![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI am still a little unclear on WHY this is when we decide what school is like in the fall, but all the omens are pointing to this is the week. The California state university system said, Nope, to in person in the fall. Harvard said, yeah, no, we are not going to be in person. Niece (college) and nephew (high school) are both seniors and they are super bummed right now about the fall prospect of More Remote.
Anyway. I was a little startled by the Paxson piece advocating for in person (she runs Brown! RI was literally stopping people at the border!) schooling in the fall. That was just over a week ago. And she is not the only one to float a trial balloon on the topic. They went over like, well, not like the lighter than air kind, that is for sure.
I decided to poke around a little bit to better understand Why This Week (brace yourself for serious buzzkill: I have vacations planned in June, August, November and December. I do not expect to go on any of them, except maybe a driving trip to LBI in August — and I have not scheduled anything at all for 2021, even tho it is already freaking May and I usually plan a full year in advance. I basically think nothing happens “normally” until the vaccine is available, thus all my surprises will be Awesome. Anyway, having given up on planning for The Duration, I am completely mystified by the various stages of giving up on things that everyone else is going through), which lead me to Inside Higher Ed.
They consider numerous scenarios (I will come back to that in a bit), but here is the last, the fully remote one.
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/learning-innovation/fall-scenario-15-fully-remote
Check out this quote:
“Should infections and hospitalizations spike in the months or weeks leading up to the start of the semester beyond what local ICUs can handle, schools may have no option but to continue with remote learning.”
That is not quoting orange guy. That is not attacking some GOP office holder for being Awful. Nope. That is straight up part of the argument for remote learning. Honestly, NOT what I would want to be caught saying in my out loud voice. How many parents and students want to attend college, thinking, gosh, if the local ICU fills up, I may have to change my plans? That would be not very many. Honestly? I would expect the faculty to sue the university for endangering them.
This is interesting, but largely academically (ha ha ha yeah, whatever) — it is not practical to contemplate if people at Inside Higher Ed cannot grasp it conceptually. I mean, we may find ourselves doing this in the decades to come (wow, would that be awesome or what?!?). But not soon.
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/05/13/one-option-delivering-instruction-if-campuses-open-fall-hyflex
“Our bloggers Josh Kim and Eddie Maloney have laid out 15 possible scenarios for campuses this fall, including delays and such, but I'm going to focus on three:
Campuses fully open to students with few restrictions (highly unlikely);
Campuses fully virtual (possible, but for many places undesirable); or
Campuses open with significant physical distancing restrictions in place, or with meaningful numbers of students not physically on campus.”
This is a really nice simplification, that creates total clarity.
(1) Campuses fully open to students with few restrictions <— That is NOT possible until we have a vaccine. Because behaviorally, we will _never_ get to herd immunity and because the nature of the virus (airborne transmission while asymptomatic) means containment is not possible (<— I am prepared to commit to this, because even if you can stamp it out, you then have to not let anyone in from outside, which is Not Going to Happen in the USA, anyway).
So. Option 1 is impossible until we have a vaccine. Which will not happen in time for fall semester.
(3) Campuses open with significant physical distancing restrictions in place, or with meaningful numbers of students not physically on campus. <—— Super hard. It is hard to imagine. It is hard to plan. It is hard to implement.
If you have three choices, and one is super hard, and one is impossible, the remaining one is going to be the choice, as long as it is not super hard and/or impossible. Since that is the one they already did on a crash basis, we know it is do-able. Therefore, that is what we are doing.
Revisiting the super hard option is worth doing! I believe the california state system nursing programs, for example, will be doing at least some in person education, and I think some of the lab stuff will be as well for science programs. You can carve out the parts that absolutely have to be done in person, and continue those, in the existing facilities, which are now nice and empty so you can socially distance. But the idea that we would somehow have the general population of students go through some weird dance on campus of social distancing just to, I dunno, support fierce intellectual debate that is Not the Same on Zoom (LOL). The idea that we would balance that versus how full the RI ICUs are. Honestly. That is a weird set of tradeoffs ya got going on. I mean, I have participated in fierce intellectual debate in person, and I have participated in fierce intellectual debate online, and I have done it in Zoom and Have You Tried Green Eggs and Ham, wait, what, where was I? Fierce intellectual debate is fucking overrated. The people who want to engage in it will not have any trouble finding places to engage in it just because college went online. The people who dislike it will finally be able to get some sleep at night.
I have a complicated theory about Why This Week that involves decision dates and when deposits are due, and parents basically deciding that they would not pay the deposit if it committed them to sending their kid into danger, and schools with brands that attract international students realizing that travel restrictions will make it impossible to collect that sweet, sweet full cash payment from their international students, and schools with brands, but whose potential enrollees ditched them in favor of someone further up the food chain suddenly having space for them this fall . . . It is complicated. Basically, no one is happy, but NO ONE is willing to pay to commit to send their kid off in the fall. The fear was that no one would pay for a year of remote schooling, but that turned out to be the smaller problem in the end.
Who knew? But it turns out this is a cleanest dirty shirt situation.
Anyway. I was a little startled by the Paxson piece advocating for in person (she runs Brown! RI was literally stopping people at the border!) schooling in the fall. That was just over a week ago. And she is not the only one to float a trial balloon on the topic. They went over like, well, not like the lighter than air kind, that is for sure.
I decided to poke around a little bit to better understand Why This Week (brace yourself for serious buzzkill: I have vacations planned in June, August, November and December. I do not expect to go on any of them, except maybe a driving trip to LBI in August — and I have not scheduled anything at all for 2021, even tho it is already freaking May and I usually plan a full year in advance. I basically think nothing happens “normally” until the vaccine is available, thus all my surprises will be Awesome. Anyway, having given up on planning for The Duration, I am completely mystified by the various stages of giving up on things that everyone else is going through), which lead me to Inside Higher Ed.
They consider numerous scenarios (I will come back to that in a bit), but here is the last, the fully remote one.
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/learning-innovation/fall-scenario-15-fully-remote
Check out this quote:
“Should infections and hospitalizations spike in the months or weeks leading up to the start of the semester beyond what local ICUs can handle, schools may have no option but to continue with remote learning.”
That is not quoting orange guy. That is not attacking some GOP office holder for being Awful. Nope. That is straight up part of the argument for remote learning. Honestly, NOT what I would want to be caught saying in my out loud voice. How many parents and students want to attend college, thinking, gosh, if the local ICU fills up, I may have to change my plans? That would be not very many. Honestly? I would expect the faculty to sue the university for endangering them.
This is interesting, but largely academically (ha ha ha yeah, whatever) — it is not practical to contemplate if people at Inside Higher Ed cannot grasp it conceptually. I mean, we may find ourselves doing this in the decades to come (wow, would that be awesome or what?!?). But not soon.
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/05/13/one-option-delivering-instruction-if-campuses-open-fall-hyflex
“Our bloggers Josh Kim and Eddie Maloney have laid out 15 possible scenarios for campuses this fall, including delays and such, but I'm going to focus on three:
Campuses fully open to students with few restrictions (highly unlikely);
Campuses fully virtual (possible, but for many places undesirable); or
Campuses open with significant physical distancing restrictions in place, or with meaningful numbers of students not physically on campus.”
This is a really nice simplification, that creates total clarity.
(1) Campuses fully open to students with few restrictions <— That is NOT possible until we have a vaccine. Because behaviorally, we will _never_ get to herd immunity and because the nature of the virus (airborne transmission while asymptomatic) means containment is not possible (<— I am prepared to commit to this, because even if you can stamp it out, you then have to not let anyone in from outside, which is Not Going to Happen in the USA, anyway).
So. Option 1 is impossible until we have a vaccine. Which will not happen in time for fall semester.
(3) Campuses open with significant physical distancing restrictions in place, or with meaningful numbers of students not physically on campus. <—— Super hard. It is hard to imagine. It is hard to plan. It is hard to implement.
If you have three choices, and one is super hard, and one is impossible, the remaining one is going to be the choice, as long as it is not super hard and/or impossible. Since that is the one they already did on a crash basis, we know it is do-able. Therefore, that is what we are doing.
Revisiting the super hard option is worth doing! I believe the california state system nursing programs, for example, will be doing at least some in person education, and I think some of the lab stuff will be as well for science programs. You can carve out the parts that absolutely have to be done in person, and continue those, in the existing facilities, which are now nice and empty so you can socially distance. But the idea that we would somehow have the general population of students go through some weird dance on campus of social distancing just to, I dunno, support fierce intellectual debate that is Not the Same on Zoom (LOL). The idea that we would balance that versus how full the RI ICUs are. Honestly. That is a weird set of tradeoffs ya got going on. I mean, I have participated in fierce intellectual debate in person, and I have participated in fierce intellectual debate online, and I have done it in Zoom and Have You Tried Green Eggs and Ham, wait, what, where was I? Fierce intellectual debate is fucking overrated. The people who want to engage in it will not have any trouble finding places to engage in it just because college went online. The people who dislike it will finally be able to get some sleep at night.
I have a complicated theory about Why This Week that involves decision dates and when deposits are due, and parents basically deciding that they would not pay the deposit if it committed them to sending their kid into danger, and schools with brands that attract international students realizing that travel restrictions will make it impossible to collect that sweet, sweet full cash payment from their international students, and schools with brands, but whose potential enrollees ditched them in favor of someone further up the food chain suddenly having space for them this fall . . . It is complicated. Basically, no one is happy, but NO ONE is willing to pay to commit to send their kid off in the fall. The fear was that no one would pay for a year of remote schooling, but that turned out to be the smaller problem in the end.
Who knew? But it turns out this is a cleanest dirty shirt situation.