NY Times article covering faculty resistence to in-person classes

[polly_mer]

That's nice. 

The union is no protection when the institution goes under.

Tenure is no protection when the institution goes under.

There's a whole lotta institutions that were open in fall 2019 that will have zero employees in fall 2022.  Covid-19 just expanded the drain for the institutions that were circling and probably could have circled for much longer.

But, sure, you might have extra work this fall for the institutions that are so close to the edge that they must open in person to have a shot at  being open in 2022.

[ciao_yall]

It is my understanding that the cost of the dining hall plan is merely pass-through from the students to the external provider.  It doesn't cost us, nor does it make us, any money.

At our place, I know that the food service company brings capital to the table -- they put millions of dollars into a major renovation to the student center building where they operate, and they are effectively paid back through a long-term contract for the required meal plan revenues and a monopoly on catered events in some spaces.  (That's the general outline - the details of the contract are closely guarded.)

And, even if it is just a pass-through, there is overhead involved in managing the contract and related accounting. So if that goes away, the jobs might go away.

[writingprof]

I will happily do a little extra work this semester to save the institution that employs me.  For that matter, I will happily sacrifice the lives of two or three of my most annoying colleagues if that's what it takes. 

[Hibush]

I will happily do a little extra work this semester to save the institution that employs me.  For that matter, I will happily sacrifice the lives of two or three of my most annoying colleagues if that's what it takes.

The old deadwood tenured professors are at extra risk from the young vaps aspiring to have their jobs.

[mahagonny]

That's nice. 

The union is no protection when the institution goes under.

Tenure is no protection when the institution goes under.

There's a whole lotta institutions that were open in fall 2019 that will have zero employees in fall 2022.  Covid-19 just expanded the drain for the institutions that were circling and probably could have circled for much longer.

But, sure, you might have extra work this fall for the institutions that are so close to the edge that they must open in person to have a shot at  being open in 2022.

Ha! You ought to know this already, but I'll explain because I love an audience: far as I'm concerned if schools go out of business, adjunct faculty will be the only blameless party. We are temporary, and for that matter, so is life.  *Accepting responsibility* and all that.

I will happily do a little extra work this semester to save the institution that employs me.  For that matter, I will happily sacrifice the lives of two or three of my most annoying colleagues if that's what it takes.

Collegiality!

[Wahoo Redux]

Publicize.

Vote Democrat.

[fourhats]

Most schools contract out dining plans.

I'm at a pretty large R1. Our dining service is entirely in-house. The revenue lost from this during closure is enormous.

And while there are certainly some faculty who would be willing to teach face-to-face, there are many others who aren't themselves older or compromised who don't want to bring home to family members (some of whom are older and compromised) what students might pass on to them when they teach.

[writingprof]

Publicize.

Vote Democrat.

Indeed. Every aborted baby is one fewer potential coronavirus victim.

[Wahoo Redux]

Publicize.

Vote Democrat.

Indeed. Every aborted baby is one fewer potential coronavirus victim.

Well, since the largest demographics of women who have abortions are "high school graduate/GED" and "some college/associate degree" (almost 70 percent combined) we should work for more college graduates, if for no other reason than we would cut down on abortions.

Good thinking there, WP.

[Stockmann]

Ha! You ought to know this already, but I'll explain because I love an audience: far as I'm concerned if schools go out of business, adjunct faculty will be the only blameless party. We are temporary, and for that matter, so is life.  *Accepting responsibility* and all that.

I will happily do a little extra work this semester to save the institution that employs me.  For that matter, I will happily sacrifice the lives of two or three of my most annoying colleagues if that's what it takes.

Collegiality!

It's still uncertain whether my employer will have F2F classes in the Fall. While I'm signed up for "hybrid" if so, whether that will be honored or not, and what "hybrid" would mean in practice, remains to be seen. If there is some compromise between the old normal and all online, I'm sure it will just so happen that all the classes that will happen F2F, or at least those with bigger sections, will be taught by contingent folks, and all the tenured faculty will either teach online or actively, freely choose F2F, or at most will be teaching small classes F2F. If that happens, in the short term, we the contingent folks, esp. the younger ones, are going to be the ones playing Covid roulette, but slightly longer term it will be crystal clear to admins, politicians, etc that we the contingent folks are overall way much more bang for the buck (esp. in terms of number of students taught) at my employer than the tenured faculty - with oncoming budget storms, they can't get rid of us as a group short of shutting the place down, and it will be the tenured folks under pressure in terms of retiring, having perks and benefits cut, etc. Or they will get rid of many of us and increase the tenured faculty's workload - but the younger contingent folks have a decent chance of getting a similar gig somewhere else, while the tenured folks, esp. the older tenured folks, will have nowhere to go. We live in ironic times indeed.
I hope we're online for the Fall (the local situation is pretty bad and deteriorating), but my "canary in the coalmine" indicator is a particular non-tenured (and non-citizen) older prof - if he's made to teach F2F and any tenured faculty aren't it will be hard proof for me of how health concerns are just a fig leaf for the arbitrary exercise of power, and if he's allowed to stay online while the younger, healthier tenured profs teach F2F then I will believe the powers that be really are trying to prevent deaths.

[writingprof]

Here's an interesting story that will out me if any of my colleagues are reading.  What the hell.  On a video chat with our provost, a colleague asked why we were worrying about social-distancing in the classroom when students would be living on top of one another, in filth, in the dorms the moment classes dismissed.  His answer was instructive: "We're not trying to save students' lives; we're trying to save professors'."

[picard]

The always though provoking Dan Drezner has just penned this op-ed on The Washington Post, on how would the pandemic reshape the landscape of how American colleges and universities be run. He argues that despite the admin's best efforts, there is simply no way to have a fully save and virus-free reopening this fall:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/06/im-college-professor-here-is-what-i-think-about-college-preparations-covid-19-this-fall/

"I have yet to see a viable university plan for reopening colleges for in-person instruction this fall. There have been a lot of variations of testing and tracing, or enforcing social distancing, or expanding the housing opportunities to make social distancing more possible. I credit university administrators for trying to make it work in a country that has abjectly failed at handling the novel coronavirus. That said, none of these plans seems to acknowledge that a) 18-year-olds will act like 18-year-olds; b) many of them are likely to be mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic spreaders of the virus; c) the question of a flare-up of cases on campus is not about "if" but about "when"; and d) quarantine and tracing procedures break down once a significant fraction of the student body is infected."

[Hibush]

The always though provoking Dan Drezner has just penned this op-ed on The Washington Post, on how would the pandemic reshape the landscape of how American colleges and universities be run. He argues that despite the admin's best efforts, there is simply no way to have a fully save and virus-free reopening this fall:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/06/im-college-professor-here-is-what-i-think-about-college-preparations-covid-19-this-fall/

"I have yet to see a viable university plan for reopening colleges for in-person instruction this fall. There have been a lot of variations of testing and tracing, or enforcing social distancing, or expanding the housing opportunities to make social distancing more possible. I credit university administrators for trying to make it work in a country that has abjectly failed at handling the novel coronavirus. That said, none of these plans seems to acknowledge that a) 18-year-olds will act like 18-year-olds; b) many of them are likely to be mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic spreaders of the virus; c) the question of a flare-up of cases on campus is not about "if" but about "when"; and d) quarantine and tracing procedures break down once a significant fraction of the student body is infected."

Identifying the problems without considering the problems of the alternative scenario seems naive. The alternative is not to put all the 18-year olds in individual pods in low earth orbit. [Error 1701: missing TNG reference] The alternative is to have them running around the community with no restrictions or monitoring.

[marshwiggle]

The always though provoking Dan Drezner has just penned this op-ed on The Washington Post, on how would the pandemic reshape the landscape of how American colleges and universities be run. He argues that despite the admin's best efforts, there is simply no way to have a fully save and virus-free reopening this fall:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/06/im-college-professor-here-is-what-i-think-about-college-preparations-covid-19-this-fall/

"I have yet to see a viable university plan for reopening colleges for in-person instruction this fall. There have been a lot of variations of testing and tracing, or enforcing social distancing, or expanding the housing opportunities to make social distancing more possible. I credit university administrators for trying to make it work in a country that has abjectly failed at handling the novel coronavirus. That said, none of these plans seems to acknowledge that a) 18-year-olds will act like 18-year-olds; b) many of them are likely to be mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic spreaders of the virus; c) the question of a flare-up of cases on campus is not about "if" but about "when"; and d) quarantine and tracing procedures break down once a significant fraction of the student body is infected."

Identifying the problems without considering the problems of the alternative scenario seems naive. The alternative is not to put all the 18-year olds in individual pods in low earth orbit. [Error 1701: missing TNG reference] The alternative is to have them running around the community with no restrictions or monitoring.

But even if that's the case, has any institution talking about having students on campus laid out a plan for how they will handle the likely outbreak(s)? Anything I've seen has treated it as a fairly remote possibility.

[spork]

My employer's plan supposedly includes a "quarantine dorm" provision if/when students test positive.