Campuses moving classes online this month: updated data and map

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Bryan Alexander

A bunch of us have been tracking how some colleges and universities have moved or planned to move classes online this month, in response to the new pandemic developments. We started nearly three weeks ago and the dataset has been growing. Here’s a quick update.

First, the crowdsourced information has overwhelmingly been for US and Canadian institutions. I’d love to hear more about campuses in other nations. So far we see 131 colleges and universities with many or all classes online, in total: 36 Canadian, 95 American. None of these appear permanent or extending to the entire term or semester so far, so they count as toggle term cases in my framework.

Second, I did a quick and dirty Google Map of the latest data:

Now it looks like the shift online is geographically widely distributed. The American northeast, west coast, and midwest around Ohio/Michigan have the thickest populations. The south, which didn’t initially respond, is now starting to appear. Across Canada, the toggle terms look to be simply widespread.

Third, while the map might appear to be crowded, these January toggle terms are in a distinct minority within the United States. Out of roughly 4,000 academic institutions, these…