| I'm a former professor (tenured) and have been watching from the sidelines. I've been discussing this all with my friends still in university faculty positions. I agree with you 100% but think the prospects of returning are not nearly as dire as some are making it out to be. I also think it depends a lot on the institution. A lot of schools are going to reopen in the fall. By then there will be incredibly extensive testing and lockdowns will be mostly gone by a couple of months at least. If the quarantines continue the economic losses will boil over and there will be riots. There will be an increase in cases in the summer and then it will subside. Many schools won't have any choice but to reopen. When they do, they'll probably offer extensive testing to incoming students as a service, probably some sort of current-status test as well as antibody test, as a courtesy and safety matter. They'll also make it incredibly easy to get for students who return, and will probably have a lot of policies in place to allow students on campus, and probably will have some kind of hybrid system in place where smaller seminars and classes will meet normally, but other things will kind of be pushed to a combination of online classes and smaller in-person classes. Large lectures will be gone for year or so, which probably should have been the case anyway. Students will be on campus again, but will be offered a lot of health services and courses won't be quite the same. Sports might be on hold in the fall. College age students are probably the lowest risk of COVID complications of any age group, which will ease concerns about pandemics. The bottom line is it doesn't matter what 20-year professors say. The students don't have anything else to do, and for a lot of them, they're not spending their own money anyway, or it's money that's all in the future in the form of debt. So rather than sitting at home, with their parents they tried to escape, they'll return. Open the doors and they will come. Besides this, the feds will throw money at the universities like there's no tomorrow as a way of stimulating whatever they can. It's easy to politically justify. There won't be many strings attach to bring needed reforms (for example, eliminating indirect funds on grants) as now is not the time to ratchet down the screws. As a result the inexorable march toward nationalized higher education will continue even more among R1 institutions. Smaller schools might struggle if they don't have enough money, and public unis being screwed by states or municipalities already (Arizona, as an example) will be in crisis. But many others will grumble and panic and then be fine. I wish like hell this crisis would instigate a lot of changes to the bullshit that is higher ed at the moment, but it will not. And I disagree with Prof. Klein in her advice, at least as blanket advice that applies to everyone: students should consider their unique situation, as every case will be different in these times. |