Problems planning for a Post-Pandemic Campus this fall

How will campuses try to return to face-to-face education? What does it mean now to plan for a Post-Pandemic Campus this fall?

In April I published three scenarios for colleges and universities may approach the fall 2020 semester in the wake of COVID-19, based on different ways the pandemic might play out. I followed that up with real world examples of each scenario, as different institutions subsequently issued announcements about their plans. To recap, they are:

1. COVID Fall: today’s “remote instruction” continues and develops for the rest of calendar 2020.
2. Toggle Term: campuses are ready and able to switch between online and in-person instruction as circumstances change.
3. Post-Pandemic Campus: colleges and universities return in the fall to the traditional face-to-face mode after COVID-19’s danger has ebbed to a certain level.

Thinking about the Post-Pandemic Campus option, how can a campus make that work? What does one need to do to convince people that it’s safe to return to campus?

So far — looking at UVM, Baylor, Purdue, etc. — opening up campus seems to include a mix of practices. Social distancing is on tap, such as configuring spaces (classrooms, libraries, dorms) to encourage people to separate. Some proclaim they will operate a lot of testing, although not all do this, and it is not clear that enough testing materials will be available — for many tests — for every campus in time for classes. Various forms of serious or “deep” cleaning are available, as is some type of surveillance and contact tracing. Medical staff will grow. I haven’t heard many mention maintaining a campus perimeter with temperature checks, but I can imagine more than a few attempting this, flaws and all.

I’m getting more worried about this the more I learn about plans and project what they might look like. Here are some reasons why.

One problem is financial pressure, as I’ve explained previously. State governments will likely cut appropriations to public universities. Enrollment is likely to decline for many institutions. While some may enjoy growth (think of community colleges online and medical programs), but generally forecasts are nearly unanimous in seeing a drop down compared with fall 2019. At the same time, many costs will go up. All of these measures I noted above will cost money. So campuses in general may tend to have less revenue and higher budgets. How will they pay for this?

Another is the likelihood that some people will refuse to go to freshly reopened campuses. Think about students (and parents of traditional-age ones) for whom safety has always been a big concern when considering which campus to attend. Will colleges and universities convince all students that their physical plant is safe? Will every student believe that the campus community won’t infect them?

Think, too, about faculty and staff who fear getting ill on campus, especially if they’re older and/or have COVID-19-relevant health problems (hypertension, obesity, diabetes, COPD, etc). How many faculty members, librarians, senior administrators, and custodians will refuse to set foot on campus and risk their lives? As one professor said, quoted in Colleen Flaherty’s excellent Inside Higher Ed piece:

“I don’t want to think about face-to-face teaching the hordes of students I usually teach until there is a vaccine,” [Alice Pawley, associate professor of engineering education at Purdue and incoming chair of the campus’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors] said, guessing that students have similar health concerns.

How many will shun the physical space because they don’t want to risk bringing infection home to their loved ones and neighbors? Remember that, as of this writing, no vaccine is available, nor any effective therapy. How will institutional governance, policy-making, and operations respond when staff and faculty members want a say in the conditions under which they’ll be working if they are expected to work in person next fall.

Let’s assume some faction of campus communities will insist on working and/or studying remotely. If a campus agrees to this (and not all will, not for all jobs), there are extra costs for making it work: financial, reputational, in terms of governance, etc. Put another way, unless a college or university can someone bring everyone back and also support neither remote work nor remote instruction, we should expect fall 2020 classes and other campus functions to be dual purpose, prepped for both online and in-person modes — simultaneously, plus with room for individuals to switch between them as circumstances change (micro-versions of my Toggle Campus scenario). Remember that a campus has to do all of this with fewer resources and lot of pressure.

All of the preceding is about preparations before fall term — i.e., over the next few months. Once the semester gets going, what happens when an infection occurs on campus? How many people (students, faculty, staff) will choose to leave the physical area? Will the campus decide to quarantine individuals in certain space, or instead send everyone home again, a la March 2020 and the Toggle Term plan?

Once again, costs will go up, including financial and reputational ones. How often will faculty senates call for no-confidence votes? Would an administration face student protests for failing to keep them free of coronavirus? Besides infections, how many students will feel that this online/toggled experience is substandard, and will then either withdraw or request (or sue for) tuition cuts? In that case, how many politicians, governments, foundations, public figures will join them? Recall that fall 2020 is the climax of a very contentious election season, meaning tempers will be high. This could feed on itself, as the spectacle of students disliking fall 2020 education, criticism of same appearing, lawsuits and protests against tuition and fees could further depress enrollment.

Will academics and academia-adjacent people increase that negative perception? A good number of faculty, staff, and others think online edu is inferior to in-person and will say so, publicly and privately, and some at length. Will administrators tell them to stop, in the name of preserving their shared institution? I can image legal actions around libel and academic freedom.

In their widely circulated letter Irina Mikhalevich and Russell Powell go further still in imagining the impact of infection on campus:

Imagine the human cost and disruption of but a single case: one COVID-positive student would require the quarantine of every student and instructor that the student came into contact with over a period of two weeks, as well as those with whom those individuals interacted. Even if the student did not infect anybody else, hundreds of students and dozens of faculty and staff would be forced to self-quarantine and their classes and work moved online mid-stride.

How will a campus community respond to its first COVID-19-caused death, either among that population or caused by infection from it? Consider all of the preceding possibilities, intensified. We can add to that lawsuits, calls for investigations, wrangling with state and federal authorities, politicians and other public figures calling for campuses to be shut down, and more.

Moreover, the very act of organizing a college or university against COVID-19 could impose other costs. Imagine a fall semester on a campuses that feels like military-medical encampment, with pervasive testing, security patrols, plexiglas shields in all kinds of places, and sporadic quarantines. Classrooms, libraries, sports stadia, and other buildings could have barriers erected to separate people. I wouldn’t be surprised to see temporary buildings (trailers, tents) in place for handling spatial overflow. It’s sounds like an intense, grim place. People studying and/or working their may well get depressed, and some decide to withdraw.

I also wonder about the cultural politics of implementing a Post-Pandemic Campus. For example, to the extent that party affiliation sometimes drives different responses to the crisis, different campus populations can express their politics through medical measures, especially as the election heats up — i.e., ostentatiously refusing to wear masks or going after people who don’t. From another angle, which people will shame or be shamed for not wanting to be on campus? Will some criticize the desire for remote study/work as wimpy, unmanly, too intellectual, or unpatriotic? Will others charge off-campus connections are unsupportive of a college or university or fraternity or profession in its respective time of trial? From another angle, will critics charge those who prefer to work and/or study on campus with cruelty, arrogance, thoughtlessness, or privilege? What happens to a sense of community when people tear at each other along these lines?

Let’s conclude by looking further ahead. If some or all of these possibilities occur on a fall 2020 campus, what kind of spring 2021 semester do they help create? Will a community come together during these stresses, achieving a good spirit of mutual aid and support, as Rebecca Solnit documents we can in her extraordinary 2010 book Paradise Built in Hell? Or will colleges and universities reach 2021 financially, physically, and culturally drained? How many Post-Pandemic schools will be compelled to return to remote instruction, or shut down temporarily or permanently?

My point in this post is not to urge campuses away from the Post-Pandemic scenario. Instead, I’m trying to help the higher education community think through what implementing it might look like, so we can make better plans and decisions. It will not be easy.

(cross-posted to my blog; Medium’s import function is still terrible)