Higher Ed’s Moment of Truth – Inside Higher Ed
Colleges confront what it means to bring students back to campuses as their fall plans become realities. Will many institutions make it through the fall without outbreaks?
As fall fast approaches, a steady stream of colleges have backed away from plans for an in-person semester in favor of a largely virtual one, citing the worsening course of the coronavirus pandemic. But many other colleges are pushing ahead with plans for in-person classes, and students have already started moving in at some colleges that have implemented mask mandates, installed Plexiglas barriers in communal bathrooms and classrooms, and placed hand-sanitizing stations throughout their campuses.
Observers are questioning how college leaders are balancing the health and safety of faculty, staff, students and members of surrounding communities with the financial and political pressures driving the push to reopen campuses. Are they striking the right balance?
Some don’t think so.
“It’s a shitshow in the making,” said A. David Paltiel, a professor of public health at Yale University who recently co-authored a study that found that colleges could safely bring students back to campus — if they test every student every two days (a testing regime far more intensive than what many colleges are planning and what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for colleges call for) and if they couple that testing with strict behavioral standards to keep the virus’s rate of transmission low.