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Nicholas Ladany will become president of Oglethorpe this summer. Southern Utah's new provost will take his post in May.

Though the coronavirus pandemic is different, the strategies for responding are, in many cases, the same.

Remote learning is tough on many students, but for disadvantaged students it can be even harder. Two experts offer advice on how to continue to support your students throughout the experience.

EditorÔÇÖs note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For more coverage, see our coronavirus hub

TIJUANA AND San Diego are rumbustious siblings. The San Ysidro border crossing, which links them, is the worldÔÇÖs busiest. Some 5m people a month make the northward journey between the cities. But covid-19 has brought about an abrupt change in their relationship. On March 19th CaliforniaÔÇÖs government ordered the stateÔÇÖs 42m residents to stay home to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. The next day Donald Trump, the American president, announced that the United States-Mexico border would be closed to all but ÔÇ£essentialÔÇØ traffic.

San Diego immediately became a ghost town, its streets bare but for a few dog walkers and homeless people. At each stop on an empty tram, a gloved attendant wiped clean the buttons that operate its doors. Traffic at San Ysidro slowed to a trickle. But at Tijuana beach, a few hundred metres across the border, couples strolled, vendors sold hot dogs and party-goers congregated around fires. Despite the notable absence of...

EditorÔÇÖs note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For more coverage, see our coronavirus hub

IN BRAZIL, COPACABANA beach is deserted and football stadiums are being turned into field hospitals. Colombia has shut its border with Venezuela. Seabirds have taken possession of Peruvian beaches and a puma was spotted ambling through the suburbs of Santiago, ChileÔÇÖs capital. Covid-19 has now arrived in strength in Latin America. With it have come lockdowns in many countries, though some leaders remain in denial, storing up trouble. Everywhere, it is threatening and testing both public health and livelihoods.

The virus has struck a patient that in economic terms has a serious pre-existing condition. Since 2014 the regionÔÇÖs economy has grown at an annual average rate of less than 1% a year and income per person has dropped. Now it faces a contraction even more severe than that induced by the financial crisis in 2009, when Latin AmericaÔÇÖs GDP fell by 1.7%. Back then, thanks to prudent economic management, many countries were able to soften the blow by...

EditorÔÇÖs note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For more coverage, see our coronavirus hub

THE FIRST person to die from covid-19 in the state of Rio de Janeiro was a 63-year-old maid who commuted each week to a beachside apartment in Leblon, the priciest neighbourhood in Brazil. Her employer had recently returned from Italy. The maid, who had diabetes and high blood pressure, died on March 17th in a city 100km (60 miles) away, where she and five relatives shared a cinder-block house. Several hospital workers there have since fallen ill. 

If the virus in Italy jumps between generations living together, in Brazil it started by hopping between classes, which are socially distant but physically close. One vector may be the populist president, Jair Bolsonaro. On March 15th, after his communications secretary tested positive for the virus, he ignored quarantine orders and took selfies with fans. When the first Brazilian died of covid-19 on the next day, he denounced ÔÇ£hysteriaÔÇØ about the virus.

Other leaders are less complacent...

A small number of international boarding school students are stranded in the UK because of coronavirus and may face problems with their mental health, according to industry professionals.

Most international students returned home after schools in the UK were recently closed by the Department for Education in response to the pandemic.

“The mental health dimension to this is huge”

The closures coincided with the end of term and at boarding schools like Bedales in Hampshire, students were allowed to leave early. However, the Boarding Schools’ Association has confirmed that a number of students have been unable to return home.

“In line with government guidelines, BSA schools are now closed with the exception of children of key workers, vulnerable children and some who were unable to go home due to travel and health restrictions,” Robin Fletcher, chief executive of BSA, told The PIE News.

“BSA and our members are working closely with authorities to support the NHS and vulnerable people at this time,” he added.

Yasemin Wigglesworth, executive officer of guardianship accrediting body Aegis, explained that both guardians and schools are looking after those students who are unable to return home.

“Some schools are staying opening for as long as needed so some students are remaining there, whilst others are staying in homestays arranged by their guardianship organisation,” she told The PIE.┬á

“Those remaining over Easter will either stay with homestays or in school, if open.

“Our guardians are still working hard to try and get their remaining students on flights home where possible. ItÔÇÖs been an extremely intense and pressured time for guardians.”

Wigglesworth added that the gratitude from overseas parents for the support received by guardians has been “overwhelming”.

Caroline Nixon, general secretary of The British Association of Independent Schools with International Students, told The PIE that the first thought of UK schools is to keep students physically safe, but their mental health must also be considered.

“Whether they are still in the UK┬á or whether they are still to be placed somewhere, the mental health dimension to this is huge and is going to go on being huge as long as people are cooped up and a long way from home,” she said.

The BSA recently held a webinar for its members, which was presented by positive psychology coach Ruth Hughes, to help them understand how coronavirus might impact their students’ psychological wellbeing.

Hughes spoke to┬áThe PIE┬áabout the risks to students’ mental health by referring to SCARF, a psychological model that explains social behaviour.

“If you look at the central points of identity as being status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. All of those are going to be adversely impacted by being left behind,” she said.

“ItÔÇÖs been an extremely intense and pressured time for guardians”

Hughes explained that students are in a very uncertain situation, not just because they donÔÇÖt know when they will be able to go home, but also because students donÔÇÖt know if their school friends will be returning for the summer term.

She explained that this could negatively impact their mental health.

ÔÇ£At the moment a lot of schools donÔÇÖt know if they are going to open for the summer term, and if they are when. So some of these kids were left thinking that term will open as normal after the holidays. Now is that going to happen?” she added.

The post UK: boarding students’ mental health concerns appeared first on The PIE News.

They find themselves at the center of many campus disputes.

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Advocates who have been pushing for student loan debt to be canceled were disappointed that, even with a $2.2 trillion price tag, the stimulus package approved by the U.S. Senate late Wednesday night doesn’t do more.

The president of the umbrella association representing colleges and universities also expressed disappointment, saying the amount of aid for higher education institutions in the bill is “woefully inadequate.”

So even before the Senate sent the relief package to the House, lobbyists were looking ahead to the next stimulus package, which Congress has already begun discussing.

“This isn’t the last bus,” said Terry Hartle, the American Council on Education's senior vice president for government and public affairs, after his group calculated that the bill contains about $14 billion for higher education institutions, far less than the $50 billion they requested in emergency aid.

It’s unknown what the next package would focus on, but with both K-12 and higher education groups complaining about being shortchanged this time, Congress could consider adding education funding, Hartle said.

Throughout the debate over the bill, advocates for student loan borrowers, such as the Young Invincibles, were pushing Democratic proposals in the House and Senate under which the federal government would have made payments on behalf of borrowers and reduced their balances by at least $10,000.

On Wednesday, Kyle Southern, higher education policy and advocacy director for the Young Invincibles, a millennial advocacy group, said, "Congress has done the basic duty for students and borrowers by holding them harmless for now." But, he said, "for people carrying a heavy load of student debt, this bill just places it farther down the trail for them to pick up again."

Under the measure, borrowers with federally held loans will be excused from making their monthly payments, without interest on their balances accruing, for six months, through Sept. 30.

“This bill will keep payroll checks coming to workers during the crisis, relieve financial burdens on Americans during the crisis,” Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican and education committee chairman, said in a statement.

The moratorium on making payments would extend the 60-day break, Betsy DeVos, the U.S. education secretary, announced last week. Some financial aid experts had worried that the temporary waiver on interest President Trump also announced could lead to problems because it required borrowers to contact loan servicers.

But Justin Draeger, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said that based on what he’s been able to learn about the Senate bill, it appeared to make the moratorium on payments and interest automatic.

Draeger also was pleased the bill included a number of provisions to relax or clarify current regulations on behalf of borrowers, including not requiring Pell Grant recipients to repay the federal government if they had to leave school because it closed due to the crisis, as well as not counting disrupted academic terms toward the lifetime limit on receiving Pell. The bill also says canceled classes would not count against a student’s satisfactory academic progress calculation, according to the National College Attainment Network.

Still, as first reported by Inside Higher Ed Tuesday, the bill does not include any debt cancellation, except for a provision that forgives debt incurred in an academic term that ends up being disrupted by the pandemic.

While the suspension of payments helps in the short term, advocacy groups had wanted debt to be canceled, anticipating that borrowers will have a hard time making payments even after the crisis ends, as the economy gears back up.

Debt Cancellation as Sticking Point

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, acknowledged on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon that the bill does not go as far as advocates wanted.

“This bill is far from perfect,” he said. “Many flaws remain, some serious. By no stretch of the imagination is this the bill Democrats would have written had we been in the majority … We would have included more relief for student borrowers.”

But a Democratic Senate aide said on Tuesday that “Republicans balked at the large-scale cancellation of student loans. We pushed until the end, but it’s not happening.”

In retrospect, Republican Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn telegraphed Republicans’ philosophical opposition to debt cancellation two weeks ago, even before the stimulus package came into shape, during a debate to undo DeVos’s new rule making it more difficult for students who were defrauded, mostly by for-profit institutions, to have their loans forgiven.

Speaking on the Senate floor, the Texas senator mocked Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying his proposal to forgive all federal student loans was a fantasy and not financially responsible.

“To say we’re going to wipe away the debt is not fair to the parents who started to save for their kids’ college even before they started walking or the college student who worked multiple jobs to graduate to work with little or no debt at all,” Cornyn said. “Or decided to go to a community college at a lower cost before they transferred to a four-year institution and found a way to mitigate or keep their debt manageable. And of course this idea of wiping away debt or making everything free is unfair to the person who chose not to go to college only then to be saddled with someone else’s debt.”

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, before the announcement of the deal, Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, described the Democratic proposals for the emergency as a “liberal wish list” that included a “student loan giveaway.”

The stimulus measure is expected to pass the House, though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was unsure how to conduct a vote given the crisis. But some, including Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, raised concerns that the Senate bill would not cancel loans.

Concerns:

- No word on universal and monthly cash assistance
- No word on coverage for all testing/treatment for coronavirus
- No word on eviction/foreclosure protections
- No word on a ban on stock buybacks/bonuses
- No word on student debt, mortgage and rent relief

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 25, 2020

Medical colleges, however, were happy about a $100 billion emergency fund for health-care providers, which could benefit teaching hospitals.

David Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said in a statement that the fund "will help stabilize teaching hospitals and faculty physician practices that are challenged by lost revenue attributable to the treatment of patients during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak -- losses estimated at millions of dollars per day."

Meanwhile, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said in a statement Wednesday that the bill includes some easing of regulations, which institutions sought, and excuses student loan borrowers from making payments for six months. He added, though, that "in this area too there is more that could be done."

But, Mitchell said, “we cannot stress enough that overall, the assistance included in the measure for students and institutions is far below what is required to respond to the financial disaster confronting them.”

Based on the information available Wednesday afternoon, ACE estimated the bill provides far less than the $50 billion in aid requested by institutions.

The latest bill provides $30.75 billion for coronavirus-related aid for all of education, of which 47 percent is earmarked for higher education, about 43 percent for K-12. (States can use about 10 percent for education at their discretion.)

Higher education’s share of the $30.75 billion comes to about $14 billion.

Of that $14 billion, 90 percent was earmarked to go to institutions. And of that $12 billion, 75 percent would be distributed based on the enrollment equivalent of full-time students who are eligible for Pell Grants, favoring large colleges with large numbers of low-income students. The other 25 percent is distributed according to non-Pell enrollment. Those only taking courses online before the crisis  don't count.

The remaining 10 percent of the $14 billion for higher education is divided between historically black colleges and universities and grants for small institutions impacted by the pandemic.

The discretionary funding for states, however, carries a requirement that states not reduce funding for higher education. States could seek a waiver from DeVos if they are in financial crisis.

Craig Lindwarm, vice president of congressional and governmental affairs at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said the requirement would protect institutions from state budget cuts.

He said, though, that the Senate bill requires public institutions to offer extended paid leave. But unlike private businesses, colleges are not eligible for a federal tax credit to defray the cost.

Lindwarm also was looking forward to the next round of stimulus to fix that problem and to try to get additional funding.

“While this legislation is an improvement from where the Senate started, the amount of money it provides to students and higher education institutions remains woefully inadequate,” Mitchell said in a statement.

“Every college in the country is facing a cash flow crisis,” Hartle said. “Federal support will help, but we don’t think it will be enough,” he said, noting that on Tuesday, Central Washington University cited financial exigency and the Art Institute of San Francisco announced it will not accept any more students and will be laying off faculty because of the crisis.

“That’s a school that survived the great earthquake and two world wars. But it’s facing a swift end because of coronavirus,” Hartle said.

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Like many professors across the country who've been displaced from college campuses because of the coronavirus pandemic, Lance Gharavi suddenly found himself teaching his spring semester courses at Arizona State University online using the Zoom meeting platform. His first Zoom session for an approximately 150-student Introduction to Storytelling course went terribly wrong.

Right off the bat, he said, one of the participants used a Zoom feature that lets a user display an image or a video in the background in order to show a pornographic video.

“I didn’t notice it until a student on chat said something about it,” said Gharavi, an associate professor in ASU's School of Film, Dance and Theater. Participants were using fake screen names, some of which he said were very offensive. "The chat window became incredibly active. Most of the comments were not on topic. They were vulgar, racist, misogynistic toilet humor. I would barely even call it humor."

Gharavi was not alone. The University of Southern California reported similar incidents occurring while professors taught classes on the same platform, indicating that the massive migration of college classes online due to the public health crisis came with a new threat -- one that's technical rather than biological. The professors were the victims of "Zoombombing" -- the "Zoom" in this case being the online meeting and course-hosting platform, and the "bombs" typically taking the form of racist vitriol or pornographic content shared with the group by an unwelcome user.

Gharavi doesn't know if the disruptive participants were students behaving badly or hackers who infiltrated his virtual classroom. He hopes it was the latter, because he didn't want to believe his students would do such a thing.

"I tried to keep going with class, but I just had to end it early because I had no way of controlling what was happening. I wasn’t an expert enough at managing a Zoom meeting yet to control it, so I finally ended it because the atmosphere was hostile to my students," Gharavi said. "I spent the next day and a half researching methods of controlling a meeting on Zoom, trying to develop a set of tech fixes that would allow me to maintain tight control over what happens in a Zoom classroom."

He also sent out announcements to students over Canvas, a learning management system, apologizing for the "awful" intrusion.

"I got a lot of emails from students saying how upset they were, but they were all very supportive. They were like, 'this isn’t your fault,'" he said.

Gharavi said the entire incident left him shaken.

"I have never had a day as nightmarish as that in the classroom where I was completely unable to control what happened," he said. "And what happened was horrifying and potentially triggering to some of my students."

There are technological steps professors can take to prevent such attacks, but many, like Gharavi, are learning on the job about the privacy settings of the webcast platforms they're now using.

USC -- where President Carol L. Folt reported Tuesday that some online Zoom classes were "disrupted by people who used racist and vile language that interrupted lectures and learning" -- has created a website with tips for how to prevent Zoombombing.

Zoom has also published a blog post on steps to take to keep would-be crashers out of Zoom meetings. The blog post gives tips on controlling access to meetings and setting up password protections and managing participants' ability to share their screens, as well as information on other options for controlling participants' activities including disabling participants' video, muting participants, turning off file transfer and annotation options, or disabling private chat functions. The company also suggests trying its waiting room feature, which it describes as "a virtual staging area that stops your guests from joining until you’re ready for them."ÔÇï

A Zoom spokesperson said the company was "deeply upset" about the attacks.

"For those hosting large, public group meetings, we strongly encourage hosts to change their settings so that only they can share their screen," the spokesperson said. "For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default, and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining." The company encourages individuals to report incidents of this kind on its website.

Ruha Benjamin, an associate professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of the book Race After Technology (Polity, 2019), has publicly called on Zoom to change its default setting to “off” for screen sharing to limit the potential for Zoombombing.

RT if you agree that @zoom_us should change its default screensharing to “off” to limit #zoombombing, then hosts can approve legit requests to share. https://t.co/htjXEHgMvE

— Ruha Benjamin (@ruha9) March 20, 2020

Benjamin made the call after a virtual storytelling event she did for children in collaboration with an independent bookstore in Princeton was targeted for a presumed Zoombombing attack. Benjamin said she was reading a children’s book called Walter the Farting Dog to a group of about 42 when someone in the Zoom meeting shared an image of “a chubby white guy in a thong with his genitals bulging.” Benjamin said the same user subsequently used the N-word several times, “so we knew it was a targeted, malicious thing.”

Benjamin said Zoom has a responsibility to change the default setting to disallow screen sharing by meeting participants unless the host of a meeting chooses to allow it.

“In the pre-virus era, I believe Zoom was mostly used in smaller groups within institutions,” she said. “Now that people are using it to sort of engender this broader sociality and connection beyond their immediate networks and beyond their immediate colleagues, I think Zoom has to adapt.”

Amelia Vance, the director of youth and education privacy and senior counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum, said webcast companies in general should consider ways in which individuals could abuse their product and “make sure you have set the defaults to minimize the possibility of abuse.”

“That’s not the way that online companies have really been set up,” Vance added. “As we’ve seen in reporting over the last couple years, many companies are set up to allow ease of access and broad information collection as default settings instead of thinking more completely about preventing harms or protecting privacy.”

Vance said professors who plan courses or other educational meetings in Zoom need to be “careful about how they’re planning out these meetings, double-checking that the people who are attending the class or the meeting are only the people who are supposed to be there, making sure that the default settings prior to the meeting starting are all privacy protective. And that’s just not something we’ve trained educators to do. This is all new.”

Allison Henry, chief information security officer at the University of California, Berkeley, said the most important piece of advice “is to familiarize yourself with what the settings are and what the options are. What you might need for a section of five students who may be known to you might be different than if you have a forum of 500 people.”

She said control over who comes into the meeting and retaining the ability to expel people from the meeting and allowing them back in are both important. She added that professors might consider designating a cohost, such as a student instructor, who could, for example, monitor the discussion in a chat box while the professor is preoccupied with presenting material.

“My biggest concern is we’ve had to rush these tools out the door so quickly because of the circumstances that it doesn’t really give people time to make themselves familiar,” Henry said. “We all need to take the time to go through it, to make sure we understand it and set up our meetings and our settings with intention.”

Brian Kelly, director of the cybersecurity program at Educause, an association focused on educational technology, agreed.

"We’re all trying to get the content of courses online, and some of the things might be simple awareness issues like making the Zoom invitation private versus public," he said.

"It's just now being used at a scale and in new ways," Kelly said of Zoom and other online meeting platforms. "A professor may not have used it to teach class; they may have used it with colleagues. It's new ways of using it that require taking a little bit more time and being a bit more thoughtful about how we’re configuring Zoom" and other similar programs.

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Workers at the University of Pennsylvania are going to be employed and paid through the semester, COVID-19 or not.

But the same is not true for the contract staff members who may work at Penn but are employed by Bon Appétit, a dining vendor. Those workers are being laid off without pay at the end of the month.

That divide is now playing out all over the country. As dining halls, residences and campus grounds see fewer students, the need for hundreds of employees on campus diminishes. It's true that many universities are offering the employees who can't work better protections and pay than other businesses would. But contract workers often are left out of those commitments.

For a university administration, that may seem logical. Those workers, who feed and clean up after students, are not technically their employees. The outsourcing of these and many other campus services became the norm years ago.

Students and unions, however, have said paying those workers is still the right thing to do.

At Stanford University, directly employed staff have been guaranteed pay, whether they can work or not, until April 15. Jose Escañuela, president of SEIU Local 2007 and himself a Stanford groundskeeper, said some food service employees still are required to come in, but most other units are home with pay.

Janitors at Stanford, though, are not directly employed by the university and are contractors. Those employees, who are part of a different union, are more vulnerable, Escañuela said. A campus group called Students for Workers' Rights has urged the university to extend the salary continuance to contractors.

Harvard University has agreed to pay its dining workers, whose work has been eliminated, for at least 30 days. But the Labor and Employment Law Project at Harvard Law said in a letter that many contract staff are left out of that policy.

John Preston, secretary-treasurer for Teamsters Local 929, which represents the laid-off Penn workers, said the prospects for those employees are not good. Though many go without work over the summer, most have budgeted strictly and were relying on their last 2.5 months of income.

"These employees are neighbors of this university," Preston said. "Unemployment is not going to pay what the university pays. It doesn't make them whole."

Though the union asked Bon Appétit to provide for workers, the company declined. Now the union is asking Penn to step in and pay workers through the vendor.

"They have $10 billion in endowment," Preston said. "They sure could afford to subsidize Bon Appétit and have Bon Appétit pay their employees for the remainder of the semester." The University of Pennsylvania actually has $14 billion in its endowment.

"The vast majority of businesses nationwide, including Bon Appétit have been dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 situation," the university said in a statement to campus. "And, as this crisis is still unfolding, it is unclear what will be required of food service operations in the coming weeks."

Who Can Afford to Pay?

Other universities that may not have the endowments of the aforementioned three institutions may have trouble making commitments to even their direct staff. Quinnipiac University is reducing all salaries in response to the crisis. Employees who make under $50,000 per year will see a 3 percent cut, with all others seeing a 5 percent.

That rule may not always hold true. Santa Clara University is a short drive from Stanford, but it has an endowment about 27 times smaller. For direct staff, the Jesuit college has offered to pay employees until April 30, about two weeks longer than its neighbor.

The question about what will both universities will do after their April commitment dates remains unclear.

In a letter to staff, Santa Clara administration said it could lose $13 million in expected revenue from room and board alone.

"Stanford has the ability more than Santa Clara to recover," said Escañuela, whose union represents workers at both colleges.

A spokesperson for Santa Clara said that after April, the administration hopefully will have a clearer picture of its financial position. In the meantime, the administration is limiting discretionary spending and putting a hiring freeze on noncritical positions.

Workers who have seen their salaries covered by universities have expressed gratitude. Georgetown University has committed to keeping all its contract dining workers paid until the end of the semester. The university is giving Aramark, its vendor, the funds.

Daysi Molina, who works at a cafe on Georgetown's campus, is now able to stay home, as her doctor has instructed her. She's been able to drive her son to his job at Safeway, so he can avoid public transit.

"This is the first time I feel safe," she said.

Sheila Alsbrook, who works in Georgetown's dining hall, said the payment from the university was "a blessing."

"I was just so grateful to know that Georgetown was paying us," she said. "They thought about our safety."

She is in a high-risk group and is staying home, though some of her coworkers have volunteered to keep the dining hall staffed.

"It's important that some of these other colleges pay their employees if the companies they're contracting with say they won't pay us," she said. "We the people should come first."

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The coronavirus pandemic has created immense uncertainty about how colleges and universities can and should proceed with open investigations of sexual assault or harassment complaints. Some colleges are finding it impossible to hold in-person hearings with campus closures and “stay at home” orders issued by state and local governments.

On one hand, victims of alleged sexual misconduct on campuses will endure prolonged trauma if investigations are delayed and may never see their cases resolved, advocates for survivors argue. At the same time, students accused of such misconduct could be put at a disadvantage if cases were to proceed through telephone or videoconferences, said Andrew Miltenberg, an attorney whose firm, Nesenoff & Miltenberg LLP, currently represents about 50 students accused of misconduct at institutions across the United States.

Miltenberg sent letters to his clients’ colleges when they began closing their campuses, asking their Title IX officials that handle sexual misconduct and harassment cases to postpone interviews and hearings. He said he contacted Syracuse University, Purdue University and Loyola University of Chicago, among others, and a “great majority” of them decided to proceed with the hearings after no more than a week of delay. If investigative meetings with his clients or witnesses are to take place virtually, investigators will not be able to effectively judge their credibility through nonverbal cues, which would prove “detrimental” to accused students, Miltenberg said.

Anna Rozenich, director of communications for Loyola Chicago, said the university could not comment publicly on individual cases, but it “remains absolutely committed to providing a fair and equitable process for all students even in the face of unprecedented challenges that COVID-19 transmission presents.”

Syracuse is moving forward with investigations “while at the same time working to balance the university’s legal obligation to prevent and redress discriminatory or harassing behavior with the reality of the global pandemic,” Sarah Scalese, senior associate vice president for communications, said in a written statement.

She noted that federal privacy laws prevent universities from commenting on specific cases, but added in the statement, “We are doing everything we can to be flexible and adapt to the challenging environment this pandemic has created while continuing to advance open investigations.”

Processes at Purdue Fort Wayne are being "modified until the university returns to more normal operations,"  Geoff Thomas, senior director of media relations, said in an email.

"Those who are involved in pending matters have, or will soon, receive notice of the adjustments," Thomas wrote. He added that the university "is putting the health and safety of our campus community first and at this time no in-person meetings are being required.”

Miltenberg said continuing with investigations remotely would be unfair to accused students because the individuals who filed complaints against his clients were granted in-person interviews as part of the process required under Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex at federally funded institutions.

“I don’t think that any person can argue with the fact that as human beings, there is something that we all gain from speaking with someone in person, that we can’t always gain from a telephone call, email, text message or even a videoconference,” Miltenberg said. “That’s an important element of presenting your narrative when you’re an accuser and the accused.”

Ray, a student who graduated from a college in Boston and did not want to be identified beyond her middle name, filed a Title IX complaint in November against a male student who she alleged raped her at his college in Illinois. She said all her interviews with the college's investigators took place over Skype. So her “heart sank” when the college emailed her on Tuesday, informing her of a shelter-in-place order issued for the state, which caused her prehearing meeting to be “postponed to a later date.” Her case “will proceed as soon as the order and outbreak allow,” said the letter, which referred to the college’s student handbook requirement for in-person hearings.

Ray questioned why the college had allowed her to participate in virtual meetings throughout the investigation and now will not proceed over videoconference. She called the decision “inconsistent.”

She said she’ll probably drop the case because of how long it has already taken to move the process forward, even though the college has already concluded its fact finding and told Ray the respondent’s alleged violations could result in his suspension or expulsion, according to the letter.

“They’re obviously giving my assailant the upper hand, and I’m wondering why,” said Ray. “I don’t want this hanging over my head, because it’s weighing on me in a way that’s not productive.”

Delays in cases such as Ray’s will have a number of adverse effects on survivors, said Sarah Nesbitt, a policy and advocacy organizer for Know Your IX, a network of student organizers that supports survivors of sexual violence. The defenders of accused students are “wielding the public health crisis to further strip survivors of their rights and access to education,” Nesbitt said.

“Many survivors that have cases open are on track to graduate this spring. They could be tethered to their university in this very negative way,” Nesbitt said. “Respondents might be able to graduate without the investigation occurring, stripping survivors of their right to even get recourse from their institutions."

Prolonging Title IX investigations or hearings could negatively impact respondents as well, Nesbitt said. Some institutions put holds on the diplomas and transcripts of students involved in sexual misconduct proceedings, which could be problematic for graduating seniors and students applying for graduate school, she said.

Miltenberg agrees that all parties involved in Title IX cases want them finished sooner rather than later, but “the desire for speed or results should not compromise the process,” he said.

Nesbitt said it is shortsighted to entirely dismiss the option of telephone or videoconferencing to move cases forward. She said while it might not work for every situation, such as when either the complainant or respondent has limited access to necessary technology, it’s not impossible to conduct a fair procedure remotely. Videoconferencing is often used for investigations that take place during breaks or while students are studying abroad, Nesbitt said.

“We can point to the practices of the past,” Nesbitt said, recalling the time she was a witness in a Title IX investigation in the United States while studying abroad and was interviewed by an investigator based in the U.S. by telephone. “Not to say everything is perfect, but it’s not impossible to do fairly.”

Title IX complaints were required to be handled in a more timely fashion before Betsy DeVos, the U.S. secretary of education, rescinded Obama-era guidance recommending that a “typical” investigation of a single incident “takes approximately 60 calendar days following receipt of the complaint.”

A DOE fact sheet from 2017 outlining institutions’ obligation to respond to complaints of campus sexual misconduct states, “There is no fixed time frame under which a school must complete a Title IX investigation.”

This lack of a set time frame has left colleges and universities unsure of how to proceed during the public health crisis, said Steven Richard, lead attorney for the Title IX practice at Nixon Peabody, a law firm that represents dozens of colleges and universities. The language used throughout years of DOE Title IX guidance has required institutions to provide “prompt and equitable” processes for both complainants and respondents, and some institutions have their own flexible student conduct policies that allow for adjustment in times such as these, he said.

For example, the college where Ray filed her complaint includes a provision for “unanticipated delays” that would allow the college to revise the timing of steps in her case and proceed “as quickly as reasonably possible given the circumstances,” according to the college’s handbook. Public institutions especially, which are subject to constitutional due process obligations, share Miltenberg’s concern of fairness in the process and that respondents are given “the opportunity to be heard and confront witnesses” either directly or through an adviser, Richard said.

“Part of the challenge will be that both the complaining student and the responding student have the chance to consult with advisers who may be remote,” Richard said. “That’s the overriding goal, to be ‘prompt and equitable.’ Circumstances have intervened that create very challenging and immediate questions about how you interpret those promises to students.”

Public institutions must also stay up-to-date with federal court opinions that could affect telephone and videoconference capabilities, Richard wrote in an article aimed at clients and colleagues who represent colleges in Title IX matters. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, has required institutions to “afford accused students with a right to cross-examine his or her accuser at a hearing,” Richard wrote. Most courts have recognized that these hearings should not be held electronically, Miltenberg said.

Richard has advised his college and university clients “not to stop” ongoing Title IX processes. But he recommends they carefully assess the process, make adjustments and communicate with all parties involved, each step of the way. Institutions have already been under pressure from students claiming in court they were treated unfairly in Title IX processes; the challenges presented by the pandemic could open them up to more legal battles, he said.

Colleges are now looking to the Department of Education to provide some guidance, Richard said. Also weighing on administrators are the department’s pending Title IX rule changes, which could be finalized in the coming weeks and “substantially change” their policies and procedures amid the already-existing difficulties posed by the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

Angela Morabito, press secretary for DOE, declined to comment on the rule and college officials' request for more guidance from the department.

“We would all benefit from some clarity to protect some colleges and institutions, but also all the students,” Richard said. “We’re all trying to figure out where to go and how best to do so, and any clarity, guidance or instruction from the Department of Education would be welcome to define for us what we should be doing moving forward.”

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We're almost to the weekend. A stimulus package is making its way through Congress. Colleges are gathering up laptops to give to students so they can continue to learn online. The number of cases of coronavirus in the States continues to rise, but some local and state governments are taking actions to curtail the spread.

Let's take a break before diving into the news.

This is Lieutenant Dan, a two-legged puppy from Ohio who is the new mascot for Cadbury, maker of the infamous Cadbury creme egg.

Love is still going in the time of coronavirus. Two women tied the knot in New York City, with a friend officiating from a window and others cheering from cars, to ensure they'd both have health insurance if one of them lost their job, according to this story from The Cut. Ah, romance.

All right, let’s get to the news.

The Senate's proposed stimulus bill includes a tax break for student loan payments made by employers. Experts have said a tax break could expand those programs.

S&P Global Ratings is giving a negative outlook to private student housing projects, in addition to higher education over all. Reasons include generally stressful business conditions, as well as broader challenges colleges are facing. Social distancing and college students being sent home from campuses won't help the industry much, either.

Speaking of housing, the University of Maine system estimates its room and board refunds will cost nearly $13 million.

Dozens of professors have signed a letter calling on Congress to help people, not big businesses. Several talked about the dire situation we face in a virtual press conference.

Betsy DeVos, the U.S. education secretary, announced the department will stop involuntary collections of late student loan payments.

Here’s a quick roundup of our latest stories, in case you’ve fallen a bit behind (we don’t blame you):

Emma Whitford has a story on how college leaders are tackling the crisis, one step at a time.

I wrote about the implications on students' privacy due to the quick switch to online learning.

Doug Lederman talked with experts about how the sudden move to remote learning will affect the well-being of professors and students.

News From Elsewhere

What won't be happening because of the coronavirus? The Chronicle of Higher Education tallies the cancellations at one private university.

EdSurge asks whether the coronavirus will inspire another MOOC moment.

If you're wondering what's up with summer courses, U.S. News & World Report posed that question to some universities.

Percolating Thoughts

This is a time when everyone has an opinion. As journalists, we try not to have opinions, but we've gathered some interesting ones from others.

"Confessions of a Community College Dean" ponders how "rain checks" will work in higher ed during this time of uncertainty.

How can colleges help faculty right now? A professor at Albion College has some ideas.

A senior fellow from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center argues that the proposed tax break for employers who help pay off student loans will help those who need it least.

Have any percolating thoughts or notice any from others? Feel free to send them our way or comment below.

We’ll continue bringing you the news you need in this crazy time. Keep sending us your questions and story ideas. We’ll get through this together.

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As colleges shrink campus operations, many student employees are out of work. Some administrators are trying to keep students on the payroll.

After a spike in the state’s Covid-19 cases, Gov. Ralph S. Northam strongly urged Jerry Falwell Jr., the university’s president, to reconsider asking students to return after spring break.

While lessons move online and campuses close, student recruiters are embracing virtual tours and recruitment fairs in efforts to keep universities and prospective students connected as more and more countries go into lockdown.

UNIVER, an online platform for international students focused on the Middle East and North Africa, will be running a virtual recruitment fair from April 19-21 in the face of the increasing difficulty of doing in-person recruitment.

“We are at the peak of the 2020 recruitment cycle… universities are facing stark challenges”

Students will be able to join online chats and video conferences, including with Unibuddy student ambassadors and student accommodation providers Unilodgers, to learn more about courses abroad.

ÔÇ£One of the biggest impacts of the coronavirus here in MENA is on the student recruitment process,” said UNIVER COO Amanda Gregory, who is based in Bahrain.

“We are at the peak of the 2020 recruitment cycle and with the cancellation of multiple events, many due to government restrictions, including school visits all across the region, universities in the region and globally are facing stark challenges.

ÔÇ£We recognise the long-term impact that the current crisis is going to have on international student recruitment and the commercial reality of not being able to deliver yearly marketing plans.

“As we are on the ground in the region, we are effectively able to keep the communication channel open and deliver the targeted numbers of applications without recruiters having to even leave their desks,” Gregory added.

Meanwhile in North America, virtual tours have been in use for years to allow international students to view campuses abroad but are now being offered to domestic students too. Unibuddy recently announced it is partnering with more than 80 colleges and universities in the US to help host college tours.

Universities will be able to host virtual events and chats with prospective students through the platform.

ÔÇ£When I was younger, it wasnÔÇÖt practical to visit most colleges,” said Unibuddy CEO, Diego Fanara.

I know what itÔÇÖs like for todayÔÇÖs students; a huge decision to be made with only websites and brochures. I created this tool to help students connect directly with each other to talk about what itÔÇÖs really like to attend a particular institution.

ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs critical now more than ever to partner with these institutions to better reach and serve prospective students – even in a world of social isolation and quarantines,” he added.

The post Recruitment continues via virtual events appeared first on The PIE News.

Global travel restrictions could mean that such students may not see their families for months.

About $6 billion each would be allocated to institutions and emergency student aid, according to the text of the deal, which is expected to be enacted by Congress this week.

The events, which have become popular ways to recruit new donors, are taking a new direction amid the pandemic.

The mobility of international students could take up to five years to recover from the coronavirus pandemic across the world, as universities continue to grapple with the “extraordinary set of challenges” the crisis has created.

This is the view of Simon Marginson, director of the Centre for Global Higher Education, speaking at the first virtual iteration of UUKi’s annual conference.

As the world faces an economic recession ÔÇô losing up to 10% of GDP worldwide ÔÇô the middle classes which have sustained the growth of international education will temporarily shrink, he suggested.

“As a sector we are looking over the edge into a very significant financial abyss”

“The overall position for international education is… going to take a massive hit,” stated Marginson. “I think we are looking at least a five-year recovery period in terms of the numbers of people that move between countries for education.”

While health factors associated with the Covid-19 pandemic will impact the sector in the next 12 months, the following economic recession will create a “very long recovery period”.

“As a sector we are looking over the edge into a very significant financial abyss,” University of Exeter vice-chancellor Steve Smith agreed.

“With most institutions being able to cope with reduced finances ÔÇô albeit at the cost of investment in major student and staff facilities ÔÇô but most worryingly to be honest, we are totally uncertain where the bottom of this is going to be,” he said.

Smith said reliable predictions of international recruitment for next year are “impossible”.

Commentators agreed that enrolment for the next academic year will look different, with universities grappling with how to deliver programs virtually and market them internationally.

We will need stronger online prototypes says Marginson, face-to-face teaching will not be Business as Usual in September #IHEFonline – but there is a status advantage to IRL learning

ÔÇö Amy Baker (@amybakerThePIE) March 25, 2020

Emerging markets ÔÇô South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and sub-saharan Africa ÔÇô where many educators source students, will be most impacted by the pandemic both health and economically, Marginson stated.

“In many respects in the English speaking countries, this has been a supply driven industry… We are now seeing a flip around in that to see what has become a buyer’s market where we will be hunting for scarce international students,” he suggested.

“The competitive effects will be greater than before,” he added. Additionally, health facilities and reputation in education destination countries “coming out of the pandemic will become very important”.

Marginson also indicated that East Asia countries recovering faster than their counterparts will lead to shifts in student mobility.

“There will be more students coming out of east Asia earlier than they will out of other regions of the world. East Asian countries ÔÇô China, Korea, Japan ÔÇô will become larger providers of regional education than they have been,” he explained.

“The competitive effects will be greater than before”

“The capacity of families to buy into international education on the scale that they have is now gone. We need to think about ways in which we can provide a better experience than we have provided before, including better health security,” Marginson concluded.

Combined with the “financial hardships that will inevitably follow” the virus, pressures associated with┬áclimate change may also lead to reduced international tertiary mobility, Smith noted.

Rapid innovation in online teaching could add to the way the crisis will “change universities and how they operate, teach and research forever”, Smith told delegates at┬áUniversities UK International‘s online IHEF conference.

“As professionals [we] will all be so used to working remotely and via online platforms that in some cases we will never go back to old habits,” Smith suggested.

The “impressive” shift to online delivery has created a question of quality, Marginson added. Online provision systems need to be ramped up in the northern hemisphere to prepare for an academic year that will be predominantly or wholly online that is “likely to persist into 2021,” he said.

However, online provision will not replace face-to-face education in the long term, Marginson predicted. Students will continue to seek immersive experiences in other countries, and perceived “status benefits” attached to face-to-face education will continue.

Asked if universities should price differently for online programs, he said, “If online is going to become a longer-term substitute for face-to-face learning, as it will in some cases, it needs to be seen as a substantially different product.. and it will need a separate pricing structure. The idea that we charge exactly the same price for any kind of online [product] as we charge for face-to-face has to go.”

UK universities have been “struggling to repatriate students”, Smith noted, with some stranded due to closed borders and suspended international flights.

Motivating stuff from Exeter VC Steve Smith: DonÔÇÖt forget about Brexit, Need back-up plan for intÔÇÖl collab post-covid, UK HE sector will be one of leading sectors & key to local recovery #IHEFonline @UUKIntl pic.twitter.com/Ys2STyKHpB

ÔÇö Tom Windle (@windle_tom) March 25, 2020

Whatever the outcome of the crisis, “the UK has to move decisively towards increasing the percentage of international students studying at all levels in the educational system,” Smith concluded.

“Education and research are becoming worldwide more and more international every year,” he said, affirming that the UK should continue to invest in its research output and that it would continue to be world-leading in this respect.

“The education research systems that prosper in the world will be those that are international in focus, producing research that combines the talents and insights of the leading researchers in more than one knowledge economy and supporting and educating students in an increasingly, maybe totally digital way.”

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