now privately held by a consortium of investors including the Vistria Group and funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management.

A Phoenix spokesman said the alleged actions took place years ago.

"Let us be clear: after an FTC investigation that lasted more than five years, the one marketing campaign the Commission had issues with ended six years ago and occurred under prior ownership," the spokesman said in a statement. "The University admitted no wrongdoing in choosing to settle with the FTC and continues to believe we acted appropriately. We chose to settle to end the potential for protracted litigation that would impact our focus on our students."

Career Education Corporation, recently renamed Perdoceo Inc., reached a $30 million settlement last July with the FTC, which had been investigating whether it used deceptive marketing and advertising to identify prospective students. Career Education Corp. admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement but did agree to enhance compliance measures involving purchasing the names of prospective students from third-party firms.

The company announced another settlement in January with attorneys general from 48 states and the District of Columbia involving "unfair and deceptive practices." Although Career Education Corp. also denied wrongdoing in that deal, it agreed to write off $556 million in debt owed by 180,000 former students.

The VA cited the FTC investigation in a letter to CEC president and CEO Todd Nelson on Monday, saying, ”CEC and its subsidiaries have used illegal and deceptive telemarketing schemes to lure consumers to their post-secondary and vocational schools. CEC used three lead generators, Sun Key, EduTrek and Expand … These lead generators falsely told consumers they were affiliated with or recommended by the U.S. military. As a result of these tactics, CEC lead generators also induced consumers to submit their information under the guise of providing job or benefits assistance.”

Perdoceo said in a statement that it intends to demonstrate to the VA in the 60 days before the sanction takes effect that “we are in full compliance with their requirements and that necessary corrective action, if any, has already been taken.”

Temple agreed in a settlement in December with Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro to establish $250,000 in scholarships for Fox Business School students over the next decade. Shapiro had filed a complaint against Temple for misrepresenting data to college rankings organizations like U.S. News & World Report. In a letter to Temple president Richard Englert, the VA cited a class-action lawsuit against the university citing the misleading data.

A spokesman at Temple did not respond to a request for comment.

In its letter to Bellevue University president Mary Hawkins, the VA cited a complaint Nebraska attorney general Doug Peterson filed in state district court in February 2019, saying the university misled nursing students. Peterson alleged the university’s nursing program did not make it clear to students seeking a bachelor’s degree in nursing that the program was not accredited, reducing the value of the degree.

A university spokeswoman said Bellevue is contesting Peterson's complaint, and that the university believes "the evidence will show that no students were misled on the status of our nursing program accreditation."

The university in a statement also said it has more than 1,500 students attending with the use of veterans' benefits and the VA has received no complaints from them.

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Sam Houston State University is considering adding collegiality to its list of tenure and promotion criteria. This follows a failed attempt to do so in 2018 when rating professors’ collegiality on a scale of one to 10 was proposed.

This time around, Sam Houston State wants to rate professors on whether they’re collegial or not, up or down. Still, the idea is controversial.

“Fifty percent of crazy is still crazy -- this really confuses the nature of management and the nature of evaluation systems,” Darren Grant, an associate professor of economics, said of the new proposal.

“We all know academia can have some characters and some of them can be unprofessional, but that’s a management problem,” Grant added. A collegiality policy, meanwhile, is more like a blunt human resources “tool to sweep up problems.”

Sam Houston State’s proposal links poor collegiality assessments to comprehensive performance evaluations and assisted faculty development plans. Timelines for remediation vary by plan, but the maximum extension of any plan is one year. After that, the faculty member’s fate is in the hands of the dean and provost. Possible outcomes to the process range from restoration to regular faculty status to getting a new remediation plan to -- most seriously, and to Grant’s point -- initiation of dismissal proceedings.

The proposed policy on faculty performance reviews affirms that the “university environment is based on the principles of free exchange of ideas and information.” It defines collegiality as “respectful interaction and professionalism that is consistent with advancing the department or university.” And, unless otherwise demonstrated and documented, it says, all faculty members are assumed to be “collegial members of the university community.”

Yet in “the rare instance” where a departmental personnel committee, chair or both have concerns, the chair will document evidence and pursue corrective action. Refusal to correct the concern could result in dismissal. All tenured and tenure-track faculty members would be reviewed annually on their collegiality, "to facilitate a conversation" on the topic.

Lack of collegiality includes “hindering” the missions of the department, program, school or university or again, hindering the effectiveness of one’s colleagues.

When university administrators first proposed the idea in 2018, they posited that collegiality is about collaboration and civility, the latter of which requires “avoidance of hostility and rudeness.” The university leaders also wanted faculty members to submit a report on their collegial efforts prior to their reviews, to help inform how chairs rated them on a one-to-10 scale.

That didn’t go over well. Faculty members objected to the rating scale, in particular. Administrators responded by forming an ad hoc committee to redraft faculty performance evaluation standards.

The committee revealed its updated policy proposals recently. So far, the animus hasn’t been as strong. But some faculty members continue to voice their objections to a collegiality criterion, including at a town hall Grant attended last week.

“The goal of the current review process is to ensure that we have a group of polices that collectively provide for a robust evaluation process focused on the professional development of faculty,” Richard Eglsaer, provost, wrote to faculty members in a recent memo. “This will be a transparent process that seeks input from faculty from across all colleges and ranks. With your help, we will continue to have a fair and equitable process that encourages and rewards faculty over the span of their career.”

Christopher Maynard, a vice provost who served on the ad hoc committee, wrote in a similar memo that his group will review all feedback and make “adjustments to the policies, as appropriate.” Finalized policies will be reviewed by the university's general counsel and other groups before being sent to the president.

Lee Miller, professor of sociology, a member of the ad hoc committee and chair-elect of the Faculty Senate, said via email that the committee is in the process of assessing responses from faculty members.

“At the moment we are still in an input-gathering phase of work on our Faculty Review Policies. Any comment on the polices at this point would be premature,” she wrote.

Michael Hanson, head of library technical services, another committee member, and the current Faculty Senate chair, also declined immediate comment.

Beyond issues of management, faculty advocates, including the American Association of University Professors, have long opposed collegiality as a factor in tenure decisions. This, they say, is because inquiry and discovery are fundamental to what professors do, and anything that threatens that -- say, being called uncollegial because you're working on a highly controversial idea or you oppose a new institutional policy -- threatens academic freedom.

To quote AAUP policy on the matter, “In the heat of important decisions regarding promotion or tenure, as well as other matters involving such traditional areas of faculty responsibility as curriculum or academic hiring, collegiality may be confused with the expectation that a faculty member display ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘dedication,’ evince ‘a constructive attitude’ that will ‘foster harmony,’ or display an excessive deference to administrative or faculty decisions where these may require reasoned discussion. Such expectations are flatly contrary to elementary principles of academic freedom, which protect a faculty member’s right to dissent from the judgments of colleagues and administrators.”

That said, the AAUP doesn’t deny that collegiality is a part of the faculty job description. But the organization believes professors' willingness and ability to be collegial is demonstrated in their teaching, research and service records. So it is part of the traditional faculty responsibility triad, not a fourth leg.

Others disagree and point out that faculty members don't have managers in the typical sense and argue that there is a need to formally enforce expectations of collegiality. But disagreement has ensued wherever faculty members or administrators have tried to push collegiality as a separate faculty evaluation criterion. The University of Arkansas system faced intense pushback when it proposed making what sounded a lot like collegiality a part of faculty evaluations in 2017. The final policy doesn’t include the exact term, but it is nevertheless part of a 2019 lawsuit brought by three professors who say it unfairly widens grounds for dismissal. One of the new justifications for dismissal, for example, is defined as a "pattern of conduct that is detrimental to the productive and efficient operation of the instructional or work environment." (A footnote reads, "This need not be a separate component in the evaluation criteria of faculty, but may be considered in evaluating faculty in the areas of teaching, research and service.")

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education also has weighed in against using collegiality or similar terms as tenure criteria.

“During my time at FIRE and my experience investigating faculty cases, I have seen how these charges can work,” Adam Bonilla, the organization's vice president of programs, wrote of the Arkansas changes.ÔÇï “Collegiality-related charges are easily and frequently thrown in as a laundry-list item in faculty investigations, and often it is the only charge universities can make stick.” ÔÇï

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The American Council on Education announced Monday that it has canceled its annual meeting, citing the “ongoing and growing threat posed by the novel coronavirus.” The meeting had been scheduled to take place this weekend in San Diego.

ACE’s decision could sway others to cancel their upcoming events, too. Other associations often look to ACE for guidance. They informally watch what the association does, and ACE's president coordinates the Washington Higher Education Secretariat, a forum of 65 association chief executives who develop responses to important issues and challenges facing higher education.

The Secretariat’s meeting last week was “all COVID-19, all the time,” said Ted Mitchell, ACE president, in a telephone interview. Attendees shared information and ideas with other associations and reported out what they were hearing from their members and boards. Asked if he expects other higher education associations to follow ACE’s lead, Mitchell said, “Some will, some won’t.”ÔÇï

ACE canceled the annual meeting after factoring in health and safety concerns and the speed at which health organizations were releasing new coronavirus guidance, Mitchell said. He was also concerned that pulling presidents and other college leaders away from their campuses amid a national health crisis was irresponsible.

It was “more important for presidents to be on their own campuses helping those communities deal with an outbreak” than to hold the meeting, Mitchell said. More than 1,500 college leaders had registered to attend. ACE is in the process of issuing refunds for all registrants. It does not plan to reschedule the face-to-face event, but some materials will be made available on the association’s website through its new professional development platform, called Engage.

"We did not want to cancel until we were sure it was warranted," Mitchell said. "We canceled as soon as we decided it was the right thing to do for our meeting."ÔÇï

In recent days, the Association of Community College Trustees and the American Educational Research Association have canceled upcoming events due to the coronavirus. The SXSW Education conference said the city of Austin canceled its March dates.ÔÇï The University Professional and Continuing Education Association and the American Association of Community Colleges announced Monday afternoon they would cancel or postpone events.

The status of all events listed in this article were up to date at close of business Monday. Check with conference organizers for the latest information on specific events.

Other scheduled conferences continue to chug forward; a postcard for the upcoming Student Affairs Administrators in Higher EducationÔÇï, or NASPA, conference, also set to take place in Austin, Tex., arrived in the mail Monday. The Association of American Colleges and Universities ÔÇïsaid Monday it is planning to proceed with its conference on diversity, equity and student success at the end of the month.

“The cancellation of SXSW in the city of Austin, which is the city we’ll be in, is a major factor” in a potential cancellation decision, said Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA. “They have declared a local disaster and are canceling events in excess of 2,500 people, but that declaration was only for one week.”

ACE’s cancellation could also tip the scale.

“Obviously, if the college presidents' conference is canceled, that may have a big impact on the ability of staff at those colleges to attend,” Kruger said. Vice presidents, he added, are serving on response teams at their respective colleges and may not be able to leave campus.

Requests for cancellations will ultimately harm conferences that decide to proceed. ACCT decided to pull the plug on its Governance Leadership Institute after would-be attendees began to request cancellations on top of already insufficient registration numbers.

NASPA has not seen mass cancellation requests -- in fact, people are still registering to attend as of Monday. Kruger expects that to change should the conference proceed as planned.

"Everything's happening at a very fast pace right now," he said.

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The way instructors discover textbooks and the way students purchase them has changed rapidly over the past five years.

Today, the textbook industry is at an inflection point, according to a new survey on educational resources by Bay View Analytics, formerly the Babson Survey Research Group.

“The whole market has changed,” said Jeff Seaman, director of Bay View Analytics. The most recent data from the company suggest there is growing acceptance of digital materials over print among faculty. The survey of 4,339 faculty members and 1,431 chairpersons also finds that professors, college leaders and even entire college systems are increasingly concerned about how much students must pay for course materials.

The open educational resources movement, which supports the creation and dissemination of freely accessible and openly copyrighted course materials, has played a huge role in driving the conversation about textbook affordability, Seaman said.

While OER adoptions and awareness continue to grow, Seaman suggests the movement may need to alter its messaging to fend off competition from new publisher distribution models such as inclusive access, where institutions can automatically bill students for their course materials after negotiating a bulk discount.

“Five years ago, instructors were choosing between OER and physical publisher textbooks. Now, the entire decision process has changed,” Seaman said. “Publishers are promoting affordable and accessible options, too.”

This year for the first time, the majority of faculty surveyed reported that they are aware of OER. Faculty who had adopted OER rated its quality as equal to that of commercial alternatives. But the report notes that “many faculty remain unfamiliar with the licensing or how to use these materials, and current rates of growth will not change this for many years.”

The inclusive-access model resonates with faculty because it addresses their concerns about the high cost of course materials, the large number of students who choose not to buy required materials and frustration many faculty feel about historic publisher practices such as unnecessary new textbook editions, the report said.

Most faculty have not yet used inclusive-access programs but are open to the idea, the survey found. Over time, faculty’s opinion of the inclusive-access model will likely change, the report says. While some faculty comments praised the inclusive-access model, others expressed concern about students’ ability to opt out. Some faculty said students may not understand that they are leasing access to digital materials on a temporary basis.

"Big publishers, often in conjunction with bookstores, are pushing inclusive access or opt-out billing solutions as hard as they possibly can," said Alastair Adam, co-CEO of FlatWorld, a digital textbook publisher that has resisted the inclusive-access trend. "That’s because they see it as a way to grow their take from each class, while squeezing out the competition from used books."

FlatWorld used to be an OER publisher but could not make the model financially sustainable, Adam said. Now the publisher charges $40 or less for its ebook titles. While the OER movement has shone a spotlight on publisher pricing, Adam said most publishers don’t see OER as a major threat to their business.

“What we see, reinforced by what we hear reported by faculty that have tried OER and have chosen to switch to one of our titles, is that in the absence of funding, compromises inevitably have to be made,” Adam said. “Whether it is the curation and quality control or missing supplemental components, such as a robust homework solution, when corners are cut, the workload and burden shifts to the faculty using the book.”

It is not unusual for commercial publishers to take aim at the quality of OER, said Lisa Petrides, founder and CEO of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, which manages the OER Commons, a public OER library. She said numerous studies have debunked this claim.

While OER’s messaging has long centered on affordability, the movement has always been about more than just the cost of materials, Petrides said. “There is a lot of really good writing about the impact on teaching and learning,” she said.

The OER movement has been “up against commercial publishing since day one” and continues to grow, Petrides said. Inclusive-access models may pose a new challenge to OER, but not one that is insurmountable. “We’re seeing a lot of consolidation in the industry, this idea that there is a one-size-fits-all model that works for everyone. OER is the opposite of that -- it’s all about academic freedom.”

Administrators are significantly involved in decisions to choose inclusive-access programs, the survey found. While 41 percent of faculty reported that they alone selected inclusive access materials, 44 percent said administrators were involved. Another 15 percent of the decisions were made by administrators only. 

Administrators may become more and more involved in course material decisions as the inclusive-access model takes off, Seaman said. “It’s potentially a real dark cloud on the horizon for academic freedom,” he said.

The OER movement has changed the conversation about affordability and access. Now its challenge is to stop institutions from “trading one broken model for another,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education at SPARC, which advocates for the use of OER.

“The inclusive-access model is a real threat to a lot of progress that has been made,” Allen said. “OER has an important opportunity to keep driving the conversation to make course materials better and ensure access to course materials is sustainable in the long run.”

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The new coronavirus continues to cause a wide range of disruptions across higher education. Inside Higher Ed seeks questions from readers that our reporters and editors will try to tackle.

Please send questions to covid19@insidehighered.com or post them in the comments section of this article. We'll reach out to colleges, experts, federal and state agencies, higher education groups, and more to find answers.

Follow coverage of this fast-moving story here.

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ACE and SXSW could suffer enormous financial losses after nixing their signature events; other higher-ed groups are still waiting to decide.

By Katherine Mangan

A number of homestay hosts in Canada are reportedly turning down placements for international students coming from countries where there has been a major coronavirus outbreak, leading to a potential shortage of provision.

ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖve had 14 families cancel in the past week,ÔÇØ related Carolina Cintra, accommodations manager at ILSC Vancouver. ÔÇ£Hosts with small children or who are elderly are afraid to take students from these countries.ÔÇØ

Cintra added that it was more work finding new homestays for these incoming students. ÔÇ£We call around to other families on our list but no one wants to host them,ÔÇØ Cintra said.

ÔÇ£Hosts with small children or who are elderly are afraid to take students from these countriesÔÇØ

Tens of thousands of international students stay in homestays every year in Canada. Language schools, school districts and some colleges and universities rely on hosts to accommodate many students for both short-term and full-year programs.

Cintra says that ILSC is still open for students from all countries. ILSC has posted a notice on its website advising students about the precautions the school is taking. Throughout its schools, ILSC is encouraging students to wash their hands and is making hand sanitiser available.

Lyda Baquero, accommodation program manager at Academie Linguistique Internationale in Montreal, stated that a few of her hosts have cancelled.

In addition, some airport pickup staff are refusing to meet students from countries with outbreaks.

Anecdotal reports indicate enrolments at several language schools are down 20% with 2019 intake. With the busy summer season approaching, school managers have their fingers crossed that the outbreak will end or at least slow down.

In the K-12 sector, some short-term groups have postponed plans to come to Canada, indicated Bonnie McKie, executive director of the Canadian Association of Public Schools (caps-i).

A few school districts were expecting Japanese students this spring and were planning to send Canadian students to Japan in the summer as part of a reciprocal exchange. With the outbreak in that country, the Japanese school partner has decided to defer the program to 2021.

Many high school programs are urging full-time students from infected areas not to go to their home countries for spring break or summer vacation. They fear that homestay hosts will refuse to take them back when they return to Canada.

Having K-12 students stay for the summer will be complicated ÔÇô they can enrol for summer school for part of the vacation period but will need activities for the remainder. In addition, it could take a toll on their mental health if they are unable to visit their parents.

For some, the outbreak brings back memories of the SARS outbreak. Ann Friesen, homestay coordinator at the English Language Centre at the University of Manitoba, recalls that Canada was hit in both directions.

Between November 2002 and July 2003, SARS killed 721 people in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. As a result, students from those areas could not come to Canada to study.

At the same time, Toronto had a serious SARS outbreak that took 44 lives. Even though SARS was confined to Toronto, programs across Canada saw a decline in enrolments, including the University of Manitoba.

ÔÇ£With SARS, there were the facts about the case. And then there were peopleÔÇÖs perceptions and fears ÔÇô these had the biggest impact on international education,ÔÇØ Friesen noted.

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In a major effort to keep students on track with their studies, last month NYU Shanghai launched a digital teaching and learning program to deliver 293 courses using state-of-the-art digital tools to engage students and encourage live feedback and interaction.

“It typically takes months to launch really high quality online learning programs”

According to NYU Shanghai, more than 1,000 students and faculty successfully participated in the first week of the program, from as far away as Brazil, India, the US, and as close by as the university’s residence halls.

In order to make it work, “an extraordinarily high level of collaboration and coordination” had to take place internally, explained NYU Shanghai provost, Joanna Waley-Cohen.

As more institutions embrace digital technology as a means of mitigating some of the impact of coronavirus-related school closures, questions are arising as to how seamless the switch from offline to online delivery can be, and how both modes of delivery compare in terms of learning impact.

According to Keith Ross, dean of Engineering and Computer Science at NYU Shanghai, one clear benefit of using “asynchronous interactions” over real-time delivery is that it has encouraged shy students, who normally do not ask questions in the classroom, to participate in discussions.

And at Spain’s┬áIE University ÔÇô where all classroom-based courses at the Segovia campus are being moved online because of recently diagnosed cases of COVID-19 among its student population ÔÇô feedback about the shift is reported to be positive.

“We bolstered the content on our online training platform for all our students who cannot attend classes on campus, and the feedback we have received is very positive,” said Gonzalo Garland, vice president of External Relations at IE.

However he added, “Twenty years ago, we were pioneers in Europe with the launch of our online training programs.” All 7,000 IE students have had access to online platforms to continue their studies.

Bur while much has been made of efforts, like China’s, to switch to online learning, other education administrators are likely to run into technical and infrastructural issues.

“It typically takes months to launch really high quality online learning programs that reflect the quality of top education brands,ÔÇØ related Luyen Chen, chief learning officer at┬á2U, which works with institutions around the world to develop their online learning platforms.

And at Canada’s Humber College, director of the English Language Centre, Stephen Allen, who studies online learning ecosystems, explained that a problem can occur when simply transferring lessons that are designed for the classroom to an online environment.

“This increases the potential for materials to be at best, dull, but at worse, not supporting student learning,” he told The PIE.

“I’m worried that it can set a benchmark of low to reasonable online education”

“ThereÔÇÖs a myth that creating online learning experiences is as easy as uploading all the resources you use in class and recording a few lectures,” agreed Lisa McIntyre-Hite, senior advisor at consultancy firm Entangled Solutions.┬á“In reality, bringing an on-ground course online requires institutions to think of so much more than just course content,” she said.

“Segueing from offline delivery to online is no easy task and will require both students and teachers to adjust how they learn and teach to an online context,” confirmed Robert Hsiung, China CEO of online educational company, Emeritus.

He told The PIE that over the past number of years, online education has evolved to adapt to the online learning environment.

“Most schools have directly replaced offline class time with online class time. In China, students must log in every day to online platforms to listen to teachers, however, teachers are finding that students are having difficulty staying attentive in this online format.

“The problem they are facing is very similar to the issue that MOOCs face,” he added, referring to the low completion rates for pre-recorded online video courses.

The small private online courses (SPOCS) that EMERITUS offers has, by comparison, over a 90% completion rate.

But, Hsiung continued, the benefit of this shift to online is that it will force educators to change the way they approach teaching and learning, from a learn-by-lecturing/listening to learning-by-doing, interactive format.

“When the coronavirus fears subside and students return to school, there will be a higher acceptance of online learning creating opportunities for online education platforms like Emeritus, but more importantly, the quality of global education will have taken a significant step forward.”

In an episode of The Edtech Podcast, Digital Learning designer at Cardiff University, Neil Mosley, said he felt that there are both pros and cons to the digital uptake.

“There are many people who are reluctant or cynical about online learning so this forces them to engage with that, and in my experience that is always a positive thing,” he said.

“I also worry about the unintended consequences of quickly scaling online provisions ÔÇô I’m worried that it can set a benchmark of low to reasonable online education, and I think we need to raise the quality of online education.”

“Countries like China and India with booming youth populations really have no choice”

Chen at 2U is hopeful that the move online could be a critical solution to higher education’s capacity problem.

“My hope is that this period will prove to be a useful testing ground that pushes schools to think more holistically about their long-term online learning strategies,” she said.

“Universities in countries like China and India with booming youth populations really have no choice but to look online in order to support the educational needs in their markets.”

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UK university application specialist counselling company, SI-UK, has told The PIE News it plans to open 12-15 new offices in the next 12 months as part of plans to have an office in every country that sends more than 1,000 new students to UK higher education institutions each year.

Since opening in Tokyo in 2006, the company has grown to having 53 offices in 23 countries and is aiming for around 120 by 2025. The last 24 months have seen SI-UK enjoy a year-on-year growth of 250% and in 2019 it helped 16,200 students makes 40,500 applications to UK institutions.

“In the past 6-9 months new offices have been established in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Chiang Mai in Thailand, Lucknow, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad in India, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Kampala in Uganda, and Cairo in Egypt,” explained SI-UK’s Dwayne Gallagher.

 This year, the company plans to open offices in the USA, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, while also expanding its presence in China and India.

“There has been an increase in demand from key markets where the ability to work post-graduation is a driving force”

Gallagher noted that the since the announcement of the new post-study work rights graduate route in the UK, SI-UK has seen “an increase in demand from key markets where the ability to work post-graduation is a driving force behind the choice of study destination”.

“This particularly true for the Indian Sub-Continent,” he added, also predicting that┬áthe fastest growth for SI-UK will come from South Asia, China, Indonesia and the USA.┬á

“The USA is another large supplier of students to the UK and is thus a market where there is high demand for support, yet limited companies with the ability to supply this in a comprehensive manner,” Gallagher told The PIE.

SI-UK also caters for the “already onshore” international student population in the UK, running an iteration of its UK University Fair in London as well as in India, Thailand, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

According to HESA statistics, 485,645 were studying in the UK in the academic year 2018-2019, up from 458,490 the year before. The UK government is pushing to increase international student numbers to 600,000 over the next 10 years.

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The spread of the new coronavirus continues to cause major disruptions to higher education.

Colleges in California, New York and Washington -- the states where the largest number of cases have been reported -- have closed their campuses or moved instruction online for the remainder of the quarter in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.

Stanford University, where a medical faculty member has tested positive for the virus, on Friday announced the cancellation of all in-person classes for the remaining two weeks of the winter quarter in favor of moving to online formats "to the extent feasible." Scheduled in-person exams for the quarter will be given as take-home tests. (Stanford said professors will have the option of submitting grades based on work completed to date in cases where remote delivery of a course or exam is not feasible, but added that "instructors are encouraged to provide students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge at the end of the quarter.")

Stanford also said all large group events are being canceled or adjusted. A weekend for newly admitted students in late April has been canceled, and the undergraduate admission office is canceling campus tours and information sessions through at least April 15.

The University of Washington similarly said on Friday it would hold all classes and exams remotely through the end of the winter quarter March 20 after a staff member tested positive for the new coronavirus (the test used was developed by UW's medical school, and the diagnosis must be confirmed by public health officials). The campuses themselves remain open, including hospitals and clinics, dining services, residence halls, libraries, and recreation and athletics facilities. Athletic events are proceeding as scheduled.

Lake Washington Institute of Technology took the further step of closing its campus and moving to remote operations through March 20. A faculty member tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, and a group of faculty and students, mostly nursing students, have been self-quarantined after visiting a long-term nursing facility that’s been connected to 14 deaths from the virus.

The move toward online instruction appears to be the norm rather than the exception in the Seattle area. Other colleges in the area that have moved all or most instruction online include Bellevue College, Cascadia College, the Seattle Colleges, Seattle University and Shoreline Community College. Everett Community College said most courses would be moved online with some exceptions, including aviation classes and clinical classes for nursing students. An Everett student who was last on campus Feb. 27 has tested positive for the virus.

Yeshiva University, a Jewish university in New York City, has reported that both a student and a professor have tested positive for the virus. The university canceled all classes at its Washington Heights and Midtown campuses until after the Purim holiday, which starts tonight and ends tomorrow, and has postponed all large social events, including a basketball tournament and Purim celebrations.

Columbia University announced Sunday evening that classes would not be held today and tomorrow "because a member of our community has been quarantined as a result of exposure to the coronavirus." Classes will be shifted online for the rest of the week. Barnard College announced the same approach.

Other universities outside California, New York and Washington have also canceled classes. Rice University canceled in-person classes and undergraduate teaching labs this week after an employee contracted the virus during overseas travel. Rice said research will continue, since it typically takes place in small group settings, but Rice is prohibiting all on-campus events involving 100 or more people through April 30. 

Midland University, in Nebraska, has closed its campus through March 15 after Nebraska reported its first case of the new coronavirus. Residence halls and dining facilities remain open. Merritt Nelson, Midland's vice president for enrollment management and marketing, said some Midland football players had volunteered at a local Special Olympics basketball tournament where they may have been in close contact with the affected individual. Nelson said 65 students -- none of whom are showing symptoms -- have been quarantined as a precautionary measure.

Concerns About International Students

The Department of Education issued guidance last week saying it was relaxing rules that typically require colleges to get permission from the department and from their accreditors to shift instruction online. The possibility that more institutions nationwide might need to move to online courses has raised special concerns about international students, who are required to take most of their courses in person under the terms of their visas.

On Friday, Joseph E. Aoun, the president of Northeastern University -- which has a Seattle campus -- wrote to Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, asking for relief from in-person learning requirements for international students.

“Providing flexibility to permit students to pursue their dreams unfettered from the threat of violation of immigration status or visa revocation is a common-sense and essential approach in this time of unprecedented public health concerns,” Aoun wrote.

A spokeswoman for Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, Carissa Cutrell, said the agency will be addressing this issue in forthcoming guidance that will give colleges flexibility. Cutrell said the agency “plans to mirror the Department of Education guidance. SEVP-certified schools will be able to adapt their procedures and policies to address the significant public health concerns associated with COVID-19. Schools will be required to use a form to report COVID-19 procedural adaptations to SEVP to ensure that nonimmigrant students can continue to make normal progress in a full course of study as required by federal regulations. More details will be provided to SEVIS users next week.” (SEVIS is an abbreviation for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, the federal database through which colleges report the statuses of their international students.)

Academic and University Travel

Colleges have canceled many study abroad programs and suspended university-sponsored travel abroad. At first, colleges canceled programs in countries that have been hard hit by the virus -- most notably China, Italy and South Korea -- but increasingly they have begun canceling all university-sponsored travel abroad for the spring and, in some cases, summer. Colleges that have canceled summer study abroad programs include Louisiana State University, Morgan State University and the University of Maryland, College Park. Some colleges, including Harvard University, have suspended domestic air travel by staff and faculty.

An increasing number of academic conferences have been called off. The American Educational Research Association announced Friday it would not move ahead with its annual meeting in San Francisco that had been scheduled for April 17 to 21. The association said it would organize a virtual meeting instead.

“Sadly, the pernicious presence and spread of the coronavirus internationally, including in recent weeks and days in the United States, makes it both impossible to hold a meeting that would even approximate the value of our annual place-based gathering and irresponsible to encourage, expect, or stand silent when attendees could be exposed to a communicable disease, affect Bay area workers or residents, and return to their homes transmitting an illness to family and friends even before it manifests itself,” AERA’s executive director, Felice J. Levine, said in an email announcing the cancellation. “This is coupled with the recent State of Emergency declared by the mayor of San Francisco last week, a further Declaration by the Governor, and growing incidence of confirmed reports in California and in the United States.

“As a research association, we adhere to the realities and the facts involved, including heeding precautions limiting travel and remaining within one’s community except under the most urgent and extraordinary of circumstances. An annual conference has many wonderful strengths, but it just cannot be classified as urgent or extraordinary in the face of the heightened risk. Those members and colleagues who are already registered will receive full refunds of their AERA Annual Meeting registration fee.”

The SXSW EDU Conference & Festival, an annual event focused on innovation in learning that was scheduled to take place in Austin, Tex., this week, has also been called off by city of Austin officials.

Other Coronavirus News

Johns Hopkins University on Friday barred fans from the opening games of the Division III basketball tournament it was hosting, according to Politico. "In light of Maryland's recently confirmed cases of COVID-19, and based on CDC guidance for large gatherings, we have determined that it is prudent to hold this tournament without spectators," Johns Hopkins’ athletic department said. “We are not making any determination about other JHU events at this time; while we await further guidance from public health authorities, we will be assessing large events on a case-by-case basis.”

Bowdoin College also said it was sanitizing spaces on campus after a student who had been studying abroad in Italy visited the campus, according to WGME. Italy has the largest number of coronavirus cases in Europe, and Italian officials took the drastic step of putting a region of 16 million under quarantine Sunday. Bowdoin officials said a second student who returned from Italy was in downtown Brunswick, Me., where the college is located, and met with a Bowdoin student. Four other students who came back from Italy have not been on the campus.

The University of Southern California on Friday announced plans to test its capabilities to host classes online by replacing in-person classes with online modalities for three days starting this Wednesday. "During Spring Recess, we will review feedback from faculty, students, and staff to determine how to improve the online experience," USC said in a memo. "Should the situation erode and we need to take stronger measures, we will be able to smoothly and quickly adapt, having tested our resources for three days."

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As the new coronavirus infects and kills more people in the United States, several West Coast universities, including the University of Washington and Stanford University, have chosen to forgo in-person classes in favor of remote learning.

The University of Washington announced its transition on Friday morning, and Stanford announced its on Friday evening. Both begin Monday and will continue for the rest of quarter. University of Washington officials have said that pending guidance from public health agencies, they plan to go back to face-to-face instruction at the start of the spring quarter, March 30. Brandman University, Seattle University and the Seattle campus of Northeastern University have also moved to remote instruction for the time being.

The decision to transition classes is part of an attempt at “social distancing,” the practice of limiting large gatherings and in-person contact to slow the transmission of the virus, called SARS-CoV-2.

“The issue is not only how do we stop this epidemic, but how can we slow it down so our health-care system can respond,” said UW president Ana Mari Cauce at a press conference Friday.

Faculty will be mostly responsible for making the decisions about how to move their classes to remote learning.

The Decision to ‘Close’

Cauce emphasized that while classes will be moving out of classrooms, the university’s three campuses will not be closed. Hospital operations, scientific research and food service will all continue, and students will be allowed to stay in dorms and residences.

“We have some students here for whom travel to their home is not possible,” Cauce said. She noted that although the virus is most dangerous for older people and those with chronic illnesses, some students may still fall into those categories. Students in risk groups, she said, were already not attending class.

The University of Washington enrolls over 50,000 students, a majority of whom take classes in person. An online petition posted last week asking the university to close gathered over 20,000 signatures.

The university separately announced that a staff member has received a “presumptive” positive test for the coronavirus but emphasized that the decision to end in-person classes was made before this revelation. Four students have also taken tests for the coronavirus, but those tests have come back negative, officials said.

Denzil Suite, vice president of student affairs at UW, said open bar areas in dining halls, such as salad bars, are being transitioned to a “grab and go” model. Cleaning and sanitizing in student residences have been doubled.

Cauce was emphatic on Friday that the virus and the university’s response to it would have financial consequences, but those would be dealt with and worried about later.

“We are going to make our decision based on what is right,” she said.

Joseph Janes, a professor of library and information science and chair of the UW Faculty Senate, said the administration has handled the situation well considering the circumstances.

“So often, particularly in higher ed, we think, ‘What are our peer institutions going to do?’” he said. “This is an instance where we really had nowhere to turn.”

Janes said that for the majority of faculty, the decision to cancel in-person classes likely came as a surprise. But generally, the administration has done a good job keeping faculty leadership informed and consulted, he said.

“There’s been a sort of rising sense of uncertainty and anxiety about what was going to happen,” Janes said. “I think this is going to provide certainty for people.”

Teaching in an Epidemic

Janes said the administration has left the decision about exactly how to move classes online, or whether it's worth at all trying, up to each individual faculty member.

“There are so many different kinds of classes, there’s no way to do a one-size-fits-all,” he said. “There are some classes where I can imagine its just really hard to go forward.”

With few days left in the quarter, Janes said that many instructors have nearly finished covering their material. For remaining content, instructors have full agency to decide if they would like to hold lectures over videoconferencing, record instructional videos or try some other modality. Final exams could be transitioned to take-home tests or projects.

For classes that involve use of labs, performances or studios, none of those measures may really work. Faculty can choose then to simply grade students on the work they’ve already completed.

Grading students only on the first 80 percent of the semester raises questions of fairness for instructors who built a large and important final assessment into the syllabus and student grading schemes, Janes said, but the decision still remains with the instructors. They can also choose to grade students pass-fail.

Brandman University, which announced a similar transition, teaches about 85 percent of its credit hours online. That makes the transition easier since the infrastructure is already there, said Jennifer Murphy, Brandman’s associate vice chancellor for instructional innovation.

The Brandman classes that do meet in person are still based in Brandman’s learning management system and only meet for one three-hour session per week, she said. These are called blended courses, as much of the course is still completed online. The in-person sessions for those blended courses have been moved to the videoconferencing tool Zoom.

“We are capable of doing this with a low detrimental effect,” Murphy said. “When looking at that versus potentially allowing students, faculty, staff to become ill because something happens, it seems like we are able to do this, so why wouldn’t we?”

The university has increased Zoom trainings for instructors and allowed them to request a staff member from the academic innovation office to sit in on a class if they are nervous about the technology.

The movement to online has raised questions for some universities about exactly how much they are capable of with their existing technology.

“If you don’t have an LMS that’s robust or you don’t have courses built already in an LMS, that’s a huge lift,” Murphy said. “Depending on what things you already have in place, it could be a very difficult process.”

Several universities have been circulating guidance to faculty about how to teach via online methods during an emergency. Guidance from the University of California, Los Angeles, to faculty noted that the administration has purchased more licenses for Zoom. The university also drew attention to a lockdown browser available for faculty to use during assessments, which provides a full audio and video recording of the test attempt.

Faculty have similarly been circulating their own guidance to peers about how to teach online on the fly, sometimes with step-by-step instructions. Instructional design and technology administrators have emphasized that temporarily moving in-person classes to remote learning is different from designing and developing a course that is completely online.

“Teaching well online requires a much more intentional arc of planning and learning around design and pedagogy,” Penelope Adams Moon, director of online learning strategy at UW’s Bothell campus, posted on Twitter. “We need stop-gap measures, but they aren't the same as online teaching.”

Sean Michael Morris, director of the Digital Pedagogy Lab at the University of Colorado at Denver, advised instructors to rethink grading around participation and attendance.

“Asynchronous work is harder than synchronous work,” he said via Twitter. “Assessment should reflect that.”

Morris and others have also emphasized that a transition to online teaching must keep classes accessible for students with disabilities and students who may lack access to the internet or other technology at home.

Megan Raymond, program director at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s technology cooperative, said that going online might not be right for every institution, depending on how many of its students are already online and other factors.

“There’s a lot of implications that institutions need to evaluate and think through really carefully,” she said, among them whether students have devices that allow them to complete an online course.

She was glad that the University of Washington has decided to keep dining halls and other services open for students, who may be food insecure or similarly vulnerable.

Though moving courses online typically requires an accreditation process, the Department of Education released a letter Thursday morning giving institutions broad approval to use distance technology temporarily to respond to the coronavirus without going through the regular approval process.

As of Friday, Janes hadn’t entirely decided how he was going to move his graduate statistics class over to online.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” he said.

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As COVID-19 -- the disease caused by the novel coronavirus -- spreads across the United States and the world, colleges are creating outbreak contingency plans, canceling study abroad programs and shoring up their financial safety nets.

But outbreaks pose a particular challenge. Unlike fires, floods and storm damage, very few colleges are insured against financial losses due to a biological disaster.

A campuswide outbreak could be costly, and lost tuition revenue from a decrease in Chinese student enrollment could have lasting effects for which colleges are not insured. Typical college insurance plans pay out next to nothing for pandemic-related losses, and purchasing new policies amid the outbreak is difficult and incredibly expensive.

Most colleges have property and business contingency insurance plans. Both could provide some relief for affected colleges in the right circumstances.

Some property insurance plans contain sublimits -- caps on payouts for a specific type of loss -- for outbreaks and pandemics. As long as the college meets its deductible, it could file a claim for pandemic-related damages and be reimbursed up to the policy’s sublimit. A typical $500 million property insurance plan could include a $1 million pandemic damages sublimit, according to Bret Murray, who leads higher education strategy at Risks Strategies Company, a national insurance brokerage and risk management firm.

But getting claims approved could be tricky because colleges must demonstrate actual physical damage to campus property to receive any compensation.

"For such coverage to apply, an insured building must be contaminated and rendered temporarily or permanently unusable (in whole or in part)," Murray wrote in an email. "Some policies further require a 'civil authority' or an officer of the institution to prohibit access to an affected building for coverage to apply.ÔÇï"

Business contingency insurance plans protect against interruptions with contractors providing services, such as dining and janitorial services. If a campus outbreak somehow interrupted covered contracts, colleges could file an insurance claim as long as their plan included pandemic-related disruptions.

The University of Colorado at Boulder, for example, maintains property and business interruption insurance. Because of limited coverage in the case of a pandemic, the university cannot well predict what financial losses would be covered under its plans.

“We have researched tuition loss coverage in a pandemic scenario,” said Deborah Méndez Wilson, a spokesperson for the university. “However, insurers have limited this type of coverage, have expanded exclusions, have drastically reduced limits and have increased premiums, making these plans very expensive for colleges and universities.”

Experts are looking ahead at what the coronavirus could mean for fall enrollments. International enrollments, particularly enrollments from China, have been a major point of concern. A decrease in tuition revenue as a result of the coronavirus outbreak wouldn’t be covered by property or business contingency insurance plans.ÔÇï

A survey of more than 230 colleges by the Institute of International Education found that 76 percent of institutions reported that recruiting events in China had been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Recruiting events include "tests like IELTS and TOEFL, recruitment events like college fairs, and other engagements."

One university is uniquely protected against such revenue loss: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The university two years ago purchased insurance to protect against revenue loss due to a drop in Chinese student enrollment. The insurance, created for the university’s business and engineering schools by a subsidiary of Lloyd’s of London, kicks in after the university files a claim that meets two requirements. First, it must demonstrate an 18.5 percent loss in tuition revenue brought in by Chinese students compared to the year prior. Second, the drop in enrollment must be attributed to one of a predetermined list of causes, one of which is a pandemic.

The plan pays out up to $60 million in the case that Chinese student enrollment drops to zero. The university pays $424,000 in annual premiums for the policy, and a university spokesperson said it's reviewing options to expand coverage in the future.

According to Murray, other colleges have eyed the plan in light of the coronavirus outbreak. Beloit College's spokesperson said the college has not ruled out purchasing coronavirus-impact insurance. ÔÇï

“A lot of institutions looked at that,” Murray said, “but it was very expensive, and a lot of schools felt it wasn’t worth the risk.”

For most colleges, it’s too late. Few insurers are going to underwrite a pandemic plan in the midst of an outbreak, Murray said.

“It’d be the equivalent of saying there’s fires approaching your house, and now you want to get fire coverage for your house,” he said. “The underwriters can see the fires approaching your house.”

The coronavirus outbreak has already wreaked havoc on study abroad programs. Since the outbreak began, colleges have been canceling their spring study abroad programs and are considering cutting summer programs as well. Insurers are adding carve-outs to make it more difficult to file pandemic-related claims for lost travel expenses that would typically be covered under existing policies.

The IIE survey found that 48 percent of respondents had scheduled spring study abroad programs in China, and 94 percent of those institutions postponed or canceled the programs, with 76 percent “canceled outright or postponed indefinitely.”

Melissa Torres, president and CEO of the Forum for Education Abroad, outlined many ways colleges are losing money on canceled programs -- from logistical losses like airfare, hotels and excursion costs, to wasted operational expenses like international faculty contracts and maintaining empty campuses abroad.

“Everybody is being affected,” Torres said. “Institutions that have really large education abroad programs, full-semester programs, are going to be really hard hit.”

Kevin McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, tweeted Wednesday that the university could lose approximately $450,000 on canceled study abroad trips and stands to lose $2 million if it cancels summer programs.

Many colleges work with third-party providers for study abroad programs, and they are facing huge potential losses as a result of the outbreak. Torres is concerned for their future.

“There are literally hundreds of education abroad providers and programs,” she said. “If the smaller and medium-sized providers go out of business because of the cancellations or requests for refunds,” the resulting consolidation could lead to higher prices across the board.

As summer programs approach, Bill Frederick, founder of Lodestone Safety International, had one piece of advice for colleges weighing their study abroad options: “Don’t spend money that you’re not going to get reimbursed if you’re not sure which way this is going to go.”

While recovering sunk costs from campus outbreaks and canceled programs could be tricky, there are steps colleges can take to temper the coronavirus’s impact. Melanie Bennett, risk management counsel for United Educators, recommends that every college create an outbreak response team made up of people in health services, housing, security, communications, food services, academic affairs, legal council and leadership.

“Make sure you also review business continuity plans,” she said. “What happens if you shut down schools for a day, for a week?"

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