[thefrozenone]

To add a bit of color:

* One of my friends went to live with her parents after her OPT expired. She was supposed to enroll in an M.S. in August, but due to COVID, the embassies in her country were shut down. While her university is hybrid, she chose to stay in her home country to take the online-only courses, which are (fortunately) discounted.

* My sister, who is trying to renew her F-1 and has no other status options, is hoping that her school doesn't go online.

* My mom, an immunocompromised professor, is asking the university for an exemption to their in-person requirement. The university said no. The word around is that a financial analyst explained to administration that if people don't have the "campus experience" and therefore stop paying for housing/dining halls, the university would face insolvency within 2 semesters.

All in all, it seems like a way to pressure universities to open. They cannot reasonably close and lose like 5-10% more of their revenue by losing all international students, especially if they haven't figured out online course delivery to recoup some fees from F-1s.

[krnsll]

The point about your mom (and more broadly older faculty) is important. I hope it works out for her.

Vulnerable faculty will likely be forced to hold "in-person" lectures (ergo worsening their risk profiles) for the universities to create quasi-in-person courses: in that, videos will still be recorded and students probably won't show up but, on paper, it wouldn't be classified as an online course. This would likely be coupled with batch-scheduled exams being the only occasion the students need to show up in person for (or perhaps, those too are obviated via take-home exams?). This is essentially identical to some large enrollment, advanced CS theory courses I've taken.