The Corona virus is having a massive impact on the whole education sector globally. This article from the Washington Post is discussing issues being faced by US universities as they attempt to open for the fall semester.
Celeste Torres, a sociology student at the University of California at San Diego, stopped by a self-serve testing station one recent afternoon to perform a five-minute ritual that could hold the key to reopening college campuses nationwide amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
Torres, who is 27 and uses gender-neutral pronouns, used a cellphone to scan a code on the testing kit and link their name to it. Then Torres swabbed inside their nose to obtain a secretion sample, put the swab into a tube, slipped the tube into a plastic bag and dropped the whole thing in a collection bin. From there, the contents would be sent to a laboratory to check for the virus.
Torres wants the university to hold in-person classes in the fall and has no problem with taking viral tests to help make that happen. “If they give us a little peace of mind, that kind of helps,” Torres said.
Many colleges and universities are pushing to bring students back to campus in the fall, pledging an all-out effort to overcome the extraordinary challenges of housing and teaching them during a public health crisis. The UC San Diego experiment is one of many data-gathering initiatives advocates say are needed to reopen.
But the movement to resume higher education in person, after a rocky spring term of remote teaching and canceled commencements, is colliding with concerns that schools could deepen the health crisis if they act too quickly.
The issues and problems being discussed in this article highlight the problems universities are facing in their efforts to reopen. They are under extreme financial pressure to get classes’ happening again. It remains to be seen if US universities will be able to open for live students this fall.
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