Will campuses reopen for fall semester? Largely, that remains to be determined. But colleges and universities across the United States are beginning to outline their intentions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By way of a letter<\/a> written by Provost Alan Garber, Harvard University announced it will reopen its campus in the fall, but classes may still be held online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So what does that mean? Campus will be open, but it’s very unlikely that operations will resume as usual. Harvard is essentially preparing for any potential outcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHarvard will be open for fall 2020,\u201d Garber wrote. \u201cOur goal is to bring our students, faculty, postdoctoral fellows and staff to campus as quickly as possible, but because most projections suggest that COVID-19 will remain a serious threat during the coming months, we cannot be certain that it will be safe to resume all usual activities on campus by then. Consequently, we will need to prepare for a scenario in which much or all learning will be conducted remotely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many other institutions are also following this strategy of preparing for any possible outcome before they make a final decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n West Virginia University<\/a>, for example, is examining three potential academic options for fall 2020, including on-campus instruction with social distancing in place, a delayed arrival to campus with partial online instruction and complete online instruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And Yale University<\/a> is contemplating the idea of a delayed start in October for the fall 2020 semester with students taking their finals after winter break. It\u2019s also possible that the university won\u2019t start classes until January and hold the spring 2021 semester in the summer instead. But Yale won\u2019t announce any official plans until July. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown University, however, appears to be more adamant about bringing students back to campus and conducting fall semester classes as usual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In an op-ed published by the New York Times<\/a>, Brown\u2019s President Christina H. Paxson wrote that the reopening of campuses in the fall should be a national priority. She went on to explain that all campuses must be able to conduct rapid testing on all students. And until a vaccine is developed, students may have to wear masks on campus, large lecture classes may have to remain online, and \u201ctraditional aspects of college life\u201d like athletic competitions, parties and concerts may have to be reimagined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other institutions share Paxson\u2019s vision. Boston University<\/a>, Wake Forest University<\/a>, the University of Oklahoma<\/a>, North Carolina State University<\/a>, the University of Iowa<\/a>, Iowa State University<\/a>, the University of Oregon<\/a> and Marquette University<\/a>, among others, intend on returning to normal operation come fall semester if it\u2019s safe to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur fall plans will comply with Gov. Kate Brown\u2019s emerging strategy to reopen Oregon and will be informed by guidance from the Oregon Health Authority and Lane County Public Health,\u201d University of Oregon President Michael H. Schill said in an announcement. \u201cOur planning will also continue to put student, faculty and staff health and safety at the forefront.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some institutions, however, are more hesitant. Wayne State University<\/a> and Michigan State University<\/a> are leaning towards keeping classes online for fall 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven in the event that health experts and government officials call the \u2018all clear,\u2019 there may be a strong sentiment to continue social distancing that results in a strong preference for online courses,\u201d Wayne State Provost Keith Whitfield said in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The delays in decision making weigh heavily on all students, including high school seniors<\/a> in the midst of picking which college or university to attend next year. Some are considering taking a gap year until this blows over. A recent survey<\/a> found that the COVID-19 may cause 40 percent of high school seniors to delay college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And no matter how far along they are in their education, students are questioning whether it\u2019s worth it to pay tuition if classes will be held online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In that regard, some institutions, including Clemson<\/a> and Kansas City University<\/a> have announced they would be freezing tuition for the next academic year in order to ease any financial hardships students face. Other universities like UC Berkeley<\/a>, however, have made it clear that fall tuition won\u2019t be discounted, even if classes remain virtual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Will campuses reopen for fall semester? Largely, that remains to be determined. But colleges and universities across the United States are beginning to outline their intentions. By way of a letter written by Provost Alan Garber, Harvard University announced it will reopen its campus in the fall, but classes may still be held online. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":45119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[647,661,656,688,645,6,230,229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic","category-ace-college","category-covid-19","category-discourse-ace-college","category-discourse","category-student-advocacy","category-news","category-lead-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020.jpg",830,533,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020-224x144.jpg",224,144,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020-300x193.jpg",300,193,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020.jpg",830,533,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020.jpg",830,533,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020.jpg",830,533,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020.jpg",830,533,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jackson Schroeder","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/author\/jackson-schroeder\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Will campuses reopen for fall semester? Largely, that remains to be determined. But colleges and universities across the United States are beginning to outline their intentions. By way of a letter written by Provost Alan Garber, Harvard University announced it will reopen its campus in the fall, but classes may still be held online. So…","featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/college-fall-2020.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}