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TCoronavirus outbreaks when students return to colleges weren’t just predictable – they were predicted. In August, the Independent Sage group of scientists asked universities to make online teaching the “default option.” The main teachers union, UCU, echoed this call. Even the not-so-independent Sage (the official body that advises the government) warned in early September that “significant outbreaks” associated with universities were “very likely,” hinting at the possibility of local closures to prevent students from returning home at Christmas. .
Blaming the outbreaks on illicit or ill-advised student parties is missing the point. Any policy that is based on perfect compliance by imperfect human beings is flawed. But even an outbreak of monastic self-control among the nation’s college students would not make a return to face-to-face teaching safe. The problem is not human fallibility, but the nature of the virus itself.
Scientists have been telling us for some time that Covid-19 is an airborne disease. Although face covering and physical distancing can protect against the kinds of droplets produced by coughing and sneezing, they are no match for “aerosols” – tiny particles less than 10 microns in diameter produced by normal respiration. These are small enough to pass through the fabric of the masks and light enough to remain in the air for many minutes, circulating in air currents and accumulating in higher concentrations the longer people spend together in a confined space or stuffy, a pretty good description of a college teaching hall.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have also learned that Covid-19 is more dangerous for more people than was initially thought. Although it is highly unlikely to kill a healthy person in their 20s, the virus can cause a prolonged and debilitating illness, leaving vital organs damaged even in asymptomatic cases. The risk for older students or those with underlying health problems is even greater, as it is for many staff members, family members of staff and students, and members of the community at large.
However, after years of pushing to expand online learning and “lecture capture” on the basis of what students want, college managers have decided that what students want. For real What we want now, during a global pandemic, is face-to-face contact. This sudden-onset fetish reached its most wicked extreme in the case of Boston University, who, realizing that many teaching rooms lack good ventilation or even windows, decided to order “giant air circulators”, only to find that the air circulators were very noisy. Seemingly unable to come up with enough “silencers” for the air circulators, the university ordered Bluetooth headsets to allow students and teachers to communicate through the roar of machinery.
All of which begs the question: why? The determination to bring students back to campus at any cost does not stem from a wet-eyed appreciation of the pedagogy in person, nor from concerns about the impact of isolation on students’ mental health. If college principals had any interest in such things, they wouldn’t have spent years cutting back on study skills advisory and support services.
It would have been much better for students if universities had told them up front that their courses would be online whenever possible, allowing work that can only be done in person, such as lab work, to continue in a way. Safer. And it would have been better for everyone if they had advised students to stay away from campus if possible, while keeping accommodation open for those who need to return because they have no other acceptable options. As it stands, students have been lured back to campuses told they are “safe for Covid”, only to find themselves trapped in cramped and expensive accommodation, not knowing when they will or may be allowed to return home. safely and study online courses. it would almost certainly have been better if the teaching staff had been allowed to prepare them properly. It is difficult to see how this favors someone’s education or mental and physical health.
As usual, it’s about money. Now that student fees and rents are their main source of income, colleges will do anything to hire and retain. When the pandemic broke out, university managers warned of a potentially catastrophic loss of income, particularly from international student fees. Many used this as an excuse to cut jobs and freeze wages, even as vice chancellors and top management continued to earn huge salaries. As it turned out, international student admissions hit a record this year, and the number of domestic college students also increased, perhaps less due to the irresistibility of the “offer” from universities than to the lack of other options (no Needless to say, staff jobs and pay have yet to be restored).
But students are more than just contributors. They also pay rents. Rightly or wrongly, most university officials have assumed that only the promise of face-to-face classes would tempt students to return to their accommodation. That promise can be safely broken only once the leases are signed and the revenue streams flow.
What university principals have done this time is so clearly unethical that few are willing to justify it with the usual appeals to financial necessity. Regardless, many university staff have privately reconciled to what is essentially a hoax and reckless danger in believing that their institutions, and therefore their jobs, need to be saved. That logic is questionable. The idea that a short-term collapse in rental income would spell death for universities is clearly false in the case of rich and prestigious institutions like Oxford and Cambridge. However, the approach of these universities has been very similar to that of others: they promise some face-to-face component, however minimal, so that students can go back to their rooms and pay the rent.
The harsh truth for the institutions lower in the food chain is that many are dying anyway. Commodification was always intended to allow some universities to “fail” and for new private “providers” to take their place. In this sense, the prophecies of financial ruin so effectively leveraged by college managers are far too realistic, even though the specific fundamentals they provide are best taken with a lot of salt. How many students would still want to return to their accommodation, understanding that their courses will be online for their own safety and that of their teachers? Nobody bothered to ask them. Would the students who are now demanding the return of their fees have done it if the universities had been honest with them? We will never know. Could universities weather a drop in rental income if they were prepared to stop spending dazzling sums on advertising, outsourcing, and executive pay? Inconceivable.
Just because a problem is systemic does not mean that those in power cannot act differently if they wanted to or if enough pressure was put on them from below. Like many of the decisions made in commercialized universities, the response to the coronavirus is a political choice. The full human cost of this has yet to be seen.
• Lorna Finlayson teaches philosophy at the University of Essex
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