Last updated (3/25/2020, 6:50 p.m.) with news of colleges’ getting less in stimulus money than they asked for, Virginia’s governor urging Liberty’s president to close its campus, more colleges planning virtual commencements, and more.
Here are the latest updates:
- After a spike in Covid-19 cases in Virginia, the state’s governor urged the president of Liberty University to effectively close its campus as it faced national outrage for welcoming students back amid the coronavirus pandemic. Read more.
- Billions in coronavirus stimulus dollars are likely to go to higher ed, but the amount falls far short of what leaders said was necessary. Read more.
- More colleges, including MIT and the Universities of Texas at Austin and Wisconsin at Madison, are postponing in-person commencements and offering virtual ceremonies.
- Moody’s Investors Service estimated that the NCAA would face a $475-million revenue drop in the current fiscal year.
The novel coronavirus and Covid-19, the disease it causes, have become a public-health threat across the world, and on March 11 the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
Tens of thousands of cases have been reported in the United States, and experts fear that number could eventually rise into the millions. As more cases are reported, colleges are canceling study-abroad programs, moving courses online, and asking students to leave campuses. Meanwhile, academic associations have canceled their conferences, and athletic seasons have been cut short.
The crisis — one Chronicle senior writer called it a “black swan” event — could have lasting ramifications in the months and years to come. It could financially devastate institutions, their students, and employees. It will test the strength and efficacy of remote instruction. And a host of unanticipated effects will very likely become clear only with time.
We’ve compiled what you need to know — to be updated regularly — on the virus’s spread and its implications for higher ed.
Hundreds of campuses are moving classes online. How are they handling the transition?
Colleges were among the first institutions to take drastic action in response to the virus, and by March 11 more than 100 had canceled in-person classes and moved most or all coursework online. (A March 5 memo from the U.S. Department of Education gave “broad approval” for institutions to set up online instruction for students affected by closures or suspensions.)
The #CoronavirusOutbreak has prompted some colleges to cancel in-person classes.
For some colleges, the transition coincided with the end of the quarter or with spring break, creating a natural stopping point for face-to-face instruction. But even then, most faculty members faced a steep learning curve. (The Chronicle has compiled a free, downloadable resource guide for online teaching.) Meanwhile, low-income students and those in rural areas often lack reliable internet access and videoconferencing capabilities.
Some institutions have responded to such concerns by expanding wireless internet hotspots into parking lots, allowing students without Wi-Fi at home to complete coursework and log in to online classes from their cars.
Many professors have striven to keep their instruction simple, and to communicate to their students that they care. (Read more.) In that spirit, institutions have relaxed their grading policies, requiring either that spring courses be graded pass/fail or that students be given that option for individual classes.
Some faculty members have expressed concern over their lack of input into the decision to go online. On March 17 the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers released a joint statement in which they urged that “decisions that affect curriculum, method of instruction, and those aspects of student life that relate to the educational process should be made after consultation with the faculty and academic staff through their unions and campus governance bodies.”
As campuses close and professors are forced to work from home, some tenure-track faculty members have worried about how the disruption will affect their tenure bids. In response, some institutions, including Ohio State and Creighton Universities, have announced a one-year tenure-clock extension for junior professors. Harvard University told its faculty on March 22 that it plans to do the same.
Hundreds of thousands of students have been asked to leave campus housing to limit the virus’s spread. Is it working?
The efforts reduced the number of students living in close proximity, but the moves have had some unintended consequences.
With campus closures, some low-income students lost hot meals, health care, and a place to sleep, and others struggled to find the funds to travel home on short notice. Two Amherst College students wrote a critical op-ed in The Washington Post, taking their institution to task for choosing to “opt out, leaving students to fend for themselves.”
Several campuses have said they planned only prorated charges for room and board this semester.
At campuses such as Pomona College, in California, students with “no other option” were allowed to petition to stay on campus. However, more than two-thirds of the petitions were denied in a selection process that “seemed completely arbitrary,” students say.
Students, especially seniors, are also being faced with the loss of major campus traditions and social events such as commencements, which are rapidly being postponed or moved online.
During the week of March 23, several colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, announced they would host virtual ceremonies.
But not all colleges have shut down their campuses. Although it has moved most of its classes online, Liberty University welcomed students back to campus during the week of March 23 after spring break, triggering harsh criticism. Jerry Falwell Jr., Liberty’s president and a staunch ally of President Trump, has played down the risk of the virus to the Virginia institution’s thousands of residential students, their parents, the faculty and staff, and local residents.
On March 25, Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph S. Northam, urged Liberty to close its campus for the sake of public health. Quoting Scripture, Governor Northam strongly urged Falwell to reconsider his decision to invite thousands of students back to campus amid the state’s worsening coronavirus crisis.
“We appreciate that our colleges and universities are making accommodations for students with special cases, but that is very different from inviting students to leave their homes and come back to campus,” Northam said during a news conference about the state’s overnight spike in Covid-19 cases, up 101 in the previous 24 hours, to 391 in all, with at least 13 deaths. Liberty responded that it was housing only students who had nowhere else to go.
With campuses mostly closed, what will happen to academic support staff?
Some colleges were reportedly preparing to furlough or lay off nonessential workers as coronavirus-related shutdowns led to financial strain.
Workers at Western Michigan University whose hours have been slashed due to coronavirus closures will have to rely on accrued sick leave and 80 emergency hours, the Chronicle reporter Dan Bauman said. While the university stressed it wasn’t planning on layoffs, workers who run out of hours are being encouraged to file for unemployment.
Harvard is providing 30 days of paid leave with benefits to custodians and dining-hall staff members who can’t work remotely, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Private industries that rely on colleges for business were also letting workers go. A third-party operator that provides dining-service workers for the University of Pennsylvania laid off its 140-person staff without pay for the rest of the semester, effective at the end of March, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
The Hotel at the University of Maryland at College Park indicated it was laying off 150 people last week, according to Bisnow.
Student workers may also be affected. The Chicago Maroon reported on March 14 that resident assistants at the University of Chicago had been told they would not receive their stipends in the coming quarter.
However, student workers participating in federal work-study can continue to be paid even as institutions move their operations online, according to guidance updated on March 20 by the U.S. Department of Education.
Will higher education be included in a government stimulus package?
Yes.
According to text of a spending deal struck by the White House and the U.S. Senate on March 24, more than $6 billion each will be directed to colleges and to emergency student aid. While the funding amount was an increase from Republican senators’ earlier proposals, it fell far short of the roughly $50 billion that higher-education associations had said was necessary to keep students and colleges afloat.
The deal would also halt student-loan payments for six months and temporarily suspend the involuntary collection of payments including through wage garnishment. (The Education Department had already announced an option for borrowers to suspend payment for 60 days, as well as the suspension of wage garnishment for at least 60 days.) The bill is expected to be enacted by Congress sometime during the week of March 23. (Click here for details.)
What could campus closures mean for colleges’ bottom lines?
Nothing good. On March 18, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its outlook for the higher-education sector from “stable” to “negative.” In doing so, it cited “unprecedented enrollment uncertainty, risks to multiple revenue streams, and potential material erosion in their balance sheets.”
Central Washington University declared financial exigency in the midst of the financial fallout of the coronavirus, according to a resolution by its Board of Trustees. The university anticipates a “significant loss of revenue” in the wake of canceled conferences and students’ moving out. And faculty and staff members at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut, can expect reduced salaries as a result of coronavirus-related financial strain, according to the New Haven Independent.
Experts on higher-education finance have told The Chronicle that most colleges should be able to weather the storm in the short term. (Indeed, the transition to an improvised online-learning system has been relatively cheap in some instances.) If campuses aren’t able to welcome students back for the fall semester, however, many colleges could be in for a shock. Strain on the sector will only increase if the U.S. economy enters a recession, or worse.
It’s the height of the admissions season. How will coronavirus affect enrollment?
At many colleges, the calendar has long revolved around May 1, the national deposit deadline for applicants. But that won’t work this year, some enrollment officials said. As of March 15, at least three dozen colleges had pushed back their deposit deadlines by a month, and several more were expected to do so soon.
Concern for applicants and their families is driving those decisions. So is concern for the bottom line. “Our work in admissions has to continue,” said Tony Sarda, an admissions official at Lamar University, in Texas. “The question is, how can we stop for a second and acknowledge people’s humanity?”
The virus is also forcing admissions offices to work on parallel tracks for international students. On one, it’s business as usual. On the other, they are planning for myriad contingencies. Will the students be able to come to the United States for the fall term? Will they want to?
“We can only base our decisions on the information we have, so the coronavirus just can’t come into play,” one admissions officer told The Chronicle in early March. Still, in the back of her mind, she is thinking about “Plan B, Plan C, Plan D.”
Nationwide sessions of ACT college-entrance exams were postponed from April 4 until June 13, and SAT testing scheduled for May 2 has been canceled. The cancellations will further disrupt the plans of high-school juniors who also won’t be able to visit campuses this spring.
How are travel restrictions affecting study-abroad programs and travel?
Most institutions barred college-related travel as the coronavirus spread, but some chose to leave study-abroad participants in place rather than expose them to the disease by traveling.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines that recommended American colleges and universities “consider postponing or canceling student foreign-exchange programs.”
This was the first time the CDC had released guidance about students’ travel abroad, said Natalie Melo, vice president for programs, training, and services at the Forum for Education Abroad, a nonprofit organization that promotes health and safety in academic travel.
“What surprised us is that the CDC has never issued guidance like that before,” she said. “People were scrambling as far as how to respond to it.”
Citing that guidance, many American colleges advised students studying abroad in countries where coronavirus cases have been reported to return home.
What does the pandemic mean for academic conferences?
Most major academic conferences with dates in the next few months have been canceled or postponed.
Some events are being converted to virtual gatherings using videoconferencing platforms like Zoom. Organizations depend mightily on their annual conferences for revenue and are still burdened by the costs of putting them together. The stream of cancellations, combined with declining membership and conference attendance, could prove an existential threat.
The American Educational Research Organization, which canceled its annual meeting and announced plans for a virtual one instead, has now canceled that one, too. The organization questioned whether it would be “adding to a ‘to do’ list growing exponentially for far too many.”
That cancellation is likely to be a major financial blow to university athletics departments. Proceeds of the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament account for a majority of the association’s revenue each year. The NCAA disburses that money to athletics conferences, which disburse it to member institutions.
USA Today reported that the NCAA had once assembled a nearly $400-million rainy-day fund to help cover such a cancellation, but subsequently spent it, including on a $208.7-million legal settlement with athletes who had not received scholarships covering the full cost of attendance at their institutions.
Moody’s Investors Service estimated that the NCAA would face a $475-million revenue plunge in the current fiscal year.
What role have university labs played in the overall American coronavirus response?
Since Covid-19 cases began spreading in the United States, the health-care system has struggled to provide enough tests for public-health officials to track outbreaks. Some of the first few labs able to get a faulty government-provided test to work in early February — or to successfully develop their own tests — were at universities.
For weeks the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, was the only test provider in the state. The team of five is working 12-hour days, plus a shift on weekends. At the University of Washington, the clinical-virology lab is testing about 2,000 people a day. Leaders at UW had to put out calls for volunteers to help process tests and for donations of lab supplies.
As of mid-March, commercial tests are finally coming online, which will significantly expand the country’s testing capacity, but scientists on the front lines expect supply shortages to continue and demand to stay high.
As the number of patients with Covid-19 grows, medical schools are weighing whether their students should be allowed to treat them. Guidance released by the Association of American Medical Colleges on March 17 recommended that med students end all patient contact for two weeks to conserve personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves.
Although temporarily sidelined, medical students are stepping up to help by fielding calls from people with questions about coronavirus; babysitting and running errands for overwhelmed health-care workers; and organizing drives to collect and donate masks, gowns, and gloves, The New York Times reported.
Institutions including the University of Virginia, Holyoke Community College, in Massachusetts, and Cuyahoga Community College, in Ohio, have also donated face masks and other protective equipment, which are normally used in research or instruction, to health-care workers and first responders.
Where can I find reliable information about Covid-19 and the novel coronavirus?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines for how to protect yourself and those around you from infection, while news outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post have useful explainers on the virus.
The Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering is tracking the spread of the virus in an interactive dashboard displaying the locations of confirmed cases of Covid-19 and the number of deaths it caused, among other data.
