
The nightmare that colleges face this fall - jelliclesfarm
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/will-college-campuses-reopen/611794/
======
Merrill
The spread of Covid-19 appears to be heavily dependent on individuals who are
"super-spreaders" and on "super-spreading events". For example, the guy who
was involved in horse-racing at Yonkers, the choir practice in Washington, the
conference at Boston.

So a simple model where each case results in R new infections doesn't capture
this at all. Instead, networks of infection appear to be like other social
networks where some nodes are much more highly connected than other nodes.

The task that colleges face is to ensure that students with large social
networks don't infect their contacts and to ensure that large events conducive
to infection don't happen. Otherwise, no amount of wiping doorknobs and
fogging classrooms with disinfectant will be effective.

~~~
hinoki
Relevant exploration of these ideas: [https://www.smbc-
comics.com/comic/social](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/social)

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ryeguy_24
Maybe this is a perfect opportunity to cut costs and make college more
affordable in the process. Higher education is getting quite expensive and I
believe these costs should be rationalized. If you take the average cost of
some higher end schools (say 150k) and look at the opportunity cost of
investing that in the stock market for 40 years. That’s about 15x return (7%
for 40 years). Thats $2.25M at retirement. Probably better than most end up
with, no?

~~~
mikekchar
Kind of apples to oranges. Take the difference in salary between a college
graduate and a high school graduate over those 40 years. Factor in inflation.
Invest _that_ at a 7% return. I'm sure it will easily dwarf $2.25M.

Why don't people have millions invested by the time they retire? Because no
matter how much money people make (up to a certain point, depending on the
person), they spend it. If you give the average high school graduate $150K and
tell them to invest it for 40 years, I pretty much guarantee that it will be
gone long before the 40 years are up.

To be fair, I don't have millions invested and I'm scarily close to
retirement. So I'm not trying to be critical of others ;-)

~~~
WalterBright
I know people who retired as millionaires on a lower middle class salary doing
just that - living below their means, and regularly investing the difference.

It does work.

But if you spent all your income, you'll never have money.

~~~
t-writescode
I suspect all you can argue nowadays is that it _did_ work. With housing costs
increasing faster than inflation, forcing people to spend money on rent
instead, which has no investment potential, I don't think it still works.

~~~
goldenchrome
Your own house isn't an investment because you always need to live somewhere.
Investments are things you can spend like index funds and bonds.

~~~
zamfi
> Your own house isn't an investment because you always need to live somewhere

Ehhh, yes and no. Plenty of people who bought nice-ish houses in the Bay Area
in the '70s and '80s sold them in 2014-2018 and retired outside the bay with a
nice extra pile of cash.

You need housing, but you don't need a crazy expensive house in a crazy
expensive area.

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kenneth
I get why this is bad for universities. For students though, the solution
seems simple: take a gap year if you're just about to start, or a semester off
if you're already in school. Gap years are tremendously valuable life
experiences that for some reason Americans don't like, but that is really
popular among Europeans. The value of university is primarily in the social
bonds it forms and life experiences it provides (and the piece of paper you
get at the end, for some). The education part itself is rarely applicable to
real life anyways. What's the point of overpaying to slave over online classes
and a compromised experience? Just wait it out…

~~~
ausbah
and do what for 4-6 months? get a job in a labor market that has suddenly gone
belly up? travel abroad to places that won't take you?

~~~
dsabanin
Play video games, watch Netflix, intermixed with PornHub, become obese,
depressed, and addicted to some substance, even if purely out of boredom.

Then, after all this, forget why you even wanted to go to college.

Sounds like a plan.

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threatofrain
Am I wrong to say that K-8 education faces a similar sort of problem, except
that college students likely live with other college students, whereas kids
are far more likely to live with family with older folk?

Why should colleges be expected to be safer than K-8? Why must they resort to
impromptu web solutions?

Also, if there's a consensus on risk and response, shouldn't that be
coordinated at a central level instead of institutions each making their own
calls?

~~~
ptero
At least in many (most) schools in the US K-8 education is pretty worthless.
As a parent I would be just fine with my kids skipping a grade (uhm, zoom-ing
through one, that is).

College though is a real education, and I want it to be face to face. I (and
them) accept the risk, based on what is known today. My 2c.

~~~
jjcon
I think it’s easy to forget how hard learning is after you have already
mastered something.

You’d be surprised all the things you learn k-8.

If you ask a current PhD student how hard things are and then wait 10 years
and ask how hard their PhD was you will get totally different answers.

~~~
barry-cotter
K-8 is primary school, right? Its value is mostly not in education. If it was
it would look very different. Mastery based learning would be the norm, not
unknown. Spaced repetition would be incorporated everywhere so what was taught
was retained. There would be no social advancement.

The school system is enormously wasteful of time. It takes about 40 hours to
teach a nine year old to read English and about the same time to cover the
primary school Math curriculum with a 12 year old.

If we took Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development seriously we wouldn’t spend
_so much time_ teaching children things they’ll pick up tens of times faster
in three years. I don’t know what primary school would look like if we cared
about children learning but it wouldn’t look much like the current system.

~~~
otoburb
I am just a parent of two K-8 children so not entirely up to speed on the
latest theory and practice of ZPD. But when I first read about this before my
first was born I understood ZPD to be "empathetic tutoring" which seems
increasingly difficult to execute correctly when student:teacher ratios exceed
4:1, and ideally 1-1 for maximum benefit.

ZPD works, but nobody has been able to implement this at-scale, let alone in
the K-8 public school system.

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monk_e_boy
The teaching facility that I work, just a few days before the lock down it was
business as usual. We all knew that we were supposed to distance, but how? The
cafe was chock full of students, the libraries full to bursting. All lectures
full. Tiny corridoors, limited parking, 20 busses full of students....

And we ALL knew it was crazy.

We can't magic up new buildings, or new classrooms or lecture halls. We
lecture 20+ students in rooms that seat .... wait for it .... 20(ish)
students. I have no idea how to social distance in there.

Half students in? How do I teach half a class, then the other half? Do they
magic up a second Monday for me to teach in? And half students, they are still
less than 2m apart.

Outside? Teaching IT and coding? Huh?

Exams?

Busses?

The car park?

Older / elderly lecturers - especially those in management. What do with they
then?

A fair few of our students are nurses so they know the risks and are happy to
inform everyone.

I think we'll open and just hope for the best. Some people are going to get
sick and there's not much we can do to avoid it. Unless we stop education for
a year.

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ulucs
I am throughly horrified at the difference between the approaches of American
and European schools. Most European schools have already moved fall semester
online while American schools are scrambling to preserve their tuitions.

I mean, just compare their _priorities_.

~~~
downerending
Many American schools have little choice. If they lose a substantial fraction
of their students (especially rich international students) for a year, they
may very well have to close, or at least decimate their programs.

~~~
itsspring
Let it be. Lay off admins, restructure their loans, Stop building new
buildings, lower costs, and use their endowments to fund the difference. And
get rid of some programs

~~~
downerending
That'd be okay with me. The reality is, though, that rich donors call the
shots. Nothing happens without their say-so.

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bsder
> revenue-generating sports.

I always laugh when I see this.

If you shut down all sports, all but something like the 5 top sports
universities (and I think I'm being generous--if I remember correctly only UT-
Austin is _demonstrably_ profitable) would see a net profit--sometimes
significantly so since the coaches are often some of the highest paid
employees.

~~~
csa
I think your comment is directionally correct, but...

1\. This article from 2015 ([http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-
center/news/athlet...](http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-
center/news/athletics-departments-make-more-they-spend-still-minority)) puts
it at 24. That sounds closer to correct to me.

2\. There are substantial knock-on effects for university donations during big
years that are not counted in the profit or loss of an athletic department.
These benefits are spread wide throughout the NCAA. Winning a championship
(even league rather than NCAA), beating a rival, or just making the NCAA
tourney in basketball can be a boost.

3\. Sustained excellence can change the face of a university in ways that
money cannot. The best recent example is the change of the student body at
Alabama during Saban’s tenure.

Just some ideas that go beyond sports revenue dollars.

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Simulacra
Could this bring reform to university administration, pay, tenure, and the
general bloat that most universities have to carry?

~~~
jonahbenton
No, because the admin is the "management" and it will squeeze everyone else-
students, profs, staff- before itself. Hence eg schools ceasing contributions
to faculty retirement plans, and no consequences for management creating a
model that is so incredibly revenue sensitive.

~~~
ImaCake
> because the admin is the "management" and it will squeeze everyone else

I participate in the research side of universities in various ways and this is
exactly how it happens. The bureaucracy is absolutely the enemy when trying to
get research done or preventing some arsehole in management from removing a
useful service.

I am currently trying to get hired as a research assistant (basically a vague
title covering people who do research as part of a lab but without the
ambitions of an academic) and lab heads will routinely try to source talent in
a way that avoids the official university hiring policy. They do this because
the official way is slow, stupid, and gets administration people involved who
just get in the way. Not only that, they deal with plenty of university
administration already, and they think it is mostly useless or needlessly
complicated.

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brentis
Schools are screwed, this is just the perfect storm. Go spend $35yr on a
middling state school or top 10 online program for $20k. Pretty sure the
cachet of top 10 schools will make it an easy decision. They have tons of
brand potential to unleash.

~~~
courtf
Yep. Thousands of schools are going to close down in the next decade unless
they get a bailout. The elite schools will be just fine, this will all happen
at 2nd and 3rd rate schools. No one is paying those prices for a severely
reduced experience unless the brand is incredibly strong.

~~~
itsspring
Most students I’ve met have no idea how their loans work or what APR is, so
I’m sure they’ll keep paying. It’s sad but true

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sys_64738
People who take courses which are online will be entering the workforce with a
devalued degree. Employers already frown when presented with online courses
but now the whole period will be like so. This whole period of online
education is troubling as kids educated during this period will be
disadvantaged academically and socially.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
If everyone in a 2 year period is disadvantaged in the same way, that
disadvantage becomes the new normal.

~~~
sys_64738
Only for those directly exposed to it. Others not so much.

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esotericn
Thinking back to my university experience - if you told me that I was going to
be doing it in front of a screen, I'd have taken a gap year.

If I'd already paid and you refused to refund me, I'd use that gap year to
travel to campus, administrators' homes, the lot, and let everyone know that
you've stolen enormous amounts of money from hundreds of thousands.

Teenage me has a hell of a lot of energy, health, and time on their hands.

It's so ridiculous an idea as to be absurd. Do you want social breakdown? This
is how you get mass riots.

Reading what's facing the US at the moment (I'm British) I honestly worry
about whether there will be some sort of military standoff if the government
doesn't step up _now_ and put together a coherent plan for the nation.

There are tens of millions unemployed, graduates are entering an economy
that's essentially been deleted, and new students are having the knife twisted
in them before they've even started.

People need _hope_. I'm angry on behalf of you guys.

~~~
seph-reed
War has been highly likely imminent since Crimea, but only overwhelmingly so
(imo) since Hong Kong. I strongly feel there will be war. China and Russia
both are invading other countries already. The US is splitting at the seams
(likely with some bot help from the two former groups).

Ever since Hong Kong, I've been extra attentive and appreciative of the fact
that this may be as close to peace as we will ever see the world again.

This. Right now. This may be as close to peace as we will ever see again.

Never-the-less, I have the utmost hope for project Earth, with or without
humans.

~~~
jjcon
Eh I doubt it - I think people are just anxious cause we’re all cooped up but
give it a year or two and people will settle back down. Coronavirus seems to
have brought out the worst of the media and the internet but the real world
isn’t so different than it was.

~~~
meddlepal
Here's the thing... it really doesn't take much to set off a tinder box.
Tensions are high, people are anxious, and there is a lot of pent up unrest.
We are definitely at a potential flash point.

So yea, I sort of agree, but I definitely also think the danger is higher than
it seems.

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hn_throwaway_99
This week I went to a gym that just recently opened up. While attendance was
way down (I'd say ~1/3 of usual) there were still a good amount of people
there, and I was the _only_ person, besides staff, wearing a mask.

At this point I see another explosion of coronavirus cases as just math. I
mean, it's like stamping out most of a fire so you're left with only a few
burning embers, so you say "Great, time to reopen, lets dump these giant bags
of dry leaves onto these embers."

Yes, many (most?) people are still staying home where I live, but for many
places that have opened up I see zero change in behavior - there were some
viral videos last weekend of packed bars and events. I contrast that with
other places (like Germany) that actually appear to have a plan in place of
how they will be able to open up safely. AFAICT our plan in the US appears to
be "thoughts and prayers".

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I would say I've almost felt a degree of peer pressure to not stay home after
the stay at home order lifts here. Even though I really am not comfortable
with the measures everyone has taken here.

I agree I think a second wave is imminent.

~~~
brewdad
My wife and I planned to ride the local rails-to-trail bike path today. We
pulled up to the main lot and even the overflow parking was full. Tried the
entry point 5 miles up trail and it was just as packed. At that point, we
decided to head home.

Technically, reopening phase 1 doesn't begin until Monday here.

~~~
nradov
The lockdown orders imposed on many beaches and parks were totally
counterproductive because people ended up more concentrated in the few
recreational areas that remained open. At least they're getting some exercise.

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blakesterz
“If I’m a leader,” McClure told me, “I better be prepared to have a really
good explanation for why it is that I brought people back to
campus—understanding the risks—if somebody falls ill and dies.”

I feel like that needs to be WHEN not IF. It's not an easy decision and I'm
glad I'm not in any position to make it. But certainly, it's when, not if.

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ipython
I’ve been waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop on college tuition for
more than a decade now. I still have another ten years until I’m in the thick
of it again myself.

Unfortunately history so far has shown that tuition is surprisingly immune to
what I would consider severe shocks to the rest of the economy. So I watch in
shock as the price continues to skyrocket...

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dang
A related thread from earlier today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349713)

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knbrlo
Everyone already knows the answer which is that the most adaptable schools
will generate new revenue streams offering more online degrees. It’s stupid to
assume that all students are willing to take the risk to show up in person
when there isn’t even a vaccine. Most schools are scared about the money
they’re going to lose yet they’re forgetting how much they could make if they
just decided to be more adaptable and flexible.

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marcoperaza
The chance of a college kid dying from coronavirus is exceedingly small. If
they aren't sick in some special way (severe diabetes, HIV), then why are we
even worried? Isn't this just an easy way to let the virus pass through a huge
chunk of the population while they are away from their older, more vulnerable
family members?

~~~
callalex
This is a USA-specific problem, but a lot of students are too poor to have
health insurance. Getting covid for these young people would ruin their life
permanently at a very young age.

~~~
tjohns
Is this common for universities across the US?

The university I went to (USC) required that all students had to either submit
proof of insurance or pay additional fees as part of their tuition to join the
university's health plan. Not having health insurance was not an option if you
wanted to enroll.

(This was about 15 years ago, though I just checked and they still have this
policy.)

