
Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus - danso
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/08/13/stanford-cancels-plans-to-bring-half-of-undergrads-back-to-campus/
======
jimmar
I'm a professor at a regional university. Not a big name school, but we have
about 5,000 students. We would be bankrupt if we told students we'd only be
offering classes online this fall because students, by an overwhelming
majority, want the in-person experience. We know we would lose enrollment if
we went fully online this fall, and the drop would be significant enough for
the university to declare bankruptcy. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and other
big names have enough reputation and big enough endowments to weather a storm
of a temporary drop in enrollment due to shifting instruction online. Many
universities cannot.

~~~
jmull
Man, this is very tough. I think the problem is (and I very much hope I am
wrong!) that an outbreak will occur and your university will still have the
financial problems. And also some more sick and dead people.

(All from a US perspective)

There's been a crazy notion floating around from the start on this, that we
can _either_ keep our normal activities/economy (jobs, businesses, schools,
etc) _or_ deal with the pandemic.

However, you _can 't_ have anything normal _unless_ the pandemic is under
control. Because until it is, so many kinds of normal activities will be hit
by an outbreak, and then your normal activity will fall apart and stop.

I think we could have had school this fall. But it would have meant much more
serious efforts months ago, building up our fast testing capabilities, a
commitment to ongoing mask, social distancing, and other mechanisms to control
the spread (mandates, really).

~~~
mensetmanusman
Nope, even with 100% lockdown, it still spreads because we aren’t an island
country. It even got to Auckland now, through freight! You can only delay the
inevitable (unless a vaccine is developed in the next few months)

~~~
darkwizard42
Yeah you aren't trying to get it to 0% rate... you are trying to reduce it to
a traceable and manageable amount...

Kind of missing the point of what it means to "get it under control"

~~~
monadic2
0% sounds pretty good to me....

------
tyingq
My son's state university is forcing students to return in person.

I fully expect a notable outbreak in some college to start a wave of media
noise, followed by all the universities sending everyone back home again.

Sucks because students are signing leases, moving crap, buying meal plans,
etc, right now. Aside from the obvious safety issues.

~~~
jnwatson
"Forcing". There's no one forcing anybody to go to college. This would be a
fine time to take a gap year.

~~~
onecommentman
If you are a freshman or sophomore _and_ you have a modicum of self-discipline
and motivation, it can be a great strategy. You know those core courses at
which you want to excel but will suck up most your time? Do you realize how
much easier they will be if you’ve already read the textbook twice over and
listened to an online lecture course or two? Maybe even audited an actual
online course from another university? Maybe found out what the assignments
will be and did most of them. A C in the online audited course at a community
college will lead to an A when you actually take it next year and with half
the effort. If you get through as much of this year’s core course material as
you can stand, keep on going with next year’s courses. "Finish" organic chem
the first half-year? "Do" biochem the second. If you nail half the concepts
before you take the course, you can focus on the other concepts during the
course. Professors start noticing you because you did so well. You bring up
advanced topics in conversations and get invited to work in the lab. You get a
good rep and the benefit of the doubt. Bonus tip: find a professor whose
support you’d like to have and read some of their recent papers or watch their
presentations. Contact them with good questions about their work. Free time is
an amazing ally if you use it right.

No, I’m not an Asian tiger mom...wrong gender, wrong ethnicity.

------
eric4smith
I firmly think there is a sea change going on from standard “college” degrees
to more practical training that will be a mix of apprenticeship and solid
training like air/vac, electricians and online skills, since the vast majority
of jobs don’t really need a college degree.

This has actually begun already at the high school level.

Once again I believe net/net the beer virus will be positive for America in
the long run - even if only on the educational level.

Some will insist that a portion of the population will be disenfranchised and
that is true.

But our education assumptions and priorities have been wrong for so long now
that it has actually become the weakness of an entire generation for the last
10-20 years.

Just think of it! In a few months we are completely re-examining the utility
of taking out a student loan that many cannot pay back in their working
lifetimes.

We’re looking and complaining if colleges will go online or reopen in person
classes - but there is so much more going underneath that conversation.

This is maybe (hopefully) the last generation of the “underwater basket
weaving” so-called useless degrees.

~~~
netcan
Somewhat different take.

The student debt problem is not really related to the college format. The
format existed in earlier decades, exists in other countries and exists in
K-12 education without runaway costs and student debt.

It's mostly a matter of policy. The US' method to expand third level education
to most of the population was by government backed and/or subsidized loans,
without price controls. This caused an inflation in credit, prices, and cost.
This is reversible, but deflation is always painful.

Meanwhile, I disagree that “underwater basket weaving” degrees are the
problem. At least, these tend to be real subjects that students are actually
interested in. The real problem is "Online Marketing" degrees, or most
business degrees excepting accounting and finance.

These business degrees are fake subjects. The material was invented for the
purpose of creating a textbook, course or somesuch. Nothing they teach is
useful. Worryingly, these have the greatest intake... because they're easy,
and sound relevant to getting a job.

I do agree the college format should change completely, go online, etc. I
think efficiency should be a part of that.

But, I also think we should try to keep the level of investment (time, money,
social capital) in education high. Get efficient by doing more, not doing the
same for less.

~~~
LargeWu
I disagree about the college format going completely online. There is so much
about the college experience that is not directly related to earning a degree.
It's a place where most people are exposed to new ideas, new types of people.
It's a place where lasting friendships and relationships are formed. It's a
place of growth that an online experience could never hope to replicate, and
that's the REAL benefit of college.

I know people who went to college, but lived at home with their parents "to
save money". In reality, they didn't need to save the minimal room and board
fees of a state school; they were mostly just cowards. They are the people
that haven't changed at all since high school. They're the people that are
afraid of everything in the world outside their small circle.

I guess that's fine for them, but I would want more for myself, and for my
children.

~~~
Gracana
Is college actually good at that sort of thing, or is it just better than
staying at home? If I spent half my college tuition on networking, social
clubs, conferences, hobby groups, etc, I bet I could do a lot better than I
did at my college campus.

~~~
netcan
Theory and practice.

In theory, you could take your college costs and spend them more wisely
elsewhere. Internet age gurus like Peter Thiel, Seth Godin & others have been
advocating this for 20 years.

Want to learn business? Take $50k out of the $200k price tag of a fancy
college and start a business with a few similarly minded people. Pay a
seasoned business person to advise you. After 4 years, you will know much more
about business. Same for software engineering, etc. Same for side-effects like
networking horizon expansion and everything.

In practice, all that money (whether parental savings to student loans) is
tied up with college. The social capital which allows anyone to spend 4 years
on abstract "betterment" is tied to college. The safety nets keeping you on
course to graduate aren't there.

It's theoretically possible, easy even. In practice, this level of determined
heterodoxy is a 1-in-a-thousand thing. Very unlikely to be chosen and very
unlikely to bee seen through by a 20-year old.

People operate within structure. We are orders of magnitude less independent
than we imagine.

~~~
ffdjjjffjj
I don’t think 20 year olds avoid this path because they lack your insight,
it’s probably more that most people can’t get $200k from their parents to
start a business.

~~~
kelnos
I think they mostly _do_ lack that insight, but it's not their fault. They've
been taught from a very young age what the "right" path to adulthood is. It's
hard to overcome that programming, especially since (US) K-12 schools aren't
exactly about teaching creative, independent thought. People who come away
from K-12 schools with that kind of thing usually arrived at it outside
school.

(Also I think the parent meant that the 20-year-old would take $50k from their
parents, not $200k. But agree that $50k is likely out of reach for most people
in that situation as well.)

------
celnardur
I feel like I can offer a unique perspective on this because I go to Notre
Dame and we are just finishing the first week of classes with everyone back on
campus. It's gone alright so far. All the cases so far have been traced back
to off campus bars or parties. However, I expect it to get worse soon as cases
start spreading on campus. If you want to see how Notre Dame is doing with
cases and testing we have a dashboard here: [https://here.nd.edu/our-
approach/dashboard/](https://here.nd.edu/our-approach/dashboard/)

I really hope we can make this work because, as an electrical engineer, most
of my classes can't be moved online.

~~~
JoshTko
So the only way this would work long term is if students on campus don't go to
bars to parties?

~~~
breck
Or it may work because there’s close to zero chance of dying for college
students, and we have far more immune people now than we did back in the
spring. Sweden’s numbers are looking very interesting right now.

~~~
roywiggins
Not all college students are 20-30, and not all 20-30 year olds have fully
functioning immune systems.

~~~
glofish
so they should protect themselves and do the lessons online.

it makes no sense to limit everyone else

------
grensley
A high school teacher once told us "Only half of what you learn here is in the
classroom" and for college, I think that drops down to about 20%.

------
xwdv
It used to be the case that even if you took out massive student loans to
attend elite schools, at least the in-person experience and networking
opportunities would be worth it.

Now you don’t even get that. You get some bullshit online instruction that is
little more than a glorified MOOC, and when you finally graduate, you have to
compete for remote jobs with people from all across the country, and get
outbid by people with the same skills as you but willing to work for peanuts
because the cost of living in their area is practically negligible.

Meanwhile, you have to keep paying for that massive student loan for most of
your life with cash flow that comes in well below your expectations, wrecking
your ability to save money and making retirement a distant fantasy that is
about as probable as the dreams people have of becoming multi-millionaires.

This should be an outrage, but no one will care. _This_ will be the generation
that takes it on the chin.

~~~
hinkley
> and get outbid by people with the same skills as you but willing to work for
> peanuts

More like:

underbid by people whose skills are _indistinguishable_ from yours.

This is the same problem we've always had with remote work. As was explained
to me, your salary is paid by someone who can't decide what your value is. If
you don't know what something is worth, or in fact _for_ , you might as well
get the cheap one.

------
v7p1Qbt1im
Is there still a possibility to defer? I would‘ve definitely done that back in
April.

~~~
epoch_100
Stanford student here. The answer is _yes_ -- afaik, they've extended the
deferral deadline to August 19th to give people enough time to make a
decision.

------
feralimal
I think we're not demanding technological, remote learning enough yet! We will
have to go through this charade a couple of times more.

IMO, all teaching as we know/knew it is gone. And those controlling the
governance will be happy about that as it removes unnecessary costs.

------
nradov
College students have to be _somewhere_. They don't magically disappear when
schools are closed. So this just means they will be getting infected and
transmitting the virus in other places. How is that better?

~~~
dharmab
Undergrads are usually required to live in dense, on campus housing. Even in
normal times, campus dorms are a hotspot of disease transmission.

~~~
randcraw
Navigating dorms often requires close contact (elevators, dining halls, shared
bathrooms, shared rooms). Social gatherings in near-campus bars, fraternities,
and on campus parties will invite infection, as party events at various summer
hotspots have demonstrated already. Classrooms are probably the _easiest_
venues of campus infection to mitigate.

------
wuxb
More or less, the "top" universities have maintained an ecosystem that
attracts so many people over the course of their live and makes people believe
that's the "road" to a better life. The problem is not about the pandemic,
it's about what's in the mind of average people. People start to have doubts.
It doesn't really matter what's the decision afterwards. People start to think
about the next level things.

------
Overtonwindow
Have any universities stated how they will handle all of the fees that are
tacked on to tuition, such as the parking fees?

~~~
nathanaldensr
I think by this point we can guess what their intent, generally, is: to keep
the money. Schools have had plenty of time to say that tuition will be reduced
if the campuses are closed, but I have yet to find a single major school
announcing this.

~~~
32notp
Princeton's tuition was reduced by 10%.

[https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/07/06/princeton-
announce...](https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/07/06/princeton-announces-
plan-fall-2020-guidelines-undergraduates-returning-campus)

------
akhilcacharya
Meanwhile, my alma mater is still resuming in person.

I wonder what the difference is...

[0]: [https://abc11.com/coronavirus-classes-nc-state-
college/63640...](https://abc11.com/coronavirus-classes-nc-state-
college/6364012/)

~~~
eitally
I lived in Cary for a long time and also attended NCSU for grad school. I've
been following the conversation on related sub-reddits and it seems like the
biggest concern is what students are doing when they're _not_ on campus:
parties, crowded gatherings down Hillsborough St, etc. Community spread will
still happen ... just that campus activities will not be the main driver.

~~~
AlphaWeaver
I'm a current student at NC State, and have been relatively satisfied with the
University's planning and policies on paper...

That said, this is obviously a cash grab, and they're ignoring that students
aren't going to follow their rules when they're off campus (Hillsborough St,
parties, as you said above.)

I've already seen it happening... this isn't going to go well.

------
eitally
My experience in engineering grad school (industrial) was that the most
valuable things I learned were engineering econometrics and statistical
simulation, both of which apply to nearly everything.

------
m0zg
Reduce prices. Expand the number of students. Most STEM work does not require
that you be present on campus. Heck, even "gender studies" degrees do not
require it, if you'd like more of that.

This is once in a decade opportunity to increase the throughput, _and_
increase the quality of their creme de la creme (because with more throughput
more high performing outliers will randomly be caught). And they'll 100%
squander it.

~~~
non-entity
> Most STEM work does not require that you be present on campus

I was under the impression that the reason more STEM degrees weren't online
because you can't effectively replicate science or engineering labs at home
very well. Most engineers (not software engineers) I've talked too said they
wouldn't take an online degree very seriously.

~~~
m0zg
And that's why I said "most" STEM and not just "STEM". I'm sure labs could be
set up to do experimental work. You just don't need the rest of the campus
(and the blood sucking administrators that go with that).

> they wouldn't take an online degree very seriously

They would, if that was the only degree available. And I'm sure Stanford, of
all places, can do it as well as anybody.

------
kingkawn
The self-righteous smugness on display in this thread about what is valuable
to learn and what isn’t is mind boggling. Apparently humility and curiosity
about things you don’t know aren’t on the stem curriculum y’all took

~~~
chrisjarvis
Also its much easier to say every should go to school online when the person
saying it most likely already got to go to college for real.

~~~
hinkley
I am currently trying to convince a friend with teenagers that the 'going
away' part of 'going away to college' is part of the entire point.

Keeping your kid in town is just infantilizing them. And god knows we have
enough enfants terribles in the world, and especially in tech.

She's going to end up with a 28 year old son still living at home playing
video games all day, while his degree rots away, wondering what went wrong.
Maybe I should start logging dates and conversations. "Here it is, July 15th,
2019..."

~~~
ausbah
sorry, but this is wildly out of touch. going to a local university while
living at home is not infantilizing anyone. it is a very financially smart and
sensible plan that meets the needs for many people's goals in life. balancing
classes, extracurriculars, a job, and other college activities that don't
depend on your living situation is more than enough of sampling what
"adulting" is like

not everyone needs to, or can, move across the country for school living in
their own place right out of high school

~~~
hinkley
There's a huge financial difference between going to school at a better school
in-state than going out of state. I went to school an hour from home.

And if we're going to talk about out of touch, I'm not sure where you're from
where you think everyone who goes to school has a university in the same town
as them, let alone with the degree program they want to attend. Changing your
degree to one that's 'good enough' so you can stay in town? That's setting
yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment.

As far as I've heard, parking on campus at my alma mater is even worse than
when I attended, so being 10 minutes off campus is more conceptual than
factual. It's probably true that Uber is far cheaper than a dorm, even if you
averaged 3 rides a day, especially these days, but there are loads of semi-
spontaneous interactions that become stilted when you have to worry about
getting back and forth across town. It's not doing your own laundry, it's the
people you meet while doing your laundry.

~~~
milkytron
> Changing your degree to one that's 'good enough' so you can stay in town?
> That's setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment.

This is exactly what I did.

I went to a good school and was in a great program for getting my Software
Engineering degree. But it was expensive, student life seemed detached from
reality, and I was piling on debt. I decided to leave and live with my parents
while attending a commuter school and getting what many would consider a
lesser degree while working 2-3 jobs at a time. Many people (including myself
at times) thought I was heading down the wrong road, and had questioned my
decisions.

I ended up with very little debt, had multiple job offers by my junior year,
and now I'm living a life I could only dream of. I don't mean to toot my horn
or whatever, I just think that what you said isn't always the case. I have no
regrets for getting a 'good enough' degree, and think it was one of the best
decisions of my life for various reasons.

------
barbecue_sauce
I was always under the impression that the word "frosh" was weird slang for
freshmen, not a word considered just as proper for written communication.

~~~
fortran77
They say "frosh" now because "freshmen" is gender-specific. Many schools do
this.

~~~
tantalor
_University administrators have now begun the process of replacing the terms
“freshman” and “upperclassman” with the gender-neutral terms “first year” and
“upper-level students” in official campus publications... “It’s really for
public, formal correspondence and formal publications … we’re not trying to
tell people what language to use in their everyday casual conversations,” Chun
said. “We’re not trying to be language police.”_

[https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/09/15/yale-formalizes-
fr...](https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/09/15/yale-formalizes-freshman-to-
first-year-change/)

------
known
No vaccine = No school

------
anonunivgrad
Let the college kids get sick. They are extremely unlikely to have any serious
effects from covid. At least on a college campus they won’t infect older
family members. Herd immunity on campus would be reached very quickly. The few
with serious preexisting conditions can stay home until that happens.

The level of fear is frankly ridiculous. People get sick and people die. One
day, we will all die. That is the human condition. Life must go on. This is
not the Black Death. A 1% fatality rate, mostly of people already on the cusp
of death, is not a reason to bring society to a halt, to lock children inside
for months.

~~~
acdha
They are relatively unlikely to _die_ from COVID-19 (and please do not repeat
the false claim that these are only “people already on the cusp of death” -
the average victim is losing at least a decade of life based on actuarial
data) but we know that there are a much greater percentage of people who will
experience significant health problems, potentially with life-long impacts.

Similarly, not everyone on or near campus is a health 19 year old and not
every college student can afford to live in their own apartment or with a few
healthy roommates. Universities have large numbers of staff of all ages, and
no college town functions without a similar all-ages mix of people living near
those students. The entire reason why there's so much pressure to re-open is
because the lack of federal support means that city and state governments (at
least 30 of the states have recent laws preventing them from running a budget
deficit during a crisis) are desperate for the revenue generated by those
students, and that is another way of saying that lots of people are literally
banking on having those students be in contact with a fair chunk of the local
economy.

~~~
nimaco
I always hear "much greater percentage" type language when referring to long-
term effects of COVID-19. Is there an actual number associated with this? Or
is it more so guesswork

~~~
acdha
We know that there are people who take a long time to recover. This is pretty
widely reported but we don’t know how long that will end up taking or what
permanent impacts there are since it’s a new disease and treatment options are
being rapidly pursued.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-
dama...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-
covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists)

[https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-
symp...](https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-symptoms-
complications-of-covid-19/)

[https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/12/after-covid19-mental-
neu...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/12/after-covid19-mental-neurological-
effects-smolder/)

There are studies looking at permanent changes to various bodily systems - see
for example, this one finding cardiac differences in recovered patients:

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916)

There are similar concerns for liver damage, reduced lung capacity, and
neurological effects.

Obviously it’s too soon to have high precision numbers for this or level of
impact on the rest of someone’s life but it definitely means that the deniers’
favorite framing of the outcomes as 99% ok, 1% fatal is leaving out a lot for
the sake of political correctness.

~~~
timr
_" We know that there are people who take a long time to recover."_

There are people who take a long time to recover from rhinovirus. The question
is, _at what rate?_ You'll note that this is _not_ covered in the articles you
have linked.

We simply don't have the data -- what we have is a small number of anecdotes,
and a bunch of news organizations who are willing to write speculative stories
before we know anything. But you could write the same kinds of speculative
stories about _any_ illness, if you chose to look.

That JAMA article has serious methodological flaws, by the way: their "Covid"
cohort has twice the number of smokers as their "risk-factor matched" group,
almost twice as many men, more people with COPD, high cholesterol, diabetes
and hypertension...and they report their results in terms of _absolute numbers
of defects observed_. The reported differences between those groups is smaller
in magnitude than the number of smokers. It's frankly embarrassing that JAMA
chose to publish the study.

~~~
acdha
This is a new disease which is still early in the research cycle but I find it
somewhat puzzling that in such a climate you're expecting a higher burden of
proof for people urging caution than the reverse, especially given that the
medical community and researchers are generally urging caution.

For example, I linked to this:
[https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-
symp...](https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-symptoms-
complications-of-covid-19/)

> "I think it's an argument for why we take this disease so seriously," says
> Dr. Poland. "People who are thinking, especially young people: '(It's a)
> mild disease, you know. I might not even have any symptoms, and I'm over
> it.' Whoa. The data is suggesting otherwise. There's evidence of myocardial
> damage, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, decreased ejection fractions, pulmonary
> scarring and strokes.

I'd tend to think that a doctor at the Mayo Clinic who has relevant education,
experience, and is actively working in the response has better instincts for
whether we should be taking this seriously.

~~~
timr
_" I find it somewhat puzzling that in such a climate you're expecting a
higher burden of proof for people urging caution than the reverse, especially
given that the medical community and researchers are generally urging
caution."_

I have the same standard that I apply everywhere: the burden of proof is on
the person making the extraordinary claims. I don't care if that person is a
hypochondriac telling me about secret herbal cures for cancer, or medical
doctors who haven't done their statistics correctly. When I can look at the
data myself and see that they haven't done their math right, I disregard their
opinions.

Having spent my fair share of time "in the medical community", I'm here to
tell you that there are _plenty_ of doctors and nurses and professors out
there who are more than willing to give a reporter a salacious quote just to
get their name in the press or their paper in a better journal. Doctors are
humans too: they rush to judgment, fall victim to bias, and get dazzled by the
idea of seeing their name in print.

So far we have a few (mostly bad) papers describing a small number of the most
serious cases, a few (really bad) papers that have gone on statistical fishing
expeditions, and an absolutely credulous news media, willing to amplify any
speculative claim for clicks. So no, I don't cede my critical thinking skills
to an authority figure, just because that figure is in a lab coat.

------
halfFact
Is there a rational reason behind this? The hyper scary emotional reaction is
to close everything down, but given the at risk population is well understood-
is this a money grab?(less brick and mortar costs)

The 70 year old professors and obese 50 year old professors clearly are able
to online teach, why make everyone lose?

Heck if students went to college we'd get closer to herd immunity.

