COVID-19 Higher Ed Update: Colleges Lean Towards Online Semesters


Wednesday, August 5, 2020

High school students who are planning to apply to college this year and start next year after earning their high school diploma may be wondering how the COVID-19 pandemic has made an impact in higher education. Let's take a quick look.



Last month, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Lafayette College, the University of Delaware and St. John’s College of Nursing announced they would offer all or most classes online through virtual learning and distance education this coming fall.

Lafayette’s president, Alison R. Byerly, shared in an announcement, “We have had to pivot and adapt many times over the last several months, and I know it has not been easy. We now need to do so again.”

Azusa Pacific and Pepperdine Universities announced yesterday that they would have online college semesters this fall. They cited California governor Gavin Newsom’s recently published guidance for K-12 schools.

The University of California, Merced and the University of California, Berkeley announced that they would begin the fall semester online in late August but hope to reassess the situation after four weeks to see if health conditions permit the start of on-campus classes.

Clemson University will begin its fall semester online late August but plans to bring students back to campus a month later in September.

Clemson president James P. Clements shared, “We believe that by delaying the resumption of on-campus activities for another four weeks, and by strictly following the recommended health precautions, the disease will be reduced to a point where we can safely return to something approximating a normal learning environment.”

There is an increasingly evident shift in colleges and universities towards the recognition that in-person learning is not feasible for the fall semester. Online instruction, whether colleges go partially or fully online, seems to be the trend.


In Davidson College’s database cited by Inside Higher Ed., roughly 2,000 two-year and four-year colleges have definitively announced plans for the fall so far. The database shows that 800 are still to be determined, 119 will be fully online, and 693 will be primarily online. The list also shows that 627 colleges will be primarily in-person and 72 universities will be fully in person. The rest, 480 colleges and universities, are planning for hybrid model classes.




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