My Grandfather’s motto was:
Health first, then school, then other things. He was a diehard Republican (of the
pre-hijacked party – one
that believed that our country should be self-governed, not none -governed). The president of the college where I teach is
a Jesuit
priest. He used to be a stickler
about not calling snow days – then one of our students died on her way into
class in an auto accident on a day when many other schools were out. Since then he has more closely followed the
local norms for school closings. The President
of our country has lost all pretense of caring for the well-being of the
citizens. He is interested in
re-election and believes that a thriving economy is the ticket to get there. He might change his mind and decide that
supporting masks will be the way to get there, but I don’t expect him to start
really caring about people.
We are one month away from the planned start of school. The plan at this point is for all of our students
to come to campus. In a typical year we
have students from 40 or more states and at least 10 foreign countries. They descend on campus, live in tight
quarters, and pass around bugs – they create a veritable petri dish of
infectious diseases.
Our corner of the country is not getting a whole lot of
press. Our curve is rising, but not as
fast as the South and Southwest. Our county is at
the next to highest level of concern based on the governor’s newest method of
rating risk (our Republican governor is very old school and has done a
magnificent job of working with a legislature that would deny the difficulties
of this illness and with the citizens and praising them for the restraint they
have shown until recently). We are
opening up – but the hospitals in my corner of the state are full. We are close to a tipping point in terms of
being able to handle new cases.
Why don’t we go to virtual classrooms? There are two interwoven reasons. The first and most important one is that
boots on the ground, breath the same air experiences are better than virtual
experiences for the cohort that comes to our university. Distance learning works well for some – for
highly motivated learners – which includes non-traditional students who are
working to move into careers that will better tap into their talents – and for
traditional students who are interested and able to be in virtual classrooms.
Ten years ago, I
remember being shocked to discover that on many state university campuses,
students were spending their entire college careers living in dorms and never
setting foot in a classroom – they were only taking virtual classes. And this weird configuration highlights the
other reason to be boots on the ground – that petri dish creates lots of good
stuff – presumably the kids living on campus but taking on-line courses were forming lifetime friendships, considering marriages, and learning the social skills that
help us transition from adolescent functioning to being ready for what is now
called adulting.
So the first issue is that in class learning has value – on
many different levels. But we have been
consistently ignoring this value – we have actually been actively devaluing a college
education. I know, it is hard to say
that given the cost of college. It is
crazy expensive. But two things have led
to that – the first is the ballooning of auxiliary services that are part and
parcel of delivering a competitive education.
Things like computer access and screens in every classroom, along with
white boards and chalkboards plus various offices
on campus to manage a variety of student concerns but also to help students
engage more fully in the college experience – salaries of faculty are certainly
part of that mix (though I make less than some high school instructors and
policemen in this city). There is also
the cost at State Universities of maintaining a large research facility.
In our little world, our President (and the one before him)
have what I call an Edifice complex. We
have built lots of shiny new buildings – most recently a gym that looks very
modern – unlike our old functional but dowdy building that wasn’t part of the
tour given to students and their parents when they came to school. Unlike the old buildings, which were named
for Jesuit priests, the new buildings are named for donors – but the donors
only provide about a quarter of the cost of the buildings and we have borrowed
money for the rest. So we have a huge
amount of debt (I
have told a cautionary tale before about building debt and the ability of a
psychiatric hospital to survive bad economic times).
So, while the costs of providing a quality education have been going up in necessary and optional ways, we have been devaluing the education that should be central to what a University does by offering scholarships
– which are internally referred to as discounts – on our tuition. Our discount rate (I sometimes feel like I
work at a Wal-Mart) is currently around 52%.
What we DON’T discount is room and board. Parents get it that it costs money to house
and feed kids. So room and board has
become our cash cow. We have gone deeply
into debt partly in order to have more dormitory rooms. This means we need to fill those rooms in
order to stay financially afloat. If we
go to all on-line learning, we won’t bring in enough money to service the debt
we have taken on to subsidize the lower tuition rates that we have (I know –
they are still quite high) and we will lose one million dollars for every week
that we do not have butts in seats (and in dorms).
Earlier today I got a call from a high school
classmate. She is facing the same
dilemma I am – only she will be going into a classroom with very young children
– children who, when they need a hug, need a hug. They simply can’t survive without one. And suddenly that becomes a risky thing to
do. She wants to know if we should just
retire. I am five years away from my
planned retirement (and so, more or less, is she - we went to school together). Should we just stop now? Financially that would pose the same problems
that the school is facing. I have debts
that need to be paid out of my income.
Is President Trump Chairman Mao? Is this the great purge of academics that Mao
undertook? I don’t think Trump has any
love for us. He knows that we are mostly
liberals and likely will vote against him in the fall, but I don’t think that
he is thinking (when I am rational) that killing us is the way to get back into
office. I also don’t think my own
President wants to kill me (most of the time – sometimes he does get pretty
angry with me – and with the rest of the faculty). I would hate for him to realize, after we had
become a superspreader site and many of our older faculty and staff are hospitalized
that he had made a mistake – the way he did with the snow days. But we are in a bind.
I wish that there were a way to put all debt on hold for a
year – perhaps even to simply devalue all property. And then to reduce the debt to be consistent
with the new value of the property. We
need to put things on pause so that we can follow my grandfather’s admonition
and take care of our health before we take care of other things. This will require visionary thinking and
remarkable leadership – both of which seem in short supply on both the national
and the local level.
I remember a conversation with one of our staff who is in charge of our buildings and grounds. I was arguing that we didn't need to have all of our buildings be in tip top shape. In fact, when we were thinking about refurbishing the main liberal arts classroom building on campus, the architects met with faculty to get a sense of what a liberal arts building should look like. They fondly said that it should be old - and that it should be comfortable. There should be places to throw yourself onto an old couch so that you could curl up with a book. But the buildings and grounds guy said that doesn't appeal to today's students - and if we don't keep our buildings up to date, their value plummets. My counter? The value of the buildings on our campus is directly related to what happens inside of them, not what they look like. We need to make the experience of being in the classroom as valuable as we can.
Paradoxically, we live in a time when that value may not be accessible for some time. That is a problem for the students, faculty and staff who want to be there. And for the fiscal well-being of the school. But if we don't keep health first as a motto, we may not have a community of teachers to return to.
In a month, I will be requiring all of my students to wear masks. I will be masked. I will spend as little time on campus as I can and I will wash my hands as frequently as I am able. And I will pray that we all come through this OK… And I will try to keep my paranoid and vindictive thoughts at bay (including those about 30 pieces of silver...).
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