Dr. Sarah Van Orman treads carefully around the word 鈥渘ormal鈥� when she describes what the fall 2021 term will look like at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and other colleges nationwide.
In the era of covid, the word conjures up images of campus life that university administrators know won鈥檛 exist again for quite some time. As much as they want to move in that direction, Van Orman said, these first steps may be halting.
鈥淲e believe that higher education generally will be able to resume a kind of normal activity in the fall of 鈥�21, and by that I mean students in classrooms and in the residence halls, others on campus, and things generally open,鈥� said Van Orman, USC鈥檚 chief health officer. 鈥淏ut it will not look like the fall of 2019, before the pandemic. That will take a while.鈥�
Interviews with campus officials and health administrators around the country reveal similar thinking. Almost every official who spoke with KHN said universities will open their classrooms and their dorms this fall. In many cases, they no longer can afford not to. But controlling those environments and limiting viral spread loom among the largest challenges in many schools鈥� histories 鈥� and the notion of what constitutes normalcy is again being adjusted in real time.
The university officials predicted significantly increased on-campus activity, but with limits. Most of the schools expect to have students living on campus but attending only some classes in person or attending only on selected days 鈥� one way to stagger the head count and to limit classroom exposure. And all plan to have vaccines and plenty of testing available.
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to be using face coverings,鈥� Van Orman said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to be lowering densities of people in certain areas. We鈥檙e going to be offering vaccinations on campus, and we need tracking mechanisms so that we can perform contact tracing when it鈥檚 called for.鈥�
With three vaccines being administered nationally so far, the chances that college faculty and staff members could be partially or fully inoculated against covid by fall are improving. Students generally fall well down on the priority list to receive covid vaccines, so schools are left to hope that vaccination of adults will keep covid rates too low to cause major campus outbreaks. It may take months to test that assumption, depending on vaccination and disease rates, the duration of vaccine-induced immunity and the X-factor of variants and their resistance to existing vaccines.
And most colleges are interpreting as prohibiting them from requiring staffers or students to be vaccinated, because the shots have been granted only emergency use authorization and are not yet licensed by the Food and Drug Administration.
Regardless, many schools are powering forward. The University of Houston recently announced it would return to full pre-pandemic levels of campus activity, as did the University of Minnesota. Boston University president Robert Brown students will return this fall to classrooms, studios and laboratories 鈥渨ithout the social distancing protocols that have been in place since last September.鈥� No hybrid classes will be offered, he said, nor will 鈥渨orkplace adjustments鈥� be made for faculty and staff.
The University of South Carolina plans to return residence halls to normal occupancy, with face-to-face classes and the resumption of other operations at the 35,000-student main campus, Debbie Beck, the school鈥檚 chief health officer, announced last month.
At some of the largest state institutions, however, it鈥檚 clear that a campus-by-campus decision-making process remains in play. In December, the California State University system, a behemoth that enrolls nearly students, announced plans for instruction this fall, only to be contradicted by officials at one of its 23 campuses.
The 17,000-student Chico State campus plans to offer about a quarter of its fall course sections either fully in person or blended, president Gayle Hutchinson to the campus community in February. 鈥淭here is no easy explanation of what this means for students,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t could mean a fully online schedule, or one that is both in-person and online.鈥�
The 285,000-student University of California in January declared a return to instruction for fall, but said specific plans and protocols would be announced by each of its 10 campuses. Places like UCLA, in Los Angeles County, which was ravaged by sky-high infection rates for months, could wind up with far fewer in-person classes than UC campuses in Merced or Santa Cruz.
There鈥檚 no getting around the financial component of schools鈥� decisions for the fall. After most of the more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. went into full or nearly full physical shutdown late last spring, overall enrollment and freshman enrollment decreased by more than 13%. And the real pain was felt in empty dormitories and cafeterias. For many schools, room and board make up the profit margin for the year.
According to research by the , room and board costs rose faster than tuition and fees at public two- and four-year institutions over the past five years. In 2017, the Urban Institute found that room and board costs had since 1980 in inflation-adjusted dollars. When those dollars dry up, as they have during the pandemic, budgets can be severely strained.
In mid-March, Mills College, a 169-year-old women鈥檚 liberal arts school in Oakland, it would no longer admit first-year undergrads and would instead become promoting women鈥檚 leadership. Mills is among a number of schools in financial distress that the pandemic pushed over the edge.
In an October seeking enhanced financial support, the American Council on Education estimated a collective $120 billion in pandemic-related losses by the nation鈥檚 colleges and universities. The in February revised that estimate to a staggering $183 billion, 鈥渢he biggest losses our financial sector has ever faced.鈥�
There are no easy solutions. The hybrid class model, with professors simultaneously teaching some students in person and others online, 鈥渋s a heavy lift for both institutions and faculty,鈥� said Sue Lorenson, vice dean for undergraduate education at Georgetown University. But although instructors generally loathe it, that model almost certainly will be in place at most schools this fall to keep enrollments as high as possible.
Clearly, the preference at any school is to have those students back on campus. And university health officials would rather see them living in dorms. As long as infection rates are low in communities around campus, 鈥渢he schools really have a great ability to keep those kids in the residential halls very safe,鈥� Van Orman said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got the ability to test them regularly and mitigate with mask-wearing, distancing, disinfecting and other things.鈥�
One of USC鈥檚 biggest viral outbreaks, in fact, occurred off campus last summer, when became infected in the 鈥渇raternity row鈥� area, a couple of blocks away from the university.
On campuses across the country, officials say, the fall term will again be marked by adjustments all around. And as for the return to a true normal?
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think, reasonably, that this will happen before September of 鈥�22, and I truly believe we鈥檒l probably be looking at 鈥�23,鈥� Antonio Calcado, chief operating officer at Rutgers, New Jersey鈥檚 70,000-student state university, during a campus presentation. 鈥淚t was easy bringing the university to a standstill. It鈥檒l be difficult bringing it back up to where we need to be.鈥�
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