Harvard will reopen in the fall, but whether it’s remote or on campus is uncertain

Harvard University officials said Monday that the school is preparing for many, if not all, of its classes to be delivered remotely when the fall semester starts in early September, an acknowledgment that it may be unsafe for students to immediately return to campus.

Harvard said on Monday that it briefly considered delaying the start of the academic year until spring 2021, but ultimately rejected that idea.

University classes will begin on schedule Sept. 2, but whether students are on campus or learning virtually remains uncertain, Harvard provost Alan M. Garber wrote in a message sent to the community Monday afternoon.

“Our goal is to bring our students, faculty, postdoctoral fellows and staff to campus as quickly as possible, but because most projections suggest that COVID-19 will remain a serious threat during the coming months, we cannot be certain that it will be safe to resume all usual activities on campus by then,” Garber said. “Consequently, we will need to prepare for a scenario in which much or all learning will be conducted remotely.”

Harvard’s announcement left many questions unanswered, including whether online classes would cost less for students than in-person instruction.

Universities are under increasing pressure from rising freshmen, returning undergraduates, and graduate students and their families to offer some understanding of what the fall semester could look like amid the pandemic. A group of incoming freshmen at Harvard sent an open letter to university president Lawrence Bacow last week asking him to postpone the fall semester if it is going to be online because low-income, first-generation students would be at a disadvantage learning remotely without in-person interactions.

Other college and university presidents are also weighing if and how they can reopen their campuses in the fall.

“Every university I know of is engaged in a huge planning effort,” said Larry Ladd, a higher education consultant in Falmouth. “It’s more intense and more complicated, in part because you don’t know how many students are going to show up.”

Boston University said it plans to have a decision by July and is considering several options, from a phased-in start to delaying in-person classes until January.

Merrimack College, in North Andover, has told students that it plans to open as a residential campus in the fall, although it is considering alternatives, including delaying the student return by a month or more. Merrimack officials said remote learning would only be an option if public health and state officials mandated it.

Yale University will announce its decision about the fall semester by July. Stanford University officials are considering several recommendations that will be presented to their president in late May, including delaying the start date until the winter quarter.

On Monday, the University of Pennsylvania told parents and students that it was "planning for a likely combination of in-class and virtual teaching (particularly for large lectures) depending upon the circumstances.”

In an opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday, Brown University president Christina Paxson wrote that reopening colleges and universities in the fall should be a “national priority” and called for putting appropriate testing, tracing, and containment practices in place now. Many institutions face financial catastrophe if they don’t start the next academic year this fall, Paxson wrote.

“The basic business model for most colleges and universities is simple — tuition comes due twice a year at the beginning of each semester,” Paxson wrote. “Most colleges and universities are tuition dependent. Remaining closed in the fall means losing as much as half of our revenue.”

Unlike the decision to close campuses and shift to remote learning, which occurred swiftly across the country in the space of about a week in March, higher education experts expect that the approach to the fall semester will vary.

Urban and rural schools may come to different decisions, experts said, and they will be guided by the rules of individual states. Individual colleges and universities will also have to consider whether they have the financial ability to provide only online education or postpone start dates.

Many institutions are considering hybrid models if it remains unsafe to have hundreds or thousands of students back on campus, living in dormitories, sharing bathrooms and dining halls, sitting in lecture halls, and partying on and off-campus on the weekends. Some colleges are looking at breaking up large lecture classes or shifting them online.

Colleges may also bring back segments of the college to campus for a few weeks at a time for in-person learning and activities and then send them back home to continue with remote instruction, Ladd said.

That could mean dorms that traditionally house 200 students could be repurposed for social distancing and serve 50 students at a time, he said.

“My prediction would be the best that could happen is a hybrid sort of instruction with modified residency,” Ladd said.

In its announcement Monday, Harvard said it will bring students back on campus in September if it has adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, reliable and convenient viral testing, robust contact tracing procedures, and facilities for quarantine and isolation.

But Garber, the provost, also cautioned that the fall semester plans for the undergraduate college may differ from those at the graduate and professional schools. Harvard’s graduate schools, such as the Kennedy School, rely heavily on international student enrollment, and it is unclear whether it will be safe for those students to travel to the United States from their home countries or if they will be able to get the appropriate visas.

Harvard graduate schools may be forced to offer more online educational opportunities if students can’t get to Cambridge.

“Because our schools have different approaches to learning and research, aspects of the fall semester will likely vary among them,” Garber said

Garber added that Harvard is planning for a “notably different” remote learning experience from what the university rushed to provide this spring. College students now scattered across the country and globe have grumbled that the online, video-conferenced classroom experience has fallen short of in-person classes.

“With more time to prepare, we are confident we can create a better, more engaging experience for the fall, should many of our activities need to be conducted remotely," Garber said. “Rather than seeking to approximate the on-campus experience online, we can focus our efforts on developing the best possible remote educational experience.”

Garber said if students cannot return to campus in the fall as usual, the university will also consider ways to offer extracurricular activities and research experiences remotely.

Garber did not say when Harvard will make a decision about how the fall semester will shake out.

Also left unanswered is whether the university will charge students the same tuition for remote learning and what staffing levels will be in the fall. Harvard is paying its dining workers, custodians, and security officers through the end of May.

“The consequences of any major decision for a large and complex university like Harvard are themselves complex and highly uncertain,” Garber wrote.

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Loss of international student fees could decimate UK research

As university researchers race to find a way out of the coronavirus pandemic, top institutions are warning that losing at least half their international students will blow a huge hole in their research budgets and lead to cuts in vital scientific projects.

Many universities are anticipating a loss of between 80 and 100% of their usual intake of international students as a result of the virus, with most agreeing a reduction of at least half seems inevitable. This is an enormous hit in cash terms, with some institutions braced for potential losses of more than £100m.

But it is all the more painful because universities have been relying on the surplus from international students’ higher fees to subsidise vital research.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank, says: “The rhetoric around the budget was all about making Britain a great global science nation, but without international students, that can’t happen.”

Vice-chancellors say that almost every university will be in financial jeopardy if the government refuses to give them any support.

Prof Colin Riordan, of Cardiff University, a member of the elite Russell Group, says: “Any university that hasn’t got substantial reserves will be at risk. There is barely a university that will be able to last without significant help from the government. Lots would struggle to last beyond a year or so. At the very least, we need some help to buy us some time.”

Last week the Treasury was said to be blocking an appeal by the vice-chancellors’ group, Universities UK, for a multibillion-pound bailout. Without it, the group says some institutions will certainly go bankrupt.

A report by London Economics for the University and College Union found that universities faced a £2.5bn black hole from the loss of tuition fees, and without government intervention, 30,000 jobs would go.

Hepi has found that on average every international student pays £5,000 more than it costs the university to teach them. The thinktank says universities typically spend most of this surplus on propping up research, a crucial activity because most funding bodies only pay around three-quarters of what it costs the university to carry out a research project.

“International students subsidising research is a huge deal,” Hillman says. “What happens if all that goes? It’s quite simple. You do less research.”

Riordan agrees. “Universities are playing an absolutely pivotal role in the crisis, in understanding what is going on and developing routes out of it. Research is critical to that. But at the same time that research is being propped up by a revenue stream that is massively threatened by the virus.”

The most prestigious universities say they are being hit with a double whammy because they are the most dependent on international student fees, and also are doing far more research than other universities. Another Russell Group head says some members would need to take in “several thousand extra home students” to make up the lost revenue, “which they just can’t do”.

Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Oxford, says the extent to which international students support research is “not widely understood”.

Riordan says that there is “profound pessimism” in the big research universities about how the crisis could play out if the government fails to step in.

Universities UK is lobbying ministers for a multibillion bailout package to stave off financial disaster for many institutions. Among its requests is a plea for government to double research support funding from £2bn to £4bn a year, as well as providing extra assistance for universities relying on high numbers of international students.

One senior academic close to Westminster told the Guardian that any help from the government would almost certainly come with strings attached. One condition might be to push struggling modern universities at the bottom of the sector to shift towards shorter and cheaper vocational courses at pre-degree level. This would be controversial, moving back in the direction of the pre-1992 system, when there were polytechnics and universities.

Hillman, who used to be a government adviser, says: “There are definitely people in Whitehall who think that what should happen at the end of this crisis is a reshaped HE sector with some universities looking more like polys, with less emphasis on degrees.”

However, he says this would be a “dangerous” mistake because, although Britain is lagging behind countries such as Germany on vocational skills training, persuading more people to stay on and gain skills after GCSE should not mean depriving young people of the chance to get a degree.

“Many students in universities are doing vocational training anyway. They aren’t sitting around learning Latin, they are training to be pharmacists or nurses, and this crisis has shown us how important those advanced skills are.”

Before the coronavirus crisis, the Treasury was pushing for a student numbers cap to control spiralling costs of unpaid student loans. Now UUK is calling for a one-year cap, with institutions limited to recruiting no more than 5% more students.

The idea is that this would stop prestigious universities from hoovering up thousands more home students to compensate, with universities lower down the food chain struggling to fill places and facing ruin.

But Ian Dunn, provost at Coventry University, a modern university heavily reliant on international student recruitment, says institutions at the top may still increase their numbers significantly. “When we last had a cap in 2012 it was set at 1% of the last year’s intake. Now we are talking about 5%. If that is based on the optimistic projections that many institutions put forward, it could mean some places could still take 10 or 15% more students than last year.”

He says that if even 10 large universities at the top do this, that would have a big knock-on effect lower down the chain.

Riordan can understand the anxieties lower down the sector, but says: “If the outcome is that there isn’t enough money to support crucial research, then clearly everyone will try to get as many students as they can.”

Prof Anne Carlisle, vice-chancellor of Falmouth University, says that even though her university is not as reliant on international students as other institutions, it is bracing itself for an impact on recruitment. “We are still anticipating a scenario in which fewer UK students decide to enrol because of the uncertainty – though I feel the worst thing a student could do right now is defer, or not complete their degree, and join the unemployment queue.”

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Coronavirus Australia: Deal could hold key to PM’s own kids returning to school

In a dramatic escalation of the fight to get teachers back into the classroom, Prime Minister Scott Morrison will announce a plan to put some “sugar on the table” and allow private schools to bring forward up to 25 per cent of their annual funding.

And the deal could hold the key to his own daughters Abbey and Lily returning to their Sydney private school after the Prime Minister complained he could not send them back until normal classroom teaching resumed.

The Prime Minister has insisted he would send his kids back to school “in a heartbeat’’ this term as long as the school was offering proper classroom teaching.

“I mean, they were sitting in a room looking at a screen, that’s not teaching, that’s childminding,’’ he said. “And schools aren’t for childminding. Schools are for teaching and they’re for learning.”

Sources have told news.com.au that the NSW Government could be plotting a course towards a similar June 1 deadline for a majority of kids back at school, with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirming: “We will see a return of face-to-face teaching from 11 May, and then will consider accelerating a full return to school as soon as possible.”

Education Minister Dan Tehan wrote to private schools on Tuesday night, noting recent claims that some private schools could be forced to close as cash-strapped parents fall behind in fees or switch to the public system. He is proposing to allow private schools to bring forward funding they would otherwise secure in July.

Schools can use the cash to purchase COVID-19 supplies including hand sanitiser and ‘deep clean’ classrooms.

In the letter obtained by news.com.au, Mr Tehan insists that the medical advice is clear: it is safe for students to return to classes.

“There is very limited evidence of transmission between children in the school environment and … on current evidence, schools can remain fully open,’’ he writes.

“The purpose of this payment option is to financially assist … schools in their response to COVID-19, while also encouraging them to re-engage with their students in a classroom-based learning environment.”

To be eligible for the first payment of 12.5 per cent, private schools must comply with the condition of approval imposed on 9 April 2020 to be open for physical campus learning in term 2 and to have a plan to fully re-open classroom teaching by 1 June 2020.

For the second payment of 12.5 per cent, schools need to commit to achieving 50 per cent of their students attending classroom based learning by 1 June 2020.

NSW Catholic Schools CEO Dallas McInerny said for those schools that had offered parents fee relief the offer could prove attractive.  “There are educational and economic reasons why we want kids back in school. I think from week 3 you will start to see more of our schools heading back to full tilt,’’ he said.

“The main constraint is the availability of staff. Some Catholic schools have responded very generously with fee relief for families affected by COVID-19 and for those schools, this could prove attractive.”

Independent Schools Association CEO David Mulford said increasingly parents wanted children to return to classes. “I think there’s a growing sense parents want children back at school now,’’ he said.

“Noone has ever said it’s going to be the best solution, online learning. Some people thrive and others don’t. Some subjects thrive on it and others don’t.”

But the proposal is set to spark a furious backlash from teachers’ unions, who warn the rush back to classes is “risky” and could spark a second wave of COVID-19 cases.

According to the Independent Education Union representing teachers at private schools in Queensland and the Northern Territory, the current case to reopen schools to all students is a high-risk strategy.

Dr Adele Schmidt said current calls for schools to reopen ignored established research regarding the potential for students to infect scores of contacts with a disease in a given day.

“So much is still unknown about this disease and a shift back to ‘business as usual’ in our schools is a fraught and dangerous one – relying on claims that have not been well tested nor peer-reviewed about the infectivity of COVID-19 in students and students themselves as infection agents,” Dr Schmidt said.

“While early data on transmission of COVID-19 in New South Wales schools would appear to confirm that transmission among children is less common than for influenza – we don’t yet have robust data on virulence of the coronavirus in question.”

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