College Opening Plans Will Fail
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June 1, 2020You’re Not Going Back to School Full-Time
August 9, 2020Preface:
Update 7/27:
It's a fast-moving world these days. I put the article below up yesterday. Today WVU announced they are rolling back their opening plans. I could pretend that I was causative instead of correlative. However, it does seem unlikely, unless my summer staff happens to sit on the WVU Board of Governors.
Jump below for why colleges are behaving so recklessly. If you don't want to read some of my better rantings, here's the four-word version: tuition and housing dollars. Here's how they plan to get away with it: scapegoating their students. It's a tried-and-true playbook.
Instead, I'm going to preempt myself, hoping to stay ahead of a quickly developing news cycle.
think colleges are going to roll back opening plans over the next few weeks. Like test-optional, once enough of them do it, everyone will jump on board. I think it may not be enough. They need to roll back their plans almost entirely. Dorm occupancy and in-person learning are probably not feasible solutions for most colleges. Like yesterday, I'm going to use WVU as an example.
The WVU Plan
It's pretty vague at this point. The idea is that WVU will...Basically, dorms are still going to operate at capacity, and they're not giving underclassmen the option of online-only, because they know they'll lose too many.
Juniors and seniors are mostly or entirely online. WVU will still lose some juniors and seniors, but it's the smart bet. Upperclassmen know that transferring is usually a losing proposition later in the game. WVU hasn't said anything about tuition, but I wouldn't expect more than a token break for online-only. Also, most juniors and seniors have a few low-level credits to fill out, so they may still get to charge all the campus occupancy fees. Like a bad romantic partner, WVU is calculating exactly how far they can push the relationship.
Aside from underhanded, I think it will be ineffectual.
Here's why:
Leases--Students signed leases last year for their apartments. Students won't want to break them. I don't have any first-hand information, but I'd that college landlords have been intimidating and threatening lessees to keep them in line. Frankly, too, I think forced closeness is wearing on college students and their parents.
At WVU, only a small percentage of upperclassmen live in dorms, and only a small percentage are commuters. The WVU move doesn't do much of anything to reduce the student population. In fairness to them, they can't control off-campus housing to that degree. They can discourage students from moving to Morgantown, both in messaging and policy. Ultimately, some privately-owned student housing may be more problematic than the dorms. Student apartment complexed tend to have high population densities, low cleanliness, and no oversight.
Dorms--WVU is still not fixing the dorm and dining hall problem. If WVU brings all the freshmen to campus--which is the plan--you'll not be able to spread them out much, even if you turn everyone else out of the dorms.
Parties--You can shut down the bars and the big parties, but it will not fix the problem. WVU has a reputation as a party school; drinking is part of the culture. The University and City of Morgantown does not have the resources to regulate the student social life to that degree.
Honestly, I wonder what the administration thinks will happen. What difference will a week make? I don't know anything about epidemiology, but infection numbers seem to experience exponential growth, not exponential decay. Does WVU believe circumstances will allow a partial return to campus? Or are they stringing students and families along long enough to lock them in?
This opening plan does little to keep the campus community safe. It only functions to protect the financial interests of the university.
It's time for WVU, and colleges like WVU, to face facts. Show some respect for your student, and they may show you some institutional loyalty. You'll have a hard time buying back trust if you string them along and nickel-and-dime their eventual refunds. Go online only and use a responsible phasing plan that introduces courses with a hands-on element first. Be considerate to the students who have been with you three or more years, and give them the educational experience they deserve.
Perceptions shift. After a crisis, there is a general accounting made from the new perspective. When COVID has passed, we will all interface with our world differently. We will see the institutions and actors in our world differently.
Colleges may find their reputations permanently impaired. Ten years after the great recession, the perception that Wall Street is malicious and callous persists. What was once the province of Woody Guthrie is now (more or less) believed by suburban families nationwide. It will endure for a generation or longer. If people die because colleges are duplicitous and callous, colleges will be permanently disgraced. The big difference between colleges and investment banks? Investment banks don't need your respect to make money. Colleges do.
(most) Colleges with Ambitious Opening Plans Will Fail
...Or, The Test Guy Rants
I think colleges like Notre Dame, although I have a lot of objections to this letter, may be fine. They have big campuses, small undergrad populations, and lots of money. That's a three-part recipe for success. But most colleges don't have all three, and I think you need them all.
I really hope that colleges walk their opening plans back. Right now, colleges are still worried about summer melt, where students who have paid deposits don't show up in the fall. I hope that once those tuition checks start rolling in, you see a dramatic change in institutional attitude.
I'm going to use West Virginia University as an example, and I hope it doesn't become a cautionary tale of failed leadership. WVU is a large, land-grant university that has aggressive on-campus plans for the fall. I went to school there, and I have positive feelings about my alma mater. I have no axe to grind. I'm using WVU because I believe they are behaving recklessly.
I won't get into the impracticality of observing strict mask and social distancing protocol inside WVU dorms and dining halls. I won't get into the casual attitude that a significant minority of 18-24 years olds have about the virus. I won't argue that the mechanism of social pressure hasn't worked for the pandemic. I also won't argue what I consider to be true: the act of opening WVU obligates the university the ethical duty of providing a safe campus, and that individual responsibility does not absolve the university of that duty.
I will note, though, that the University was unable to keep the men's basketball team from becoming infected this summer. If they can't keep Bob Huggin's team healthy, a D1 powerhouse with players whose lives are well-controlled, they can't expect to keep the student body at large healthy. I don't think they expect to, at least in their heart-of-hearts.
Let's look at their plan.
WVU Opening Plans
Aside from enhanced facility cleanings and the like, here's what the University is doing.
University Responsibilities
That's it. In fairness, there's not much more you can do (although the welcome kit is awfully light in my opinion). Let's look at what students are responsible for.
Student Responsibilities
What are They Thinking?
To quote from the Dean of Students' letter:
You have told us that you want to be on campus, and that means that we all must take personal responsibility and be accountable for maintaining the health and safety of our community.
I knew the guy who wrote this letter; we sat on a committee or two together when I was a student. He's a really nice guy, but I wasn't impressed by him. His strength was agreeability. That's the problem: college administrations are replete with lackeys—groupthink and congeniality are rewarded. There are very few college administrators who can think outside of incremental, committee-driven change. I’ll paraphrase Dean Farris:
You want to be back on campus. We did a reasonable job of making it look like we were doing everything. It'll be your fault when it inevitably does not work out.
WVU is shifting the entirety of the responsibility to the student. It's not alone--there are far too many colleges following this model.
For over twenty years, colleges have said, "We're not your parent, and we won't take responsibility for your actions, but we'll brand your success, and we reserve the right punish/blame you if you make us look bad." Modern business ethics make shareholder value the supreme virtue. Modern university ethics make institutional reputation the supreme virtue. In truth, it's a good proxy for share price. At the end of the day, colleges and universities operate like commercial enterprises.
I think the ethics are important, but I won't dissemble into a discussion of institutional responsibility versus individual responsibility. We all draw our own lines on what is morally obligatory. What's relevant is justification. Business decisions that seem ethically dubious are sanctified by shareholder value. Institutional reputation has and will justify scapegoating.
You don't need me to say this (although I have), but it's all about money. Colleges don't want to lose freshmen; they don't want returning students transferring out. They don't just want big, fat tuition and housing checks. They need that money.
When threatened, institutions will act in almost any way to protect themselves. I don't know how severe the threat is to WVU, but I know that WVU—like nearly every other college and university—feels threatened. It's not irrational. Medium/long term indicators don't look great, institutions are heavily leveraged, and consumers are losing confidence in the value of a college education. No value proposition holds up to decades of ~9% a year price increases. In short, the higher education industry is entering a severe contraction.
It takes a lot of moral strength to change how you're operating on a fundamental level. WVU did all it could within the confines of its business model. They need money. They need normalcy. And they've preemptively absolved themselves. When it doesn't work out, here's what they'll say:
We believed that on-campus classes were integral to Mountaineer…. and our mission of… providing the best possible education, and while the University did everything perfectly… responsibility ultimately laid with the students. Unfortunately, a few bad apples….
That's the jist. I'm sure they'll have a great zoom meeting and email chain working out the platitudes.
Money in. Reputation preserved. I'm sure there will be a nice memorial for any students and staff who die.
I want to be wrong. I want to go back to business as usual. I'd love there to be college football, and I'd love Morgantown to be an awesome place to be a college student this fall. It always has been. I greatly enjoyed my time at WVU. I had some wonderful professors, good mentors, and great experiences in student organizations and student government. But while institutions are made of people, institutions are not people.
If your college doesn't relent. You have options. If they don't offer what you need online, consider taking online courses from a college or community college that has great reciprocity. If you're a freshman, and you're attending WVU or a similar institution. Don't worry. You can transfer in; they accept plenty of transfers. Be smart. Be safe.
