What Do US Universities Risk If They Reopen This Fall?

Forbes ^ | 04/30/2020 | Anna Esaki-Smith

[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.

[PGR88]

The problem with bankrupt universities is that the ones that will survive the shake-out will be the Ivy League, and then the large, state-funded universities (those with deepest pockets).

Unfortunately, the leftist, SJW humanities parasites will likely survive, because they will be funded by government.

Smaller universities can survive, but they need to radically change their mission, focus, lower costs, and purge all leftists.

[metmom]

They can learn to code.

[matthew fuller]

"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. "

And that, sports fans, is the absolute best scenario that we as a nation can hope and pray for.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Last night Tucker Carlson reported that the ever slow on the uptake WHO is coming around to your point of view. They now seem to think the Swedes had it right.

[stevem]

What applies to cities, counties, states, and nations also applies to universities. It makes no sense to save it by killing it.

Killing some universities might save the rest of us.

[ml/nj]

What Do US Universities Risk If They Reopen This Fall?

More and more offended snowflakes.

(See e.g. New Virginia Athletics logo ignites controversy over use of serpentine walls.)

ML/NJ