In May, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. proclaimed confidently that Purdue University had an institutional duty and sufficient scientific evidence to reopen for in-person courses in the fall. Students want to be there, Purdue’s president argued in a column for The Washington Post, and the risk of serious illness to students from Covid-19 was extremely small.
Denying 45,000 tuition-paying students an opportunity to study on campus for the semester would be “a gross disservice to them and a default of our responsibility,” Daniels wrote just two months after most colleges across the country shut down, moving all courses online.
Anxiety is up and research productivity is down, says the chair of the University Senate.
Daniels was criticized within the university and beyond for reopening the campus at the risk of causing an outbreak not only among students, but also faculty and residents of the small city of West Lafayette. As it turned out, the university made it through the semester uninterrupted — not entirely unscathed by the virus, but managing to keep the infection rate relatively low with extensive testing, protective measures in classrooms, and a barrage of messaging about personal responsibility.
Daniels is taking the semester as a win, for both the academic and financial benefits of doing so — unlike many campuses, the university has not had to lay off or even furlough any employees. Just before Thanksgiving, as the term was ending, the former Republican governor sent a congratulatory message lauding those on the campus for their role in helping the university make it through the fall semester without shutting down or shifting back to remote learning, as many others had done.
“Today’s Boilermakers emphatically refuted the cynical predictions that their behavior would overwhelm any protective actions the university attempted,” Daniels wrote, defending his decision against the critics. And he praised the campuswide effort, which he called “the greatest capstone team project in Purdue history.”
Medical experts and those who study higher education give Purdue good marks for the semester, but note that there were still risks in making the tradeoffs between in-person learning and the health and safety of the campus and its surrounding city.
Mercedes R. Carnethon, an epidemiologist and vice chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University, wrote in an email that “it’s not safe to describe” Purdue’s experience as successful given the case volume of nearly 3,000, but that “it does not appear that the case rate in the Purdue community exceeded those of the state of Indiana as a whole.”
The university has categorized most of the cases as mild, but it’s not known whether any of the people who contracted the virus “will have long-term damage to their heart and other organs that may not appear until years later,” Carnethon wrote. “We also don’t know how many of those who were infected have persistent symptoms, described as long-haul COVID-19, that could affect their quality of life and ability to learn over the longer term. Finally, we don’t know how many of those who were infected would not have contracted COVID-19 had they been living and learning remotely.”
“Overall, though, it appears that this experience at Purdue does reflect a best-case scenario during a very challenging time for higher education,” she wrote.
Measuring how well Purdue controlled the virus compared with other universities is a little tricky, given the wide variations in campus density and testing protocols. But Christopher R. Marsicano, an assistant professor of the practice of higher education at Davidson College and director of its College Crisis Initiative, said the university compared well within its peer group.
“Purdue was as successful as any institution of that size in keeping case counts down and keeping students in class,” he said.
Between August 1 and November 24, when in-person instruction ended, nearly 2,800 students and faculty had tested positive for the virus at Purdue, mostly through the university’s weekly surveillance testing of about 10 percent of the campus population.
By comparison, the University of Illinois, which required all students to be tested twice per week, reported nearly 3,900 positive tests over that time.
“If you buy into Daniels’ belief that some number of cases is okay, then he succeeded by those metrics,” Marsicano said.
Purdue was able to do this by spending $50 million on testing, as well as the improvements to the physical and technological infrastructure to minimize the possibility of viral spread on campus, such as reconfiguring classrooms for more social distancing and adding plexiglass barriers for students. The dining halls became carry-out only and the university set up tents around campus to provide outdoor space for eating and studying.
If students did test positive, the university had not only dedicated space for quarantine, but provided them with extra medical and academic advising.
The investments on campus paid off, Daniels said: Through contact tracing, the university found that not a single case of coronavirus had been transmitted through the classroom experience, which was available for about two-thirds of the courses offered. And the biggest cause of viral spread was not off-campus parties, he said, but student exposure in congregate housing, such as fraternity and sorority houses or co-op spaces where there was not enough social distancing.
Faculty, staff, and some Purdue students have a different assessment of the semester. They are tired and stressed.
A survey near the end of the semester of faculty, staff, and student employees of the university found that they were generally working longer hours but feeling less productive. Tenured and tenure-track faculty, in particular, were spending up to 25 percent less time on research and grant writing, according to the survey, and as much as 40 percent more time teaching.
Less than 40 percent reported that they could accomplish all they needed to during regular work hours, or be able to manage the demands of both work and home life. A little more than half said they felt positive about Purdue’s efforts to manage Covid-19 during the fall semester.
Deborah L. Nichols, chair of the University Senate and an associate professor of human development and family studies, said that students, too, are showing signs of stress, mostly by not showing up for classes. Most courses do not have an attendance policy or participation component for their grade, she said, and students have told her that without those incentives, they are less motivated.
The university took all the necessary steps and managed to keep infection rates low, especially for instructors, Nichols said. But even under the best possible circumstances there has been a toll, Nichols said: Anxiety is up and research productivity is down.
The concerns of faculty went beyond the campus. “We always worry about spread through the community,” said Pamela Aaltonen, a professor emerita in the School of Nursing and chair of the local board of public health. “That’s why we need the testing and the Purdue dashboard.”
But she noted a different dynamic between the city and the campus: While there are concerns about students who may be asymptomatic spreading the disease, it tends to be the older community members who are less likely to wear masks.
Initially, there were also concerns in the city of West Lafayette, said Mayor John Dennis. “The first conversations about bringing students back made the static population nervous,” he said.
The city’s proximity to the campus increases the population density, Dennis said, so people were worried about having tens of thousands of students potentially spreading the virus through off-campus parties, he said.
Dennis said the presence of students did add to the number of cases in the city. (Daniels disputes that, and said it was community spread that caused some cases on campus.)
But the worst fears were never realized, the mayor said, in part because both the city and the university had stiff penalties for those who violated the rules. The city’s mask mandate carries a fine of up to $300. “The ‘Protect Purdue Pledge’ and city enforcement made this the success it was,” he said.
Daniels, too, said the university’s actions to expel some students early in the semester sent a message that they should take the rules seriously. “I would have preferred it didn’t happen but it had an effect,” he said, “it wasn’t bad to have a couple small object lessons.”
There are signs, though, that the spring semester will provide even greater challenges, given the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases across the country. From early November until the last day of in-person instruction at Purdue, the average percentage of positive diagnoses among all those tested jumped from less than 4 percent to about 6 percent, according to university figures.
Students must be tested before coming back to campus, but the mayor, Dennis, said the city is still at risk: “We will always get our ass kicked when we have a high number of people in a small area.”
Daniels has his own concerns about the next semester, especially about the spread of the coronavirus from the community to university employees. “We‘re studying these things very carefully, he said. “I’m more concerned about what if, like many hospitals, we don’t have enough staff to operate essential services? That may be as big a risk.”
But he has faith in the students. “The main thing was leadership of the students,” he said. “They were motivated to do that not out of selfishness — they’re smart enough to know it won’t hurt them. It was about protecting other people and the institution.”
