Harvard University will invite 40% of its students back to campus this fall and continue with online learning, while Princeton brings back half its undergraduates and cuts tuition.
Harvard is welcoming back all first-year students as well as students “who need to return to campus to continue to progress academically,” President Larry Bacow, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Edgerley Family Dean Claudine Gay and Danoff Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana wrote on university’s website Monday.
All students living on campus will have their own dorm room and be required to sign a pledge agreeing to new health measures such as mandatory video training, daily symptom checks, coronavirus testing every three days, participation in contract tracing, and wearing masks and physical distancing, they said.
Harvard University Health Services will be able to quarantine up to 250 individuals.
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“Without a vaccine or effective clinical treatments for the virus, we know that no choice that reopens the campus is without risk,” the president and deans wrote. “That said, we have worked closely with leading epidemiologists and medical experts to define an approach that we believe will protect the health and safety of our community, while also protecting our academic enterprise and providing students with the conditions they need to be successful academically.”
If density restrictions must be continued into the spring, seniors will be the next group of students welcomed back.
Tuition will remain the same for all students, but those on financial aid who remain remote will receive a $5,000 room and board credit. The university said it would provide assistance to students who cannot access the technology for online learning.
Harvard announced at the end of June that instruction would remain online with some rare exceptions.
Princeton cuts tuition 10%
Princeton University will bring back about half of its undergraduates for the fall and spring semesters, and give every student a chance to live on campus at least part of the year, President Chris Eisgruber announced on school’s website Monday.
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Because most undergraduates will only on campus for at most one semester, Princeton will discount tuition 10% for all students for the academic year, Eisgruber said.
Faculty have been working over the summer to improve Princeton’s remote learning program as most instruction will remain online during the year, he added.
“Princeton’s preferred model of education emphasizes in-person engagement, but in-person engagement is what spreads this terrible virus,” he wrote. “While I wish that we might return immediately to the kind of campus life that we enjoyed when March 2020 began, this moment imposes different responsibilities upon us.
UB’s coronavirus page offers complete coverage of the impacts on higher ed.
