Should colleges and universities open in person for the Fall 2020 semester?

On campus and in-person classes will only lead to outbreaks

Question: Should colleges and universities open in person for the Fall 2020 semester?
Position‹2 of 3›: No – Students should do the semester online and not come back to campus
Argument1 of 4›: On campus and in-person classes will only lead to outbreaks

The social nature of college life and classroom experience will make it almost impossible to effectively prevent the spread of the virus

The argument

Residential, dorm-style housing and in-person classes pose a high risk of COVID-19 transmission and will likely result in many localised outbreaks across the country. Colleges and universities that are reopening in person have outlines extensive health and safety programs to prevent the spread of the virus, but their effectiveness has not yet been tested. Bill Gates recently called COVID-19 tests "a complete waste" because the result comes back too slow. If someone has the virus and is tested for it can take days before they receive their results and go into quarantine, giving them ample time to spread the virus. Few people believe that thousands of 18-22-year-olds will return to campus and comply with social distancing and other safety measures. Although students will be asked to sign behavioural contracts with the school, there is little way to effectively monitor all student activity; college campuses are naturally social spaces.

Premises

[P1]Residential dorms and in-person classes create conditions of close, sustained contact that readily transmit COVID-19. [P2] The health and safety measures colleges have outlined are untested, and slow test turnaround times allow infected students to spread the virus before being isolated. [P3] Thousands of 18-22-year-olds on naturally social campuses cannot realistically be monitored or expected to comply with distancing rules, even with behavioral contracts. [C] Therefore, opening campuses in person for Fall 2020 will only lead to outbreaks, and students should do the semester online instead.

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that outbreaks were not inevitable and that an online-only semester carried its own serious costs. Institutions that combined frequent rapid testing, wastewater surveillance, de-densified housing, masking and outdoor instruction did suppress transmission, and students sent home kept socialising in less controlled community settings rather than stopping. Weighed against the documented harms of remote learning — learning loss, deteriorating mental health, forfeited lab and clinical training, and food and housing insecurity for students who depend on campus — a blanket online term was not clearly the lower-risk choice. Effective mitigation, not closure, is what the evidence supports.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Dorms and classes transmit the virus chiefly in the absence of mitigation; testing cadence, de-densification and masking measurably cut spread where they were applied. [Rejecting P2] Rapid antigen testing and wastewater monitoring shortened the detection-to-isolation gap, and 'untested' is not 'ineffective' — several programmes demonstrably contained clusters. [Rejecting P3] Students sent home did not stop socialising; they moved it into less monitored settings, so campus closure did not remove the behavioural risk the argument assumes.