Like many higher education officials, Melissa Taverner, the provost at Lyon College, was hoping students could return to the school’s Batesville, Ark. campus this fall.
Lyon is among the roughly 14% of colleges — or more — planning for a remote semester this fall, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. In the late spring, about 68% of colleges that had announced their plans for the fall said they would offer in-person instruction, according to the Chronicle’s tracker at the time. Now, just 48% say they will be fully in person.
“The situation is deteriorating, which is certainly cause to change plans,” said Bansal, who is also an infectious-disease researcher. A simulation created by a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an economics professor at Swarthmore College modeled the impact of colleges’ interventions on the spread of the virus.
Officials at Paul Quinn College, a historically black college in Dallas, Texas, came to a similar conclusion. “I just don’t know very many people who have success managing the hourly activities and engagement of 18- to 22-year olds,” said Michael Sorrell, the college’s president. Sorrell has expressed concerns since May about bringing students back to college campuses.
“Universities are preparing for some level of acceptable losses,” she said. “If they’re not aiming to prevent transmission and get ahead of the outbreak then there’s no other way around the idea that there will be an outbreak and that there will be severe outcomes in that population.”