Harvard goes online only 20\21 academic year.

06 July 2020, 01:47 PM

ShiroKuro

Princeton's plan is a little more complicated

https://www.princeton.edu/news...020-21-academic-year

quote:
Princeton will invite approximately half of undergraduates to campus each semester, most teaching to remain online

Meanwhile, no news/updates from my uni. The plan is (was?) to have 75% of classes F2F, but the F2F is the hyflex model, with some students present in classroom, and other synchronously Zooming in.

In this model, no instructors ever get sick. So, yay, right?

06 July 2020, 10:40 PM

BeeLady

There go all the international students.

Online only? No VISA for you!

"Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status," read a release from ICE's Student and Exchange Visitor Program. "If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings."

06 July 2020, 11:01 PM

QuirtEvans

There's one obvious effect of that rule, and one less obvious one.

The obvious one: schools will feel economic pressure to be open in-person, or else they'll lose the flow of international tuition that is critical for some of them.

The less obvious one: it isn't just good enough for a school to be open for in-person classes. Foreign students have to ATTEND. So, if in-person attendance is optional they have to bear the risk of attendance while their domestic classmates can make the choice to attend remotely.

07 July 2020, 09:19 AM

ShiroKuro

quote:
The less obvious one: it isn't just good enough for a school to be open for in-person classes. Foreign students have to ATTEND. So, if in-person attendance is optional they have to bear the risk of attendance while their domestic classmates can make the choice to attend remotely.

I hadn't thought of it that way.

Well, gee, it's consistent though isn't it. The most marginalized groups tend to be the ones with the least amount of choice in terms of exposing themselves to covid risk

07 July 2020, 02:16 PM

Nina

To be honest, they have to ENROLL. I can think of a jillion ways around this, but the universities will have to adopt some sort of hybrid model. Because the rules are so unclear, I think a professor could require a 20-minute face-to-face "recitation" sometime during the term and the course could be considered not fully online.

The other unspoken issue here is whether professors can be compelled to teach in person. Some can't wait to get back to the classroom/lab, others are very concerned for whatever reason. But how this shakes out, statistically speaking, is that in-person courses are more likely to be taught by junior faculty, adjuncts and graduate students, increasing their risk of exposure.

The bottom line of this, for me, is that it's a punitive, ill-conceived notion that someone in ICE dreamed up as a means to massage Trump's ego and signal to his base. But the issues of inequality regarding who gets to stay home and who has to go to work are alive and well in higher ed, just as they are in any other workplace.

08 July 2020, 10:00 AM

jon-nyc

Berkeley is coming up with a 1 credit in-person class for international students to sign up for so they can stay here and keep their visas.

08 July 2020, 10:07 AM

Steve Miller

quote:
Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Berkeley is coming up with a 1 credit in-person class for international students to sign up for so they can stay here and keep their visas.

08 July 2020, 09:29 PM

Nina

quote:
Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Berkeley is coming up with a 1 credit in-person class for international students to sign up for so they can stay here and keep their visas.

Great idea. They could even give it some sort of jingoistic title like "Patriotism for non-Americans," to push back on any criticism from the White House.

I'm kidding. Sort of.

14 July 2020, 04:08 PM

wtg

From The Hill:

quote:
The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a policy that would have stripped visas from international students whose courses move exclusively online amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The move comes after the policy announcement last week sparked a flurry of litigation, beginning with a suit brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by California's public colleges and later a coalition of 17 states, among other challenges.

Judge Allison Burroughs, a federal district judge in Boston who was expected to preside over oral arguments in the Harvard-MIT case, made the surprise announcement at the beginning of the court proceedings Tuesday.

“I have been informed by the parties that they have come to a resolution,” Burroughs said, adding, “They will return to the status quo.”

The latest development cancels a move U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced last week that international students whose courses move entirely online would be required to depart the country or transfer schools and reinstates an earlier plan to grant exemptions to student visa holders.

In March, as the government scrambled to prepare for the public health crisis, ICE offered a reprieve to student visa holders, who are normally required to attend in-person classes to remain in the country.

ICE reversed itself with little warning last week, saying that any student visa holders in the U.S. would have to leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online.

The Harvard-MIT suit asked a federal court in Boston for a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction against the administration's new policy.

Their lawsuit alleged that ICE’s decision appeared designed to “force universities to reopen in-person classes,” thereby increasing the risk of exposure to the coronavirus while scrambling carefully laid plans to conduct courses online and upending foreign students’ lives.

The universities accused the administration of committing several violations of a federal law known as the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which concerns how certain decisionmaking power resides with federal agencies. At issue was whether ICE’s new policy was legally justified or if it was “arbitrary and capricious” and thus illegal under the act.