A Problem for College in the Fall: Reluctant
Professors
Most
universities plan to bring students back to campus. But many of their teachers
are scared to join them.
·
July 3, 2020 Updated 9:50 a.m. ET
College students across the country have been
warned that campus life will look drastically different in the fall, with
temperature checks at academic buildings, masks in half-empty lecture halls and
maybe no football games.
What they might not expect: a lack of
professors in the classroom.
Thousands of instructors at American
colleges and universities have told administrators in recent days that they are
unwilling to resume in-person classes because of the
pandemic.
More than three-quarters of
colleges and universities have decided students can return to
campus this fall. But they face a growing faculty revolt.
“Until
there’s a vaccine, I’m not setting foot on campus,” said Dana Ward, 70, an
emeritus professor of political studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif.,
who teaches a class in anarchist history and thought. “Going into the classroom
is like playing Russian roulette.”
This comes as major outbreaks have hit
college towns this summer, spread by partying students and practicing athletes.
In an indication of how fluid the
situation is, the University of Southern California said late Wednesday
that “an alarming spike in
coronavirus cases” had prompted it to reverse an earlier
decision to encourage attending classes in person.
With more than a month before schools
start reopening, it is hard to predict how many professors will refuse to teach
face to face in the fall. But schools and professors are planning ahead.
A Cornell University survey of its
faculty found that about one-third were “not interested in teaching classes in
person,” one-third were “open to doing it if conditions were deemed to be safe,”
and about one-third were “willing and anxious to teach in person,” said Michael
Kotlikoff, Cornell’s provost.
Faculty
members at institutions including Penn State, the University of Illinois, Notre
Dame and the State University of New York have signed petitions complaining
that they are not being consulted and are being pushed back into classrooms too
fast.
The University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign campus is known for its lively social scene, says a faculty
petition. To expect more than 50,000 students to behave according to public
health guidelines, it goes on, “would be to ignore reality.”
At Penn State, an open letter signed by
more than 1,000 faculty members demands that the university “affirm the
autonomy of instructors in deciding whether to teach classes, attend meetings
and hold office hours remotely, in person or in some hybrid mode.” The letter
also asks for faculty members to be able to change their mode of teaching at
any time, and not to be obligated to disclose personal health information as a
condition of teaching online.
“I shudder at the prospect of teaching
in a room filled with asymptomatic superspreaders,” wrote Paul M. Kellermann,
62, an English professor at Penn State, in an essay for Esquire
magazine, proclaiming that “1,000 of my colleagues agree.” Those
colleagues have demanded that the university give them a choice of doing their
jobs online or in person.
University
officials say they are taking all the right precautions, and that the bottom
line is that face-to-face classes are what students and their families — and
even most faculty members — want. Rachel Pell, a spokeswoman for Penn State,
said the petition signers there represented only about 12 percent of the
9,000-member full- and part-time faculty. “Our expectation is that faculty who
are able to teach will return to the classroom as part of a flexible approach,”
she said.
Driving some of the concern is the fact
that tenure-track professors skew significantly older than the wider U.S. labor
force — 37 percent are 55 or older,
compared with 23 percent of workers in general — and they are more than twice
as likely as other workers to stay on the job past 65, when they would be at
increased risk of adverse health effects from the virus.
Many
younger professors have concerns as well, including about underlying health
conditions, taking care of children who might not be in school full-time this fall, and not
wanting to become a danger to their older relatives. Some are angry that their
schools are making a return to classrooms the default option. And those who are
not tenured said they felt especially vulnerable if they asked for
accommodations.
Many professors are calling for a
sweeping no-questions-asked policy for those who want to teach remotely, saying
that anything less is a violation of their privacy and their family’s privacy.
But many universities are turning to their human resources departments to make
decisions case by case.
Anna Curtis, an associate professor of
criminology at the State University of New York, Cortland, asked to be allowed
to teach remotely from home so she could care for her 4-year-old son. She said
she was worried about what she would do if he were sent home from day care for
ordinary things like sniffles and a fever that could be seen as possible signs
of Covid-19, and she did not want to constantly be scrambling to find child
care during a pandemic. Her request was denied, she said.
The university’s human resources
department, she said, told her that caring for a child did not qualify as a
reason to stay home under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and that
she would have to take family leave.
“But
that doesn’t happen until the sickness happens,” she said. Going in and out of
virtual mode will be disruptive to both her and her students, she said, adding,
“It’s a parent penalty, and most of the time it’s the women doing the primary
care.”
Stephanie Silvera, 45, an epidemiology
professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said she withdrew from a
planning committee in frustration after she could not get the other members,
who were administrators, to focus on deciding which classes needed to be taught
in person and which ones could be done online.
Many
students at the university are commuters, and work in the health care industry,
Dr. Silvera said, heightening the risks of their contracting the virus and
passing it to the faculty.
Joseph Brennan, a spokesman for
Montclair State, said that another group was looking at pedagogical issues, and
that the university was making getting back to in-person classes a high
priority.
“Our students generally feel that they
learn better in person,” Mr. Brennan said. “We do not want to be a 100 percent
online university.”
Instructors at Georgia Tech said they
were told last week that they would either have to be 65 or older or have one
of seven specific health conditions, like diabetes or chronic lung disease, to
qualify to teach remotely.
Professors
at the university are being urged to help “achieve our objective to have a fall
term that approximates normal residential instruction and is cognizant of
public health requirements,” according to a PowerPoint presentation circulated
among the faculty.
Alexandra Edwards, who teaches
first-year writing at Georgia Tech, had planned to teach from home, and thought
her request to do so would be “just a formality.” Now Ms. Edwards, 35, who says
she has a disability that is not on the exemption list, is concerned that she
will not qualify to teach remotely. “I don’t feel safe, personally, going onto
campus to teach,” she said.
Joshua
Stewart, a spokesman for Georgia Tech, said the university’s high-risk
categories were based on guidance from the federal government and the Georgia
Department of Public Health. “If that guidance evolves, our plan will evolve
along with it,” he said.
Other universities have been more open
to letting professors decide for themselves what to do. “Due to these
extraordinary circumstances, the university is temporarily suspending the
normal requirement that teaching be done in person,” the University of Chicago
said in a message to instructors on June 26.
Yale said on Wednesday that it would
bring only a portion of its students back to campus for each semester:
freshmen, juniors and seniors in the fall, and sophomores, juniors and seniors
in the spring. “Nearly all” college courses will be taught remotely, the
university said, so that all students can enroll in them.
Cornell plans to make clear to students
before each semester begins which classes will be offered in person and which
will be online, so they are not surprised, said Mr. Kotlikoff, the provost. He
said the university environment would be safer than the outside world because students
would be tested even when they did not have symptoms.
Still, campuses are not fortresses, and
professors in states that have seen recent spikes in coronavirus infections are
particularly worried. Hundreds of cases have been linked to universities in Southern states in
recent days, including clusters among the football teams at Clemson, Auburn and
Texas Tech, and outbreaks tied to fraternity rush parties in Mississippi and to
the Tigerland nightlife district near the Louisiana State campus.
“We’re all holding our breath to see
what the policies will be,” said Terrence Peterson, an assistant professor of
history at Florida International University in Miami. Professor Peterson, 35,
said he had respiratory ailments and a 6-month-old daughter at home.
Joshua Wede, 40, a psychology professor
at Penn State, argued that it was not possible to maintain a meaningful level
of human interaction when students are wearing masks, sitting at least six feet
apart and facing straight ahead.
“The
value that you have in the classroom is totally lost,” he said. “My style of
teaching, I’m walking all over the room. I wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Professor Wede said a survey of his department
found that one out of five faculty members would not be comfortable teaching
face to face. But people fear speaking out, he said: “If the university knows
they are high-risk, and they have to go remote, are they not going to renew
their contracts?”
At Pitzer College, Professor Ward said
that whether to go back into the classroom to teach is a hot topic among the
faculty.
“Nine out of 10 are worried,” he said,
especially with the recent rise in cases in California. He is not scheduled to
teach until spring, he said, but he expects to sit out that course for health
reasons and on principle, because he does not think it is fair to promise
students something they will not get.
“It’s
not possible to replicate an in-class experience,” he said. “It’s a kind of
bait and switch.”
