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Michigan State University decided not to open campus for in-person classes or student residence two weeks before the semester start. Not the earliest call for sure, but one of the relatively few (save the Cal State system) large public university to make the call preemptively.
I welcomed the decision, and thought it was the prudent course of action. Did it pay off? Hard to tell, and examples like the University of Wisconsin, a decent point of comparison, suggest maybe it did a bit. But check out Ingham County (MSU's jurisdiction) since August 1
Total testing is not up, but daily cases - allocated by MI HHS to the onset of symptoms, is way up, as is the share of tests that return a positive result.
MSU does not have an extensive testing and reporting system in place - it does have a new opt-in saliva based test system - so this probably (and I am veering out of my depths here) not a complete picture.
I think there is broad consensus that colleges and universities have not handled this well.
What can you do when students congregate near campus, and contribute to community spread?
What can you do when students congregate near campus, and contribute to community spread?
Students could be held to high conduct standards for behavior off campus, and suspended or expelled for violations, but the police and punish approach may not achieve good compliance and seems likely to fracture the campus relationship with students.
Comprehensive mandatory testing regimes require access to students, faculty, and staff, probably on campus and are challenging to implement when you suspend on-campus activity, but such testing and monitoring systems are almost certainly needed.
In MSU's case the City of East Lansing has imposed ordinances beyond state imposed rules but has not closed local businesses (to my knowledge) or prevented local landlords from renting houses and apartments, which might be hard to do and would have adverse economic consequences.
Places like MSU, and Wisconsin, and the many others that are cites of community spread are built, economically and culturally, on the mass congregation of tuition payers whose status as students gives access to a social system. Most times, that is a source of stability ....
but that model is not well suited for pandemic resiliency.
I don't have a better answer but to say that that US culture is not well suited for a pandemic, this is worse by intense polarization, and the most charitable accounting of the federal government is it's incompetent.
I don't have a better answer but to say that that US culture is not well suited for a pandemic, this is worse by intense polarization, and the most charitable accounting of the federal government is it's incompetent.
As @kevinrmcclure and others have observed, these conditions, coupled with tuition dependence, state-level political pressure, and reliance on big scale operations make being a large public university nearly impossible right now.
Last thought: Of course campus administrators need to be held accountable and the university community should push for better performance. But those who were stridently bullish, in my opinion, deserve the most scrutiny.
