College, anyone?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that two-thirds of American colleges and universities have announced plans to resume on-campus classes with the Fall 2020 semester. In my little university town, landlords are advertising off-campus student rentals. Schedule a tour today! Or not.

I’ve wondered, often, what college will look like in the fall. My town has suffered and will suffer mightily without a student population. I have friends and colleagues who will want to be teaching in classrooms, doing the work of what I like to call real-presence education. But I cannot imagine college-as-usual, or anything close to as-usual, in the fall.

As I’ve kicked around the idea of writing about the next academic year, I’ve found two people who have already done so to my satisfaction. Stan Yoshinobu, a professor of mathematics at California Polytechnic State University, has a piece behind the Chronicle paywall, “The Case Against Reopening,” and an earlier version on his blog, with twenty-three points against reopening. Yoshinobu does the awkward and necessary work of asking about practical contingencies: Do we ban parties? What do we do when a student coughs or sneezes in class? Will students be permitted to go home on weekends? For Thanksgiving? And I’ll add: Who’s supposed to keep track? And to what purpose?

As Yoshinobu says, he doesn’t like “virtual college.” But he sees it as the only reasonable and ethical choice for the next academic year.

As does Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University. In The New York Times he offers a perspective shaped by decades of teaching and researching young people: “Expecting Students to Play It Safe if Colleges Reopen Is a Fantasy.” Steinberg begins by highlighting suggestions in a recent Times symposium on plans for college in the fall: masks, sanitizer, social distancing, and students placed in family-sized groups within dorms. (One contributor to that symposium imagines each small group taking classes together.) Steinberg’s blunt conclusion:

These plans are so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff.

Steinberg too looks forward to returning to teaching in a classroom. But not yet.

If I were still teaching, I’d want to insist on a virtual fall, and perhaps a virtual spring. I’d think of my virtual teaching as a difficult, memorable experiment. If I were a first-year student, I’d want to wait for my real-presence education and take a gap year if at all possible. If I were a sophomore, junior, or senior, I’d hope that my school would have the good sense not to bring everyone back to campus. There too I would think of a virtual semester or two as a difficult, memorable experiment. When we’re on the other side of this pandemic, there’ll be thousands of faculty and students, sick of screens, looking forward to the possibilities that a real-presence community of learning can once again offer.

My fear is that those who already want to make college a virtual experience for all but a small elite will take the pandemic as an occasion to further their scheming. But right now there’s already enough to worry about. Besides, when we’re on the other side of this pandemic, there’ll be thousands of faculty and students, sick of screens, looking forward to the possibilities that a real-presence community of learning can once again offer.

[The repetition is deliberate.]