Back-to-College Plans Devolve Into a Jumble of Fast-Changing Rules

Spelman College announced on July 1 that the Atlanta campus would welcome back students to dorms and classrooms for the fall semester. Last week it reversed course. Classes would be online only.

In Waterville, Maine, Colby College plans to open most of its campus to students and faculty with one of the more ambitious testing protocols in higher education. The small school expects to administer about 85,000 Covid-19 tests this fall, including testing students, faculty and staff at least three times during the opening weeks of the academic term.

About 50 miles away, first-year students will be among the only ones on campus at Bowdoin College. “It was not prudent to bring everyone back,” said Clayton Rose, the college president. “We’re walking before we run.”

With fall semester just a few weeks away, the Covid-19 pandemic has stumped the brightest minds at universities across the U.S. There is no consensus about how college campuses are going to open, and what they will look like if they do. There are as many plans as there are institutions, and their guidebooks are being written in pencil, leaving families and students in limbo.

At stake are the health and well-being of more than 20 million students, faculty and staff—as well as billions of dollars in revenue from tuition, dormitories, dining halls and sports competitions. If colleges allow students back on campus, they could be inviting a public-health nightmare. Yet keeping classes online risks a drop in enrollment by students transferring elsewhere or sitting out the year. The University of Michigan, which plans to have students on campus, estimated this spring that its losses from the pandemic could reach $1 billion.

“College presidents are basically in an impossible situation,” said Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. “If they announce they’re going online too soon, they run the risk of losing students and probably making some alumni mad at them. If they open up in person there are serious health concerns, and they run the risk of protests and a vote of no-confidence.”

Michael Young, president of Texas A&M University, helped draft a plan to unify East and West Germany when he worked for the State Department three decades ago. He said that was easier than figuring out how to bring back 65,000 students, 3,500 faculty, and thousands of staff this fall to the campus in College Station, Texas. At present, the plan is for some students to come back to campus to take small, in-person classes, while others will take them remotely.

And if the disease crops up on campus? Mr. Young said the school hasn’t yet set a threshold, but 100 new infections a day has been discussed as one measure for triggering a renewed shutdown. It might depend on who is getting sick. “If it was 100 professors a day, it would be game over,” he said. “We can’t lose 20% of professors and continue to run the university.”

Competing demands and the pandemic’s spread have yielded a cascade of chaos for just about everyone in higher education. Some students want a tuition discount if classes are offered only online. Faculty and staff worry about the health risk of face-to-face work. Professors complain about the extra burden of preparing for in-person and online versions of their classes. President Trump is demanding schools reopen, and football fans want games.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given some general guidelines, like noting that large, in-person classes carry more risk than remote instruction and encouraging schools to close communal dining rooms and lounges, but says its advice should supplement, not replace, local rules. While Ohio has issued guidance including minimum standards for reopening and best practices—including urging remote learning where possible—not all states have provided such detailed recommendations, or they don’t align with city regulations, leaving school leaders to their own best guesses.

University presidents who had only weeks ago forecast campus life returning to normal this fall are now walking back those plans. Many are still juggling options while waiting for Covid-19’s next turn.

According to the most recent tally by The Chronicle of Higher Education, 49% of schools plan to bring students back for in-person classes; another 13% will offer only online instruction; and 35% will have a mix of both.

Even those planning to reopen campus to students have different ideas about how best to do that. Duke University announced Sunday that it would limit campus housing to mainly first-year students and sophomores, rather than bringing back juniors and seniors as well. Stanford University will alternate groups of students by class year for each 10-week academic quarter; Harvard University plans to allow mainly just first-year undergraduates on its Cambridge, Mass., campus. The neighboring Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus is hosting mainly seniors.

This year, getting to college looks like it will be about as tough as getting into college. In upstate New York, Ithaca College plans to open its campus to students—except those arriving from the 31 hard-hit states on New York’s 14-day quarantine list. Those students can only take classes remotely because there isn’t enough room at the school to wait out their quarantine.

Some residents in Amherst, Mass., oppose plans by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst to bring students back, fearing a flood of newcomers from virus hot spots. Like some other colleges, students are expecting to take classes online but many will live on campus.

Matt O’Brien, a biomedical engineering student at Michigan, is eager to get back even though he knows it won’t be the same: no big lecture halls, no tailgate parties. The virus threat makes his return to school “equally as frightening as it is exciting,” the rising junior said.

Some schools are asking students to sign a pledge saying they won’t leave campus, socialize in large groups or bring others back to their dorm rooms. Most require masks in public settings. A Cornell University committee issued a 97-page report in mid-June that, among other health-related recommendations, suggested students take shorter showers to avoid a pileup in communal bathrooms and try not to brush their teeth while other people are at the sink.

Cornell currently plans to return students to its Ithaca, N.Y., campus, with a mix of face-to-face and online classes. But it and other schools acknowledge that few plans are final.

“By the time a report is produced and a decision is made and announced, the situation has changed yet again,” said Kim Weeden, a sociology professor at Cornell who participated in deliberations for that school’s reopening.

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