Like thousands of US colleges and universities this spring, Simmons University in Boston had to adjust to Covid-19 on the fly, closing lecture halls and moving classes online. And like many of its peer institutions, Simmons is preparing for a remote fall.
CONAHEC News and Information
Like thousands of US colleges and universities this spring, Simmons University in Boston had to adjust to Covid-19 on the fly, closing lecture halls and moving classes online. And like many of its peer institutions, Simmons is preparing for a remote fall.
Over 50 state & national civil rights, higher education, & consumer advocacy organizations, including the heads of state universities and community colleges, are calling on the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a student loan borrower “bill of rights.”
A number of institutions of higher learning are already dealing with dangerous and disruptive coronavirus outbreaks shortly after reopening for in-person classes.
KEY FACTS
- August 26:
A New York Times survey published Wednesday of more than 1,500 American colleges and universities (including every four-year public institution and every private college that competes in NCAA sports), revealed at least 26,000 coronavirus cases of and 64 deaths since the pandemic began.
By now, it should be clear that we’re not going back to February. COVID-19 has changed higher education irrevocably. The way Americans expect to learn, the demands on their time and energy, and the job market students will graduate into are forever altered.
The worldwide effort to create a vaccine for the novel coronavirus kicked off in January, soon after scientists in China posted online the genome of a virus causing a mysterious pneumonia. Vaccine development usually takes years and unfolds step by step. Experimental vaccine candidates are created in the laboratory and tested in animals before moving into progressively larger human clinical trials.
South Korea’s grip on the coronavirus faltered this month when a large church in Seoul had an outbreak—involving 915 cases as of 25 August. The government has reinstated restrictions in the city to prevent a surge, but it’s also reporting details of the outbreak publicly. For instance, it has shared that 120 people infected at the church have spread the coronavirus to people at 22 venues, including 4 call centres and 3 hospitals in Seoul.
As institutions pivoted to online learning this spring, what worked well and what didn’t?
When the surgery center where Maygin Hamilton works closed in March, she was scared. The single mother, who had recently paid off $16,000 in legal fees to win custody of her two daughters, wasn’t able to get into California’s unemployment system for three days.
On top of the strain of everyday financial pressures, there was another looming worry: How would they pay for her younger daughter’s upcoming first year in the University of Portland’s nursing program?
Yousuf El-Jayyousi, a junior engineering student at the University of Missouri, wanted guidance and reassurance that it would be safe to go back to school for the fall semester. He tuned into a pair of online town halls organized by the university hoping to find that.
He did not.