Posted on 04/30/2020 9:00:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After shutting down campus in March, a university reopens its doors this fall, and welcomes students from across the globe back to class. However, due to the dense nature of a college campus, a coronavirus outbreak occurs, resulting in a number of students and faculty members contracting COVID-19. Tragically, some die of the disease.
That worst-case scenario is looming over the current debate among university administrators about whether to conduct face-to-face classes this fall. With the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci describing a second coronavirus wave as "inevitable," they may face the logistical nightmare and dire financial consequences of shutting again if they resume physical classes, health professionals say.
“What exactly would trigger a re-closing?” asked Dr. Ron Waldman, a professor of global health at George Washington University, with a specialty in pandemic preparedness. “How much infection on campus will they tolerate? Will it take one death? Or more?”
The stakes are high. Higher education was already in crisis before the coronavirus pandemic, with rising cost, budget deficits and falling enrollments plaguing institutions. In 2017, the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen predicted that, in 10 to 15 years, half of America’s 4,000 colleges and universities were bound for bankruptcy.
That timeline has most certainly accelerated. The University of Michigan forecasts a loss of up to $1 billion due to the coronavirus, and one survey estimates a twenty percent drop in fall enrollments. International students – the one-million-student cohort that contributes $41 billion annually to the U.S. economy – are constrained by travel bans and visa processing difficulties, as well as personal concerns about being far from their families amid a global health crisis. Some students are already filing lawsuits for partial tuition reimbursement after their on-campus studies were interrupted this spring.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
My give a crap is busted.
L
The virus is not going away until a vaccine is invented or we’ve reached herd immunity. Mire likely the latter. If we hide under our beds we are just prolonging the pandemic.
Same here. If they want to buy into Fauci’s BS so be it but no feral bailouts.
If they reopen they lose time that could be spent obscuring records of possible collaboration on biological weapons research with foreign entities from the public.
For most universities that isn’t an issue.
For some universities it is almost certainly an existential issue.
The chance to indoctrinate a whole new bunch of naive white kids??
Has anyone ever gotten aids at college
Will there be a movement to financially bail out colleges and universities?
We may tend to forget, that these institutions of higher learning are also businesses which need to balance their budgets.
And this is true of state universities, not just private. State universities are discrete business entities within their states, and do not automatically get all of their operating expenses paid by their state.
What happens to the class of 2020? Do they graduate? Do they get their degrees, even though they didn’t finish the semester?
“We may tend to forget, that these institutions of higher learning are also businesses which need to balance their budgets.”
How many business have endowments?
Close down fauchi..Dr Negative and Dr Stay Closed.
kids will be fine, only the old profs and admin will die, win win.
Uh, kids die on campus every single year from over-drinking and partying too much, falling down flights of stairs while drunk, falling out windows while drunk, overdosing on drugs, committing suicide, etc. I’ve never heard of a college closing because of those deaths.
I think in most cases they will complete their courses online and have a virtual graduation ceremony. But they are encouraged not to throw their laptops in the air at the conclusion of the ceremony.
I would hate to be in the 2020 class. Missing almost a semester of on-campus learning. How do you account for courses like Chemistry, Bio or other sciences that rely on real life lab work to understand the science? A video or PowerPoint doesn’t cut it. What about senior projects/independent study courses?
Like 2.5 mil deaths and over run hospitals were inevitable. He has been wrong on every prediction he had, why people still believe him, I have no idea.
Is it possible to build enough safe spaces with puppies and ball rooms to open yet?
No picnic for the classes of 2021-2024 either....
Vaccines don’t make viruses go away. They just reduce infection rates. We don’t have an HIV-AIDS vaccine or one for the H1N1 swine flu.
I suppose you tell the sick to drink plenty of fluids, take aspirin and eat their vitamins. In a logical world we would tell the world that HCQ Zinc and Zithromycin is a cure if taken before the lungs are badly involved.
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