The COVID-19 College Experience: What Can You Expect? (Part 1 of 2)

The fall semester will be unique because of COVID-19. While every college will be a little different, here is what I expect you may find.

COVID-Safety – Colleges will try and make sure that students arrive on campus COVID-free by doing some or all of the following:

• Testing for the virus,
• Taking temperatures,
• Asking about COVID-19 symptoms and travel.

To prevent the spread of the virus on campus, colleges will enforce social distancing, the wearing of masks, reduce physical interactions, and have additional cleaning. Social distancing will often require fewer student in a classroom or in a dorm room. To reduce physical interactions, colleges may use doors that open automatically or assign a single person to open doors in a particular building. Colleges will have plans for quarantining students that come down with the virus and will have contact tracing in order to know who the infected person has come in contact with. Colleges will also make special arrangements for high-risk students and employees; this may mean online classes for those students or faculty. The biggest unknown regarding COVID-safety is whether students will follow the college’s guidelines.

Academics – Colleges have taken different approaches regarding delivery of course material in the fall semester. Plans include on-line synchronous, on-line asynchronous, in-person and hybrid course delivery. Many schools, not teaching on-line, will need to spread out classes across more hours of the day, more days of the week, and/or more months of the year to teach in person, while social distancing.

According to a Chronicle of Higher Education survey of 960 colleges published on June 14, the college plans for course delivery are as follows:

• Planning for in-person – 65%
• Proposing a Hybrid Model – 11%
• Considering a Range of Scenarios – 9%
• Planning for Online – 8%
• Waiting to Decide – 6%

Here are plans announced by four colleges that reflect a variety of different approaches:

• Beloit College plans to break the semester into 2 modules, in which students take 2 courses in each module. “The aspiration is to have a residential learning experience next year, but if COVID rages, this flexibility allows us to have it only affect half a semester, possibly.”
• Stanford University plans to spread instruction over four quarters, including the summer. Half of undergrads will be allowed on campus in fall. Students who are permitted on campus will switch with their peers each subsequent quarter. The four quarter year would allow Stanford undergrads to complete two quarters in residence, and at least one quarter remotely.
• The University of Notre Dame will resume in-person classes on August 10. Classes will begin two weeks earlier than usual so students can complete a full semester by Thanksgiving. They hope that by skipping a traditional fall break they will reduce the likelihood that students will bring the virus back to campus.
• The 23-campus California State University system is planning for on-line classes, with limited exceptions for essential lab courses and clinical classes for nursing students.