MSPeconomist

NCAA is banning spectators from all events, including March Madness basketball (men's and women's) tournaments, hockey games, and wrestling matches.

MSPeconomist

Cornell is going farther and requiring all students to complete their online courses after spring break from their permanent home residences. [I'm not sure how easily they can check provided that the student isn't living in campus housing. Also, should the university be telling people that they must leave off campus apartments in the middle of leases? If someone cannot be on campus, why can't they go to a beach or someplace interesting to do their schoolwork online rather than necessarily to their permanent home residence? Also, what if their permanent home residence is Italy, India, Wuhan, South Korea, etc.?]

Cornell is also banning meetings and other gatherings of over a hundred people (presumably on campus or as sponsored events, but this isn't clear to me) and "discouraging travel."

GrayAnderson

I take the view that "from their permanent home residence" is a (clumsy and poorly-phrased) stand-in for "from somewhere that is not on-campus housing". A college that, for example, tried to compel a student to return to a "hot zone" and disciplined them for not doing so would probably run into all sorts of problems. Moreover, a student in an off-campus apartment on a 12-month lease (as opposed to a 9-month lease) could probably argue that their apartment is their permanent home residence. I can't really see the college being able to push back against that, particularly if the student is (for example) registered to vote there, has a state drivers' license there, etc. And of course, the effect is null on local/commuter students as well.

MSPeconomist

As a very general rule, it's extremely difficult for college-age students who have gone straight through school to establish residency (and hence in-state tuition privileges at state and state-related institutions) to establish residency at their college location, even in graduate school. Normally their permanent home address is considered to be their home address at the time they applied for admission, with some obvious modifications if the parents have moved. Exceptions would be students who were considered to be emancipated and self supporting before they applied for admission, older nontraditional students who worked before college, or those who are married or have children.

Cornell clearly doesn't want any students (except faculty brats, etc.) to return to the Ithaca area after spring break.

However, I'm surprised that this seems to apply equally to graduate students who often are employed as research assistants in externally funded university labs. It's also very hard to see how certain programs such as vet med can be conducted online. The same would be true for medical school, especially the second two years of programs that haven't yet integrated patient contact from day one, but Cornell's medical campus is in NYC and I'm not sure whether it's being shut down too.

chipmaster

Well almost every school is liking going to go remote/online as the liabilities to continue classes are too large.

What I find interesting is that schools that say students don't come back and whom don't come back from spring break, or vacate to home ( my child is out of state ) will their be a refund? After all housing - room/board, after all if that is the policy should / would they get that money back. Of course tuition won't as they are teaching online. Will be interesting how they administer final exams, hmmm.


Right out of a hollywood movie we go.

Exterous

The dominos are falling. If a University hasn't shut down in-person classes yet they will soon. I work for a company that works with\handles IT projects for large Universities and the last two weeks have been...unique. Remote work\assistance\lecture capture\VPN companies now essentially have COVID-19 sales bundles that bypass the usual 1-3year agreements as schools rapidly try and ramp up their remote capabilities. The bundles are typically 3mo+ blocks of unusually large license\user counts at reasonable prices. Some Universities that were part of the internet founding are easily reallocating /20 public CIDR blocks they've been squatting on to easily ramp up VPN connections and spin up VMs to handle the bandwidth (which is an incredibly unique ability given IPv4 address exhaustion) while others are having to expend more time and effort to accommodate the sudden shift. Even service providers based in The Cloud are warning that there may be bandwidth issues for their services and they may need to autoscale down lecture broadcasts to handle the load. Interesting security implications too as holes are poked in firewalls and security rules to allow remote access to specialized research equipment and High performance Computing resources. IT Security people are going to be busy monitoring scans and logs and there's probably been some decent business for security vendors as well.

As an added challenge many schools were already facing long laptop order delays due to Intel chip shortages and HP has been at reduced capacity as a major factory is located in Wuhan. Some interesting challenges to manage for those schools who are limiting campus access in terms of getting new\replacement\repaired computers back to faculty and staff. It's been a good kick in the pants for a few schools to move to Microsoft AutoPilot and have vendors drop ship computers to then intended recipient's home. But also a lot of scrounging for old laptop equipment to give out as long term loaners


I think its a bit different for Universities than other general public areas for a couple of reasons:
1) Disparate international travel is significantly more common at some (many?) Universities both in terms of students and research than your average organization
2) Students are well known for relatively poor hygiene habits, are in close proximity to each other in class\hallways\etc and every hour several to tens of thousands of them touch the same door knobs, handrails etc
3) Higher than average number of older employees (faculty) who are much more at risk

tearex

All undergrads in dorms/greek commons now required to move out by end of March. Harvard also forfeited the game.

CUNY/SUNY also shifting to online. CUNY will have an five-day recess to prepare. SUNY campuses will be shut down March 19.

MSPeconomist

Lucky friend. It could be an interesting time in your home. (I hope they're not graduating seniors as it would be so sad to miss the final couple months of college.)

CPRich

Purdue has classes through Friday, then all on-line starting the 23rd after Spring Break week. Dorms/food service will be open, so students have the option of staying/returning to campus or working from home. My daughter says she will probably go back - large robotics project due shortly in a major course. Lectures/problem sets are doable, but exams and especially finals could be a real challenge - no word on how that will be handled.

Her spring break study abroad program to Japan had already been changed to Peru about 3 weeks ago and then was canceled last week.

They have already refunded the travel abroad program costs and has distributed forma for reimbursement of travel costs that can't be recovered from the airlines and others.

I know Harvard will be giving pro-rated refunds for room and board, and at least one other announced the same - don't remember the name. I don't think other have made any statement regarding costs - probably not top of mind right now.

SilverLai

I'm a Junior at MSU Denver and today they officially said along with the rest of AHEC (Auraria Higher Education Learning Center) Colleges (MSU, University Of Colorado Denver, and Community College of Denver) that they'll be moving to an online format for classes going forward for the rest of the semester till the end of May by March 30 with a two week transition period to convert classes to the online format. They won't be shutting the campus completely down (i.e. student union, library, administrative offices, department offices, etc for example) but they said they'll be evaluating the situation as it happens and determine if the campus has to completely shut down based on how this plays out.

Along with evalutaing what student services will or won't be open on campus during this period. Along with figuring out how they will provide services like tutoring, appointments, advising, teacher and faculty communication.

I've considered just leaving for home to Seattle where I have family either midweek or this weekend instead of next Friday like I originally planned for Spring Break and may just extended it beyond Spring Break by a couple weeks as I might get very bored being cooped up in my apartment dorm suite for the rest of the semester.

tbh, it's gonna be a rough couple of weeks for our teachers to figure out how they'll teach their classes in the new format as while some classes will be easy to transition to an online format, others like a sensory class in understanding beers I'm taking this semester will be a lot more complicated to convert to said format, but the administration said that they'll be working with teachers on solutions to bridge the gap.

As for Study Abroad's, they've cancelled them for the rest of the semester with Summer study abroad stuck in a holding pattern as to whether they'll happen or not. I was supposed to go on a two week study abroad to Spain, Portuga, and Morocco but we won't have a definitive answer whether the trip is happening or not till mid April most likely as that's when they have to decide to cancel the trip or not with the travel agent for the trip. It's also a bit trickier for me as well since I already bought plane tickets for most of my journey SQ JFK-FRA rt, LH FRA-MAD, and HV TNG-ORY and don't know how each airline is open to refunds of flights and this will be a case of where I'll need to speak to customer service representative to understand my option as to how I move forward. Although, I may consider just flying to Europe regardless of whether the trip happens or not and just do a different itinerary through a different part of Europe than the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Morocco from the study abroad. Luckily all my hotel rooms that I've booked are flexible rates and haven't purchased any other transportation than just the airplane tickets (like train or bus tickets for example)

They are giving students who are doing study abroad at foreign universities currently the option to stay and complete the rest of their study abroad or come home.

I'll be honest, they've handled the situation fairly well with only some confusion on certain issues like if classes are canceled next week or not. But this will be a tough time for a lot of students as we transition into virtual classrooms for the rest of the semester.

GinFizz

Thanks for posting that - and welcome to Flyertalk! It's not maybe the best of times to join this community, but it looks like you already have a good trip lined up, and I am sure you'll get lots of good advice both here and on other threads in case that needs to be revised at any point.

Very good also to get a student perspective on the campus closures and the shift to online teaching. In my university here in China we were lucky in that we already have been running an online learning platform, though there was still a period of a couple of weeks required for ramping up server capability and to add some better functionality.

I think also many of us are going to be jealous of your sensory class in understanding beer I've already mentioned this on another thread, but I'll say it again here, updating my courses to an online format is an ongoing challenge, but one of the positive aspects is that I can enjoy a beer while teaching my weekly 7-9pm class (no live camera used I should add...) so I hope the lecturer can find a way around that one (and if the class goes public make sure to let us all know ..!).

MSPeconomist

More data regarding the midwest (USA):

University of Wisconsin (Madison) is going to online classes for the rest of the semester. Students are being told to plan not to have access to residence halls from March 23 (spring break) to April 10 (a couple weeks after spring break ends).

University of Iowa (Iowa City) is going to online classes after spring brea.

University of Minnesota is going to online classes through the end of March on all campuses. Spring break on the Twin Cities campus has been extended for a couple days. Plans are unclear for laboratory and performance courses. Residence halls, dining, and student services are tentatively expected to remain open. Employees have been instructed to report to work as usual. About 63,000 students are affected over five campuses.

In addition, more than 500 students are currently in Europe participating in study abroad programs. They will all return to the USA within the next week, but academic plans to complete the semester need to be organized/arranged for them. (Students were brought back earlier from at least Italy, South Korea, and mainland China. Two of them are finishing two week quarantines off campus without exhibiting symptoms; they were reportedly traveling with someone having COVID-19 when they boarded their TATL flight back to the USA.)

Elsewhere in MN, the University of St Thomas (Roman Catholic) and St Cloud State currently plan to continue holding in person classes.

bpe

At Northwestern (hearing from a friend there), MIT and Harvard (a friend at MIT), they have effectively shut down and undergraduate students are being forced to leave campus by next week. A bit less clear for graduate students especially since they don't live in campus housing, but they probably will be asked to at least stay out of campus buildings.

Much of the surprise and chaos was how sudden these decisions were made, from 'everything as usual' to 'everybody leave now' in less than 24 hours in some cases. While the urgency is somewhat understandable, the sudden decisions lead to poor logistics, many questions and uncertainties, panicking, as well as rumors that students are infected and the university is trying to hide it.


In contrast to all of this, universities in Japan seem like they will hold classes as usual. It currently is Spring break (typically February-March), but there doesn't seem to be any indication of canceling class, although campus events such as ceremonies and orientation sessions have been canceled.

SS255

I went to Brandeis University, and the alumni received an update from the University President. Classes move to online beginning March 16. Students must move out of campus housing by March 25. Exceptions will be made for students who don't have the ability to move to an off-campus location where they can access on-line classes. Commencement is still TBD. I'm scheduled to attend Alumni Weekend in early June. Thankfully I haven't booked my flight yet, since that is also TBD.

All in all, I think they're handling the situation pretty well.

scott429

And the knock-on effects of large campuses being deserted will kill local economies.