What are Colleges Planning for Fall 2020?

If you are a current high school senior or college student, I am sure that you are wondering what the fall semester this year will look like in terms of life on or off campus. Students from around the country (and globe!) are still feeling the sting of their year being cut short due to COVID-19 and the rocky transition to online learning. Next fall seems like a beacon of hope for some to get back on track and return to a normal college experience. However, in the age of the Corona Virus, universities and colleges are having to totally reconsider how their schools will run next year.

Although some schools have notified their students and communities of their tentative plans for the fall semester, many are yet to announce their final decisions. Below is a look at some colleges around the country, and the information they have released about the fall 2020 semester.

Colleges so far have fallen into four broad categories of their response to the return to school: 

The first category is schools that have announced that they will return to campus in the  fall and hold in-person classes for the majority of the student body. For international students that are unable to return to campus, remote learning is available. University of Notre Dame, University of Austin Texas, University of Washington, Rice University, University of Michigan, Boston College, and University of South Carolina are among schools in this category. Most of the schools have pushed their start date earlier in August, in order to complete a semester before Thanksgiving break in order to reduce the likelihood of a COVID outbreak on campus. 

The second category is schools that have announced they are planning for online learning in the fall. Many of these colleges have plans to invite some but not all students back to campus at different points throughout the year. Bowdoin College, for example, released a statement yesterday notifying their students that first year and transfer students along with students who are unable to complete online learning at home would be the only ones back on campus for fall semester. Similarly, each class at Stanford University will spend two quarters on campus, and one online, rotating through so that there is only ever two classes on campus at once. MIT will only bring back some its undergrads with large changes to housing and class schedule to accommodate social distancing measures. Harvard University is planning for entirely online learning in the fall, with the potential to bring some students back to live in on campus housing. 

A third group of colleges and universities  have adopted a hybrid classroom model for their fall semester. This model has some classes online and others in person, or a mix of both. These schools include New York University, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, and University of Pennsylvania. 

Finally, many schools are yet to announce their plans for the fall semester. Brown University, Georgetown University, Duke University, Cornell University, Princeton University, Yale University, University of California Los Angeles, and Columbia University among many others have not notified their students and community about fall semester plans. Due to the changing nature of the virus and unclear predications for the future of social distancing, these schools are waiting until they know more to make a decision about the fall. 

We know one thing for certain; colleges will look different in the fall, but just how different we do not yet know.