Should college and universities reopen in the Fall? All have been shut down for nearly two months. There is no question that students and professors would like to attend and teach face-to-face classes. But the COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than 1 million people in the United States, and more than 70,000 have died. Bringing students back to campuses will require the implementation of stringent plans and testing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease.

The Chronicle of Higher Education in a recent article, identified what universities are doing to plan for the fall. The article identified several options that colleges are considering. These include:

• Leaning toward in-person classes on campus.
• Planning in-person instruction on campus.
• Hybrid approach including face-to-face and remote instruction
• Remote learning
• No decision yet—most will announce their decision by June/July

Plans for Fall 2020

The results of the Chronicle’s article are shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Figure 1 is based on Information from 58 institutions. According to the results of the survey, 47% of colleges indicated they are planning to start in-person instruction, although some say they will be prepared for unknown circumstances. An additional 13% said they are leaning toward in-person classes. Some indicated they would use a hybrid plan including remote and in-person instruction. Only two of fifty-eight colleges indicated they would only offer remote learning. Twenty-eight percent of the colleges reported that they will delay a decision until later this spring. Some said that they will provide more detailed information later. Most hoped that they would open their campuses.

Figure 2 is an updated chart based on data compiled from the Chronicle on May 1. There were 141 institutions listed on the Chronicle webpage. There is little difference in the data. By far, universities are planning for in-person classes on campus this Fall. You can peruse the list of colleges the Chronicle identified.

Colleges and Universities in Georgia

There are 26 institutions in the University System of Georgia (USG). All of these institutions closed their campuses and moved all courses to an on-line environment. The USG plans to resume in-person instruction during the fall 2020 semester. Specifics have not been worked out. There is still much work to be done. Each USG institution has its own coronavirus website where you can find the latest update for each college or university.

The Atlanta University Center Consortium of Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College is using virtual and remote learning through the end of the Spring Semester. Details about their response to the Global Coronavirus Outbreak are spelled out on their site.

Should Schools Reopen in the Fall for Face-to-Face Instruction?

According to the non-scientific survey I reported on above, most of the institutions on the list are making the move to open their campuses for the fall semester. However, I reported on only 130 institutions. There are 5,300 institutions of higher education in the United States. There are nearly 20 million students enrolled in these institutions. And this does not include faculty, staff or security personnel on these campuses.

So, opening institutions of higher education will require an enormous effort on the part of America’s educational institutions. And it will require that students embody a knowledge base about the virus, and how their actions can or cannot mitigate the effects of pandemic. There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between students and university faculty, and staff in order for a safe environment to exist on the nation’s college campuses.

Opinion of a University President About Reopening in the Fall

Christina Paxson, the President of Brown University said that College Campuses Must Reopen in the Fall. Here’s How We Do It. In her New York Times article, she lays out a very strong rationale for the need to open American universities. In fact, she says that it should be a national priority.

Full disclosure: I am a former Professor of Science Education at Georgia State University (1969 – 2003), and now have the rank of Emeritus Professor of Science Education.

I think her writing about the effect of the pandemic on university life, and how universities should deal with opening their campuses should be studied and discussed amongst university faculty, student governments, and the universities’ administrators. This should be done in conjunction with state public health departments, the mayors of the college’s community, and within the national guidelines for social distancing and testing.

Opening Campuses Means…

Opening campuses means bringing hundreds of thousands of students from their homes into campus environments that present social distancing problems.

Dr. Paxon admits it won’t be easy, but in her opinion it must be done. Otherwise, higher education will face a calamity. And I would agree with her that remote learning is not a long term solution for higher education. Students, in general, do not favor learning remotely, and would rather be in a classroom with peers and instructors. And many students don’t believe that if they are forced to take their college courses online, they shouldn’t have to pay as much tuition for online courses.

And as Dr. Paxon makes clear, colleges and universities are dependent upon the tuition they receive at the beginning of each semester or term. Imagine, if colleges remain closed in the Fall, they could lose up to 50% of their revenue. Paxon puts it this way:

This loss, only a part of which might be recouped through online courses, would be catastrophic, especially for the many institutions that were in precarious financial positions before the pandemic. It’s not a question of whether institutions will be forced to permanently close, it’s how many.

Paxson, C. (2020, April 26). College Campuses Must Reopen in the Fall. Here’s How We Do It. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/coronavirus-colleges-universities.html?referringSource=articleShare

Campuses can reopen in the Fall, but…

College campuses should be opened in the fall, but must adhere to very strict public health policy in the age of this pandemic. Clearly, bringing thousands of students back to a campus will result in an increase of infections of COVID-19. However, to control the spread, each college must have in place a reliable testing program, along with a tracing plan, and the ability to separate and isolate sick students. She explains in more detail:

Our students will have to understand that until a vaccine is developed, campus life will be different. Students and employees may have to wear masks on campus. Large lecture classes may remain online even after campuses open. Traditional aspects of collegiate life — athletic competitions, concerts and yes, parties — may occur, but in much different fashions. Imagine athletics events taking place in empty stadiums, recital halls with patrons spaced rows apart and virtual social activities replacing parties.

But students will still benefit from all that makes in-person education so valuable: the fierce intellectual debates that just aren’t the same on Zoom, the research opportunities in university laboratories and libraries and the personal interactions among students with different perspectives and life experiences.Taking these necessary steps will be difficult and costly, and it will force institutions to innovate as we have never done before.

But colleges and universities are up to the challenge. Campuses were among the first to shutter during the Covid-19 pandemic. The rapid response that occurred across the country stemmed from our concern for the health of our students and communities, and our recognition that college campuses pose special challenges for addressing infectious disease.

Our duty now is to marshal the resources and expertise to make it possible to reopen our campuses, safely, as soon as possible. Our students, and our local economies, depend on it.

Paxson, C. (2020, April 26). College Campuses Must Reopen in the Fall. Here’s How We Do It. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/coronavirus-colleges-universities.html?referringSource=articleShare

Opinion on Testing

We must know if people are sick if we want reopen this fall. Simply measuring one’s temperature will not tell us if they are sick with COVID-19. We need fast, and highly reliable tests. Tests are needed that we can trust. We can’t bring college students together in groups without this knowledge.

To investigate this dilemma I am going to reference the work of Dr. Cathy O’Neil who columns on Bloomberg News, and is a mathematician who has worked as a professor, hedge-fund analyst and data scientist. She founded ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company.

In her most recent Bloomberg article in the Technology & Ideas section of the News, she addresses testing in the context of bringing people together with an active coronavirus at large. She is fearful that the tests we have now won’t be enough to make it safe to stop social distancing. It’s imperative that we have better COVID-19 tests.

She says this about coming together, opening society, and testing in the age of COVID-19.

The debate about when and whether the world can reopen keeps coming back to testing. If only we could test everyone all the time, the logic goes, we could isolate the ill and everyone else could go back to school, work and life as we once knew it. Sadly, that’s not quite right. The prerequisite for reopening is better tests, not just more tests.

A “good test” has three properties: It’s rapid (like less than an hour), accurate and widely available. Only with all three can it be used to screen people before they go to the office, get on an airplane, or attend a class or conference. And only then — barring an effective vaccine — can authorities safely allow people to do all those things.

O’Neil, C. (2020, April 27). We Can’t Get Together Until Tests Get Better. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-27/coronavirus-we-can-t-get-together-until-tests-get-better

CDC Serology Testing

One kind of “good test” is serology testing for COVID-19. The CDC has developed such a test with the effort to determine how much of the U.S. population has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This test looks for the presence of antibodies, which are specific proteins made in response to infections. These antibodies can be found in blood and other tissue samples. Accordingly, if antibodies are detected, then this person has had an immune response to SARS-CoV-2. This test can be used to estimate how many people have been infected.

One of the first demonstrations of this test was in New York. According to one report, nearly 1 in 7 people who were randomly tested for coronavirus antibodies tested positive for them. In New York City, the number is higher, with 1 in 5 people tested having the antibodies. This means that about 2.7 million people in the state of New York have been infected. Keep in mind, these tests do not tell you if you are infected with the virus, only that you have been.

Another demonstration of serology testing has just begun in Fulton County and DeKalb County, Georgia. A random sample of households in these two counties will be contacted and tested, if they give permission. At the present time, Fulton County has had 1,965 COVID-19 cases, and 46 deaths, while DeKalb County has had 2,766 cases and 114 deaths. The serology testing will give officials an estimate of how many people in these counties might have been infected.

Diagnostic Testing

The CDC developed a diagnostic test for COVID-19 in early February 2020. After it was distributed, it was discovered that there were performance issues with the test results. A new test was developed, and is in use around the country. The CDC reports that it has tested 5,498 samples, and U.S. public health labs have tested 517,644 as shown in Figure 2.

Summary

In order for colleges and universities to reopen in the Fall, they will need a diagnostic test that can be administered to each student coming to campus or driving in to take a course. Bringing students together to live and take classes together is a crucial goal for American society. We still have a ways to go to reach this goal.