Originally published on July 28, 2021 on Medium
///
Whoever said “[t]he definition of insanity is doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting different results” surely did not
foresee the COVID crisis we find ourselves in. A little less than a month
before residential colleges and universities open their doors for the fall
semester, the expectation is (again) that students will have a residential
experience, classes will be taught face-to-face, and college athletics can
return to in-person attendance.
Colleges were similarly optimistic last year around this
time: The 2020 summer wave peaked on July 20 when the 7-day moving average of
COVID cases reached 68,709. Numbers started to go down, and many were hopeful
that we would not see a repeat of Spring 2020 when students were sent home and
instruction went online. By the middle of the fall semester, however, it was
clear that we were heading into the next outbreak. Many institutions decided to
go at least partially online, either right from the beginning or halfway
through the semester, and many did not return at all after Thanksgiving. Hardly
a normal fall semester.
This year, the number of daily new cases is still rapidly
increasing. This is due to the rapid spread of the Delta variant, which causes
higher viral particle loads in infected individuals and can even infect
vaccinated individuals, although the morbidity and mortality in vaccinated
individuals are much lower than in non-vaccinated individuals. A combination of
the much more contagious Delta variant, less than half the U.S. population
fully vaccinated, and an end of many restrictions gave us another wave that is
just getting into gear, despite the promise that this will all be over by
Independence Day. At the end of June, the number of daily new cases was quite
low, but even by July 4, it was already clear that this number was creeping up
again. On July 27, the 7-day moving average was 63,248, and the number of cases
is currently increasing by 145% every two weeks, according to the New York
Times. We should know by now what exponential growth looks like, and so we
should not be surprised to find ourselves in another wave.
It is understandable that people are tired of the pandemic
and want to return to their pre-pandemic lives. But the virus does not seem to
be tired of us. A strategy of opening and leaving it up to individual
responsibility may not be sufficient to get this wave quickly under control or
to avoid future waves every time a more contagious strain sweeps the globe.
Despite a daily barrage of bad news, the vaccination rate is holding steady at
a rate that is much too low to keep the pandemic under control. The low
vaccination rate among younger people is particularly troublesome for colleges.
And so, we find ourselves in a similar situation as last year, prompting the
CDC on July 27 to revise its mask guidance to urge masking in schools and
indoors in COVID hot spots, even for vaccinated individuals, and the Biden
administration to consider a vaccine mandate for all federal employees.
We seem to still be at the beginning of this wave, and so it
is unlikely that we’ll be done with it a month from now when many colleges and
universities are starting to welcome back students into their dorms and
classrooms. Back in April of this year, we argued that for colleges and
universities to hold in-person classes this fall, they should mandate
vaccinations. The Chronicle of Higher Education has identified about 600
colleges and universities that are requiring students or employees to be
vaccinated against COVID-19. The rest, and this is a much larger group
considering that there are over four thousand colleges and universities in the
U.S., does not have a vaccination requirement. Depending on the state, there
may not even be mask requirements.
It is not difficult to predict what will happen when we
invite the virus back on campus this fall semester. Vaccination rates among
younger people are particularly low, and if there is no vaccine requirement, we
should expect students to have similar vaccination rates as the counties they
are coming from. We should expect that there will be students who will bring
the virus with them as they return to campus and infect others, mostly
unvaccinated but also vaccinated students, and likely also staff and faculty as
they begin to interact more. Many colleges and universities will not have
adequate testing and tracing programs, and so the virus will spread undetected
and uncontrolled before it becomes obvious that the campus community is in the
middle of a local outbreak.
It may not take long before a large number of students,
faculty, and staff find themselves in self-quarantine or self-isolation, and
before we know it, faculty will struggle to manage face-to-face instruction and
to provide instructions to those who cannot show up in the classroom. Students
who are sick may fall behind and may be unable to catch up if they are away for
two or more weeks. Dormitories may have to move students to isolate sick
students on separate floors. Instructors who fall ill may be unable to teach,
and it may be difficult to find someone who can substitute. Co-curricular
activities may have to be canceled to limit contact among students.
As we have seen in the past academic year, it is not just
the college or university that is affected. Colleges and universities are
embedded in communities. Students live and work off-campus and encounter the
local population. A New York Times article last year in December talked about
this: “Links between university outbreaks and deaths in the wider community
[were] often indirect and difficult to document, but some health experts say
there are clear signs of a connection.”
What should be clear after three semesters of dealing with
the virus is that we cannot assume that we can bring students back on campus
and expect a normal experience without taking significant precautions.
Requiring the vaccine still seems the best way in the current situation, but
many presidents and chancellors feel that their hands are tied behind their
backs. They cannot or don’t want to wade into the political battle of requiring
vaccination. In some states with Republican legislators and governors, they are
legislatively and legally prevented from even asking about vaccine status and
cannot require masks. Even if they could, there are states, like Minnesota,
where it is very easy to get a non-medical exemption, and so a requirement may
not do all that much. What institutions are left with is having Plan B ready
for roll-out when face-to-face instruction is not possible anymore. In many
cases, the plans won’t look any different from the plans they had a year ago.
When the pandemic first hit, there was a lot of talk about
the ‘new normal’ and that higher education will significantly change. There was
some optimism about changing the instructional model since we were surprisingly
successful in pivoting from face-to-face instruction to an online environment.
People were talking about that this could spell the end of the lecture and
students could get more experiential learning opportunities instead. However,
what we see now is that the past academic year was exhausting, and many people
simply want to go back to what it looked like before the pandemic hit.
This gets us back to the quote in the beginning: “The
definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results.” This won’t be the last semester where we have to
deal with this virus. The hope to be able to control COVID-19 has faded.
Instead, we are being prepared by politicians and public health officials that
we need to learn to live with it. This means that we will have COVID-19 on our
campuses for years to come.
Continuing to pivot between online and face-to-face
instruction depending on the infection rate could be a strategy but feels like
being stuck in an infinite loop with no escape. We may need to start thinking
seriously about different residential models since it may simply not be
possible to bring tens of thousands of students at the same time on our
campuses and keep the virus at bay.
The private sector, where a large percentage of the
workforce is sitting in open office spaces, is facing similar problems, and we
may want to get together to come up with new models for learning and working.
We have seen that students can learn online and that there are many jobs that
can be done from home. While nobody wants this to be the exclusive model of the
future, a combination of virtual and real places where we work and study is
likely in our future. It is up to us to design the future so that we can get
together at times, even in larger groups, without risking another outbreak. The
future may include models where students learn and socialize in a hybrid
environment with some activities entirely in virtual environments, such as the
traditional 50-minute lectures, and other activities in smaller groups with the
occasional large event, such as convocation or graduation or a football or
basketball game. We may also move away from the traditional academic year of
two 16-week sessions with the campus largely empty the rest of the year and,
instead, keep our campuses open year-round to decrease the student density on
campus.