The fall semester is barely underway, but several colleges are already announcing their instruction plans for the spring. The bottom line, so far, is that few institutions will change their approaches — whether face to face, remote, or a mix of the two.
The California State University system is the most recent institution to do so, announcing on Thursday that all 23 of the campuses would continue to provide instruction virtually. “This decision is the only responsible one available to us at this time,” Chancellor Timothy P. White said in a news release. “And it is the only one that supports our twin North Stars of safeguarding the health, safety, and well-being of our faculty, staff, students, and communities, as well as enabling degree progression for the largest number of students,” he said.
John Barnshaw, vice president for research and data science at the consulting firm Ad Astra, said the trend is clear among the 500 colleges they work with: “If they’re building a course schedule, it’s remaining the same from fall to spring.”
The continuity is a reflection that those colleges feel what they are doing is successful, said Chris Marsicano, an assistant professor of the practice in educational studies at Davidson College. “If it’s working, why not just give people some certainty and extend into next semester?” he said.
The early announcements by institutions also give faculty members more time to prepare and students and parents a clear timeline for travel to and from campus, said Richard Muma, executive vice president and provost at Wichita State University.
Wichita State has also announced that it will continue to offer similar options for the spring semester. The university is giving students a choice between taking courses completely online, or a hybrid mode that combines limited in-person instruction and virtual content. More than 85 percent of courses are now in the hybrid mode, Muma said. “We learned to plan ahead,” Muma said. “It helps reduce the anxiety of students and faculty.”
The fact that several colleges are already announcing their spring semester plans is a big improvement from the fall, when so many institutions waited until mid- to late-summer to decide whether to allow any instruction on campus, Marsicano said.
And since the summer, there has been no treatment breakthrough or vaccine that would allow all campus activities to resume, he said. “The only major change that should change operating procedure would be a surprisingly early vaccine,” Marsicano said, and even then it wouldn’t be first distributed to normally healthy college-aged populations.
While the course modalities may remain the same from fall to spring at many colleges, institutions are modifying the academic calendar to minimize travel to and from campus to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.
Wichita State, for example, will offer only remote courses during January. The spring semester will start three weeks later than normal, and there will be no spring break.
Carnegie Mellon University has announced a similar change to its academic calendar along with the continuation of its hybrid approach to course offerings.
The change acknowledges that “the Covid-19 pandemic will likely continue through the winter months, and with a desire to reduce the number of weeks we are in session during flu season, CMU will delay the start of the spring semester,” according to a letter from Jim Garrett, the university’s provost.
For colleges that allowed students back on campus, maintaining the status quo might seem like a shaky decision. Several major universities have already experienced widespread outbreaks of coronavirus — sometimes just days into the fall term — and shifted from in-person to online learning.
While administrators are genuinely concerned about students and faculty members, there are still other factors that relate to colleges’ decisions for the fall, said Barnshaw at Ad Astra.
Colleges that have NCAA football teams, greater selectivity, or that are in states controlled by Republicans were all more likely to offer in-person courses, according to an analysis of data from the College Crisis Initiative.
Whatever reasons went into the decisions to bring students back to campus for the fall, in some cases the plans have worked relatively well so far, officials say. Wichita State reports only 38 positive tests for coronavirus, though the university is only testing students who are symptomatic or have a known exposure. In addition, “students, faculty, and staff who undergo testing off-campus are not required to report positive test results.”
Being on a campus with limited student housing has helped keep the numbers low, said Muma, the provost at Wichita State.
The University of Connecticut at Storrs has had about 180 students test positive. The university has said it will continue to provide a mix of course offerings in the spring, but it hasn’t come to any decisions on whether to change the timing of the semester, said Carl Lejuez, university provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
“What we’ve said is that right now the best predictor of the spring is the fall,” Lejuez said. And if things get worse, the university will pivot to protect the health and safety of employees and students, he said.
“We’re not afraid to make changes,” he said. “The world will likely not look better than it does right now.”
