Outbreaks of Covid Continue in Higher Education

Covid keeps hitting higher education. Previously CU Boulder had issues with students getting infected due to them not following the rules, and now the waste water from a CSU dorm has tested positive for covid meaning that someone in there has it. I hate to say it, but I’m not surprised for many reasons. First, this age group for the most part still thinks they are immune to covid with how it has been covered by the media and the current U.S. government not taking it seriously. Second, this age group is still developing into adults and they are still learning basic life skills that may not have had to deal with at home. This includes things like cleaning and basic social responsibility. These are skills that can take time to develop depending on how they were raised. Lastly, we have seen that when people are brought together cases of covid go up. This is one where I hate to say it, but the schools should have known better. I know that everyone wants things to return to normal, but when that is rushed we will continue to have outbreaks. Some of the schools are also going back and forth between in person and online learning depending on what covid cases look like.

The best way to address this would have had all lecture based courses switch entirely online and then only have classes meet in person for labs associated with the sciences or technical programs. No student should have been allowed back in the dorms. I know that this would have cut into the schools funding (they way over charge for both housing and food), but you need to do what is in the best interest of not only the school and students but what is best for the whole community. Sorry for the run on sentence but it was needed. Many colleges today have the capabilities to run online only. For example CSU has CSU Global. They should have taken direction from this to see how they could function 100% online. 

I do understand that there are some students that just learn better in person. Unfortunately due to safety these students may have to put their education on hold. Online education takes a specific type of personality to be successful. Not everyone can do it. One of the key traits that is needed is time management. Another is that they must have self-motivation. The only way I see around this is for schools to make special sections of courses and only bring these students on campus while keeping the environment as controlled as possible (this could also include students with disabilities so that their needs are met as well). I could then see these students being housed on campus, but they could not be allowed to leave and would have to live in a quarantine. 

At this point, I’m just waiting to see how far into the semester/this academic year it will take before schools realize what they need to do. I’ll just keep watching the situation to see what happens as schools start to release their plans for the spring semester while we wait for a vaccine.