Covid-19 Response: Evidence of How Higher Ed Can Be Completely Restructured?

[marshwiggle]

I can't remember  the source, but the statistic I heard a few years ago was that now about 25% of couples meet online. It doesn't have to be close to 100% to be very disruptive.

In the case of online dating, I'd assume it has basically replaced "going to bars or clubs with the express purpose of meeting someone." It just was that lots of people always met people who were in school with them, or because they were a friend of a friend.

Actually, I'd guess the "bar crowd" (at least pre-covid) probably still do bars. Older people, single parents, and people who don't have easy options for regularly meeting other single people benefit a lot by online options. Students (as an example) are surrounded by other single people in person, so they don't need it. (Although it seems to me that Tinder is about as close to a singles bar as you can get, so even some of the bar crowd have shifted online as well.)


And it's that "long tail" factor that is the same in education. There will probably always be a large demographic for whom the in-person experience works, but there will probably also be a significant minority for whom that works badly, or not at all, who will be the market for inline education.

[spork]

Everyone isn't going to switch to online classes or canned online labs because those things are actually crummier and don't provide the same benefits.

I agree with people not switching to what is clearly a crummier experience that doesn't meet any of the goals for why someone would engage in the activity.

[. . . ]

For the benefit of whom? My university offers a 100-level, 3-credit online chemistry course that is taught by someone with an M.S. in another field. There are no physical labs. I know I'm somewhat biased about what constitutes "good science education" because of the math and science courses I took and my work in an engineering lab while an undergraduate, but it seems clear to me that this course only exists to check one of the boxes in my university's gen ed science requirement. Students have to complete a requirement to graduate, so we make it easy for them to complete it. Students pay three credits in tuition and get three credits added to their transcript. It's win-win, until the student population that takes this kind of course finds out they can take the same kind of course from another vendor with accreditation at a tenth of the price.

* Since we know people can work from home and be productive, will we be able to keep a work-from-home option when things really open back up?

* Is there any way to go all the way up to 24/7 shifts now for researchers so we can get more time with our equipment while still obeying all social distancing and sanitation processes?  Some people would be willing to work every night from midnight to 7 AM (leaving time for the day shift to arrive with no overlap) if it meant being reasonably safe and still being productive.

My university is only now, and with great reluctance, broadening the days and times courses will be offered in order to comply with social distancing requirements. E.g., a section of a course that is essentially hybrid that meets in the physical classroom on Saturday mornings. The practice of some colleges and universities not using a year-round academic calendar always struck me as crazy. I think that practice will become even more rare because fewer institutions will be able to afford letting their physical assets sit idle during summers.

[Caracal]

Actually, I'd guess the "bar crowd" (at least pre-covid) probably still do bars. Older people, single parents, and people who don't have easy options for regularly meeting other single people benefit a lot by online options. Students (as an example) are surrounded by other single people in person, so they don't need it. (Although it seems to me that Tinder is about as close to a singles bar as you can get, so even some of the bar crowd have shifted online as well.)

People go to bars, because they like bars. I'm sure sometimes they happen to meet a person there and date them, but I don't think this is a plan for many people anymore. People in their 20s mostly meet online now, and Tinder is just really another dating site, there's nothing that scandalous about it.

[spork]

New York Times piece on possibly permanent changes to corporate operations and cultures evolving from the shift to working at home:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/remote-work-covid.html.

I love not having a commute. Would I be willing to give up the office that I'm rarely in in exchange for only coming to campus on a very occasional basis? Yes. If that choice is offered to enough people, the university eliminates the need for a building full of offices. The building could be converted to a student hangout. Or a dormitory. Or a banquet hall available for rent.

[Bonnie]

New York Times piece on possibly permanent changes to corporate operations and cultures evolving from the shift to working at home:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/remote-work-covid.html.

I love not having a commute. Would I be willing to give up the office that I'm rarely in in exchange for only coming to campus on a very occasional basis? Yes. If that choice is offered to enough people, the university eliminates the need for a building full of offices. The building could be converted to a student hangout. Or a dormitory. Or a banquet hall available for rent.

I would definitely go for a shared office model if it meant I was expected on campus much less. Way back when I first started my academic career, my office was a place to organize articles and books, securely store data. I just don't require that kind of space any longer. I do need a sometime space, for students who want to meet in person for office hours, for instance. For a quiet space to get some grading done between F2F class sessions, but do I need a space dedicated t me? I don't think so. Of course, we still have some administrators who equate presence on campus with effort. They'd have to get over that.

[Caracal]

New York Times piece on possibly permanent changes to corporate operations and cultures evolving from the shift to working at home:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/remote-work-covid.html.

I love not having a commute. Would I be willing to give up the office that I'm rarely in in exchange for only coming to campus on a very occasional basis? Yes. If that choice is offered to enough people, the university eliminates the need for a building full of offices. The building could be converted to a student hangout. Or a dormitory. Or a banquet hall available for rent.

I would definitely go for a shared office model if it meant I was expected on campus much less. Way back when I first started my academic career, my office was a place to organize articles and books, securely store data. I just don't require that kind of space any longer. I do need a sometime space, for students who want to meet in person for office hours, for instance. For a quiet space to get some grading done between F2F class sessions, but do I need a space dedicated t me? I don't think so. Of course, we still have some administrators who equate presence on campus with effort. They'd have to get over that.

It seems like people's feelings about an office are connected to how close to campus they are, what sort of class schedule they have, and whether there's anywhere else pleasant to be around or near campus. As an adjunct, I share an office, but only with people who teach opposite days then me, and if I didn't have the office largely to myself, I'm not sure I'd continue teaching. I teach 3-4 classes on my teaching days, in an eight hour day. I'm on a large crowded campus and there's no pleasant coffee shop or anything to hang out in during the day. Leaving campus isn't a good option, because the area off campus isn't very walkable, and just getting to my car and back takes 20 minutes. I need my office on my teaching days as a base camp. I also just hate sharing office space with someone physically there. I want to be able to come back after class, shut the door for 20 minutes and eat my sandwich in peace without worrying if I'm chewing too loud.

[San Joaquin]

The changes have polarized an already transitional campus here into two distinct & distant camps.  The traditionalists long to snap back into the old ways of doing without delay. For example, I filled out a paper form in person today on two separate occasions.  The futurists are delightedly planning for the completion of a hybridizing process that removes anything not essentially face-to-face to an online environment.  May end up to be quite a spectacle.

[Ancient Fellow]

Per Kevin Kelly: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." — Clay Shirky

A thought-provoking line, indeed!

[polly_mer]

My university is only now, and with great reluctance, broadening the days and times courses will be offered in order to comply with social distancing requirements. E.g., a section of a course that is essentially hybrid that meets in the physical classroom on Saturday mornings. The practice of some colleges and universities not using a year-round academic calendar always struck me as crazy. I think that practice will become even more rare because fewer institutions will be able to afford letting their physical assets sit idle during summers.

Has summer Pell been reinstated?

Are students going to sign up in droves for year-round required courses so that the financial aid can be standardized into year-round awards?

Are faculty going to be willing to teach all the required courses in the necessary terms so the students can make necessary progress in the majors that have long-prerequisite chains with no flexibility?

What are the tradeoffs financially for having summers with students instead of renting out facilities to summer camps and organizations?

What are the tradeoffs for recruitment by not having regular extended visits by k-12 students and other members of the community?

[spork]

My university is only now, and with great reluctance, broadening the days and times courses will be offered in order to comply with social distancing requirements. E.g., a section of a course that is essentially hybrid that meets in the physical classroom on Saturday mornings. The practice of some colleges and universities not using a year-round academic calendar always struck me as crazy. I think that practice will become even more rare because fewer institutions will be able to afford letting their physical assets sit idle during summers.

Has summer Pell been reinstated?

Are students going to sign up in droves for year-round required courses so that the financial aid can be standardized into year-round awards?

Are faculty going to be willing to teach all the required courses in the necessary terms so the students can make necessary progress in the majors that have long-prerequisite chains with no flexibility?

What are the tradeoffs financially for having summers with students instead of renting out facilities to summer camps and organizations?

What are the tradeoffs for recruitment by not having regular extended visits by k-12 students and other members of the community?

All good questions. I do not have answers to most of them.

As for the last question: "extended" visits currently consist of very infrequent overnight dorm stays by prospective (currently in high school) students. We have no residential community outreach programs; really we have no community outreach programs at all (occasionally individual faculty members develop something but there is little to no institutional support beyond a pat on the back).

As for the next-to-the-last question: we lost $3.2 million in dorm and meal plan refunds for half of the spring semester, and ~ $1 million in lost summer event revenue for the first half of the summer. Given the obscenely expensive summer rental market in the area the campus is located in (students vacate off-campus apartments during summers because they can't afford the rent), we could open up a dorm or two for part of the summer and it would net more revenue than facilities rentals.

I am now looking at the academic calendar for a Canadian university: fall, winter, and summer terms. Courses run in six different configurations within those terms -- fall only, winter only, fall + winter, summer I, summer II, and all summer. Not rocket science. But disbursement of financial aid in the USA is not my area of expertise.

[polly_mer]

I ran the online RN-to-BSN program as year round and it was fine because it was non-optional.  They had six sessions per year with breaks between sessions.  Students could sit out the occasional session, but then they dropped back to the next cohort to stay on the required path. 

I learned a lot about financial aid details as SD experimented with curriculum and having more students on campus for mini-sessions, alternate start times within a given term, and mixing online/on-campus offerings that were originally separate and therefore charged different prices for 'the same' course.

The overhead on keeping all that straight along with the timelines for mandatory reporting was huge for the registrar's office and the financial aid office.  Larger institutions are better situated to have enough staff so the overhead is a reasonable cost of business for the increased flexibility for students.

I've read about programs and institutions that do year round well.  However, the conversion requires hammering out a lot of details that will be specific to a student body.

When I investigated  converting to three-year BA degrees with required summers for SD, the conclusion was we would lose most of the students we had because they did not want to be in school year round.  We also wouldn't pick up the students who really want the intense educational experience because SD was not rigorous enough.  Thus, our best option for the summers was to rent out our facilities and offer suitable gen ed courses online.

[spork]

We haven't had summer online gen ed courses since third-provost-ago cancelled the program without any rationale. So students in the five-years-but-squished-into-four bachelor's programs (like elementary ed) take summer courses elsewhere, often online, and transfer the credits back. There are probably some students in these programs who would really like to take some courses in a shortened summer session to lessen their fall-spring workloads.

[polly_mer]

We haven't had summer online gen ed courses since third-provost-ago cancelled the program without any rationale. So students in the five-years-but-squished-into-four bachelor's programs (like elementary ed) take summer courses elsewhere, often online, and transfer the credits back. There are probably some students in these programs who would really like to take some courses in a shortened summer session to lessen their fall-spring workloads.

The case made by the SD registrar for specific summer online gen ed classes was exactly that SD was losing revenue by having students enroll in CC classes to transfer credits back.

[picard]

The Provost/Dean of Beloit College (a Wisconsin-based LAC) describes his institution's plan for reopening its campus for the Fall 2020 semester in an interview with PBS Marketplace:

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/09/covid-19-college-reopening-classes/

Excepts from the interview:

David Brancaccio: Tell me about this hinge, this pivot point that you're building into the semester to come.

Eric Boynton (Provost/Dean): Instead of teaching a 15- or 16-week semester in which a student takes four courses, which is a normal load, we would split the semester up into two modules, and students would take two full courses, each in a seven and a half week "Mod." And so there's a hinge in the semester, and that hinge is this way to maximize flexibility. If we needed to move away from campus, there would be a place, a pivot point in the semester where it'd be natural to move off campus. Or, if we had to start out online, it's also a place in which only two courses would be affected.

Brancaccio: What are you doing about classroom size, seating, labs — even dorms?

Boynton: We're going to be on campus in clever ways. We will have nearly enough capacity to give people single rooms, for instance. We'll have classroom spaces in which no more than 10 students will be gathered at a time. This is one of the benefits of a small liberal arts institution where you have a rather large campus for a small number of students. And so we're able to deal with density in ways that larger state campuses just can't deal with....

I'm betting that it's going to be some kind of hybrid educational model, in which we're on campus with most of our students, but not all of our students. There'll be certain students that can't return to campus, like there'll be certain faculty that should not teach on campus, those who are at risk.

[spork]

From another thread:

All admin support (a.k.a. secretaries) have been furloughed for the remainder of the summer at my university.

Sorry to hear that.  Sad for the people furloughed.  I guess faculty and other staff have to do extra clerical work with no extra pay (along with other extra work on course prep, etc.).  You reported earlier that your u library is closed.  How can you have a "university" without a library?

[. . . ]

This raises the question of whether a library -- as customarily designed and operated -- is needed at a university that is primarily for undergraduate instruction.