Back to school

The California State University (or rather its Chancellor, Timothy White, and his team) took the decision in May to go completely online for the Fall 2020 with a high likelihood that the System's twenty three campuses will also be online in the spring.

That was simultaneously a bold decision (the CSU was the first major university in the country to make that decision) and at the same time something of a no-brainer. If the virus was under control by the end of the summer, that is, if cases were so few that testing and tracing was logistically feasible, in-person classes might have been possible; but if there was going to a significant chance that the virus was still circulating undetected, then bringing student to campus was always going to be a terrible idea.

Anyone who has to interact with the age demographic that the typical student body comprises could have told you that mask-wearing, no socializing and social distancing were non-starters. While this isn't a critique of all twenty-somethings, it applies to a large enough proportional that a covid hot-spot was all but inevitable: as, indeed, recent events have shown.

The other interesting aspect to this is the apparent greater willingness of elite private institutions to offer in-person classes. While this is not s statistically validated correlation, anecdotal evidence seems to support that notion that well known private schools were more likely to re-open with in-person classes than lesser known public ones. If this is so, what might explain this?

Two things. First is the power of the purse. Well heeled parents can exert considerable pressure on schools and may have used that leverage to sway schools' decision-making. If wealthy two-career families would rather not have their kids at home, just make sure that their university takes them off their hands.

The second may be hubris. Institutions comprised of people who see themselves at the top of their profession may overestimate their ability to deal with a situation that realistically isn't in their wheel-house. But that's not uncommon in top management teams; it's a feature of M&A 'disappointments', so why should the same dynamic not apply here?

Admittedly 20/20 hindsight and confirmation bias may be wt work in my interpretation, but one thing is clear; trusting people to "do the right thing" isn't a always such a great strategy. Perhaps it's time for time senior academic administrators to go back to school?