Universities May Not Resume In-Person Classes Until 2021

Universities were among the first institutions to take action against the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States earlier this spring when schools across the country sent students home to complete the semester online, and now some schools are beginning to consider extending those measures.

Boston University has already called off all “in-person summer activities” scheduled to take place on campus, and the school is also prepared to continue online-only learning should the pandemic prevent students from being able to safely return to campus in the fall as planned, CNN reported.

“The Recovery Plan recognizes that if, in the unlikely event that public health officials deem it unsafe to open in the fall of 2020, then the University’s contingency plan envisions the need to consider a later in-person return, perhaps in January 2021,” the university said in a statement.

While President Robert A. Brown maintains that the school is still focusing its efforts on finding “the best and safest way” to bring students back to campus in the fall, the university isn’t ruling out the possibility that students’ return may be delayed, and other schools are currently eyeing their own fall plans with a similar level of cautious optimism.

“Only the novel coronavirus will determine what happens. We can hope for a full return in fall 2020, but hope is not a strategy. So that is why we are going to prepare as best we can for every possible contingency,” Oregon State spokesman Steve Clark told The Oregonian. Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said the school is considering “lots of different scenarios” in an interview last week.

“We are cautiously optimistic that the fall semester will be able to launch with the normal face-to-face campus experience,” the University of Arizona said in a recent statement to the Arizona Daily Star. “But of course we will prioritize the health and well-being of our community in making that decision.”

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