More colleges are releasing detailed plans for how they’ll conduct instruction this fall, but the picture of what’s ahead is not necessarily getting clearer, according to the results of a survey of more than 350 college presidents and provosts conducted by The Chronicle. With the course of the coronavirus still unknown, an anonymous respondent compared planning amid Covid-19 to “nailing Jell-O to the wall.”
The main watchword seems to be flexibility. A plurality of colleges are opting for face-to-face instruction, the survey reveals, though many of them are pursuing hybrid in-person/online models in practice, and preparing to pivot online again if they must. Colleges that plan on reopening soon are preparing a range of safety measures, but they are not calculating all the additional expenses. While leaders are hoping for the best, they’re making plans for difficult days ahead.
As one anonymous respondent put it, “Contingency planning has become the norm. Everyone is learning about their thresholds for planning with uncertainty being the central characteristic.”
In May 2020, The Chronicle sent an email with a link to an online survey to a random sample of leaders of two- and four-year colleges in the United States. Overall, 357 responses were received from presidents, chancellors, provosts, or chief academic officers, or from those who responded on their behalf. The survey was accessible for nine days, with multiple reminders sent to nonrespondents. Among the respondents, 50 percent led four-year private nonprofit institutions, 35 percent led four-year public universities, and 15 percent led two-year public colleges. Some takeaways from the survey data stood out, as did some of the accompanying comments, which were submitted anonymously.
Many colleges plan to be face-to-face this fall. Nearly half of the respondents — 46 percent — indicated that their institutions were planning to return to face-to-face instruction for the fall semester. (In contrast, about two-thirds of colleges have publicly stated that they intend to do so, according to The Chronicle’s tracker.)
But returning to campus would also mean having to plan for a number of contingencies. For example, Oglethorpe University, a private college in Atlanta that responded to the survey, intends to bring students back a week later than usual to allow for additional preparations, Glenn R. Sharfman, the provost and vice president for academic affairs, said in a subsequent interview with The Chronicle. Once on campus, class sections may be split so that only half of a class attends in person at each meeting, to help with social distancing, among other precautions. Oglethorpe is also designating quarantine areas for sick students.
Only 17 percent of respondents said that their institutions already planned to rely mostly or completely on online instruction for the fall term. The California State University System, for example, made the call in May.
In addition to health concerns, and worries about disrupting another semester if campuses had to be evacuated again, leaders of the system were leery of the costs of safely bringing nearly 500,000 students back to 23 campuses. At the Long Beach campus, which enrolls more than 37,000 students, administrators projected that extra cleaning and sanitizing alone would cost the university an additional $6 million a year, said Jane C. Conoley, the president. “There’s no way that we can absorb that,” she added.
But many colleges are still weighing the pros and cons: 38 percent of respondents indicated that they were still deciding. Cristle Collins Judd, president of Sarah Lawrence College, a private institution in New York, said she didn’t “feel like I can answer those questions in ways, right now, that I could commit to in the absence of more information.” She said she would announce the college’s plans by July 1.
Plans are not absolute, and are subject to change at any time. Survey respondents signaled a high degree of confidence in their chosen bets for the fall, although some were higher than others. Among leaders who plan for most or all instruction to be conducted online this fall, 73 percent said they were “very confident” in their choice, and 25 percent said they were “somewhat confident.” Among leaders planning for face-to-face instruction, however, only 29 percent were very confident and 63 percent somewhat confident.
But “face to face” and “online” instruction are not binary choices as colleges react to Covid-19. Asked to provide some specifics about their plans for in-person learning, many respondents indicated that “most” but not all classes would be in physical classrooms; many planned to rely on hybrids of face-to-face and online classes. Asked to give some specifics about their online plans, several respondents indicated that while most classes would be online, more hands-on learning experiences, such as labs and clinicals, might still be held in person.
At Dabney S. Lancaster Community College, in Virginia, for example, about 50 percent of classes — mostly in general-education subjects — will be held online. But for programs such as welding, nursing, and commercial driving, some activities will have to be conducted in person, with appropriate precautions, said John J. Rainone, the president.
Oglethorpe had no classes taught online before this spring, and prides itself on its in-person approach, but after finishing the spring online, Sharfman asked faculty members whether they would prefer to teach online this fall for health reasons. About 20 percent of professors have said they would.
Like many respondents, Sharfman knows that all the elaborate planning for social distancing and temperature taking might be swept away by a spike in infections or a state decree. Asked if he was confident that Oglethorpe’s plan would hold until September, he answered, “I am not. But we need a plan.”
Several respondents noted in their survey comments that they were planning for face-to-face instruction, but were prepared to return to remote learning again, if necessary. That’s only prudent, said Rock F. Jones, president of Ohio Wesleyan University. “We feel confident that we will be able to open in August and relatively confident that we’ll be able to see this through” to Thanksgiving, when the university plans to send students home to complete the semester online. But if the virus surged again or the state issued another stay-at-home order, Jones said, “things would change.”
Colleges are considering many precautions, but have spent less time calculating their costs. Institutions planning to reopen in August or September are considering a panoply of measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 on their campuses. Among the most common procedures needed for in-person classes, respondents said, were increased cleaning (92 percent), lower-density instruction (80 percent), and mandatory masks (79 percent).
Survey results also indicated that institutions may not have weighed the costs of those adaptations. While increased cleaning was the most popular requirement for reopening, only 63 percent of respondents said they had estimated the cost. About half of the respondents had projected the costs of lower-density instruction and mandatory masks.
Some reopening requirements have been examined even less. About two-thirds of respondents — 67 percent — said that mandatory health and safety training for students would be required to reopen, but only 20 percent had estimated the cost of such training. Contact tracing was considered necessary by 62 percent of leaders surveyed, but only 30 percent had estimated its costs.
Given the parlous finances many colleges face this fall, unexpected expenses could compound looming fiscal challenges. But some colleges are working to figure out what they will need and what it will cost right now.
Wesleyan College, a private nonprofit women’s institution in Georgia, is compiling all the precautions it needs and determining what it will have to pay. The college has already spent tens of thousands of dollars on sanitizing stations, said Vivia Lawton Fowler, the president. Wesleyan caught a lucky break when the facilities department unearthed a stack of plexiglass sheets that could be used as barriers in face-to-face interactions. “It was like manna from heaven,” Fowler said.
Colleges are bracing for significant impacts. Leaders have considered a variety of contingencies for their revenues and operations this fall. Among respondents, 88 percent expected declines in enrollment and 86 percent expected drops in tuition revenue. In addition to short-term financial worries, 66 percent were worried about declines in fund raising.
Many respondents took a dim view of hopes that colleges would be back to something like normal by next spring. About 40 percent of respondents were concerned that their institutions would be wholly or mostly online for the entire 2020-21 academic year. More than a third worried that they would not be able to enroll any international students.
Those rumblings are still distant, however. “Within the next couple of weeks, we’ll have a better sense of what the financial impact for next year will be in the best-case scenario,” said Jones, of Ohio Wesleyan. “There are worst-case scenarios that could be far more dreadful.”
Respondent comments revealed more detail about financial concerns. One wrote that financial planning was a critical challenge, as “we will have a $50-million shortfall that we will have to manage.” Another offered that “cuts in state funding, county funding, and possible enrollment declines threaten the existence of the college.”
Other comments revealed concerns about lingering impacts. One respondent bemoaned the likelihood of a “slow recovery into 2021-22,” while another expressed worry that “revenue losses from enrollment changes will extend three to five years.”
Still, some leaders projected cautious optimism. A. Scott Weber, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system, believes that if the crisis is relatively short-lived, his institution will emerge stronger. “We’ll be more nimble,” he said. “We’ll be more technology-based. I think we will have more employees who are more flexible in their work schedules.”
Leaders at Buffalo have also looked at the consequences of other scenarios, including “some pretty tough ones,” Weber said. “We believe we’ll be able to weather them all.”
