What we don’t know about COVID-19 is staggering. But the models that we have from former viral
infection agents is worrisome, to say the least. If this is like HIV or Herpes, this could become
a lifetime illness that will reoccur at, for instance, times of stress. If like Herpes, it will become transmittable
when it is reactivated, we will need to be guarding against this for a long
time – or until we have a reliable vaccine.
If you don’t like wearing a mask now, imagine how you will feel wearing
one forever – or intermittently whenever you begin to appear symptomatic.
But that is just the surface problem. The long term problem could be that we would
have dangerous – perhaps even life threatening re-occurrences as we age. These would need to be treated
medically. And, not only would that be
personally dangerous and interfere with our ability to do our jobs
intermittently, the medical care will be expensive.
The Universities, it
is becoming clear, are reopening this fall because of economic concerns. Elsewhere
I have shown how, for my University, these concerns are related to the
importance and value of teaching in person – something that we have been
devaluing in trying to compete with other universities to offer lower
tuitions. So we have been backed ourselves
into an economic corner where we need to have kids in the classroom in order to
break even financially.
My concern is that this may be penny wise and pound
foolish. By keeping ourselves afloat, we
will create a petri dish for COVID to infect more students, who have gathered
from all over country in dorms that are every bit as confined as cruise ships,
and the students, as they share the virus amongst themselves, may infect
faculty and staff. Many of our faculty
are tenured and most of them eventually will be. This means they have lifetime contracts with
the University. Our University’s health
plan is a self-insurance plan. That
means we pay for the treatments that those we cover need.
If COVID becomes a recurring, lifetime illness, we will be
paying for treatments for a very long time.
How long can we afford to do that?
How much will we have to raise tuition to do that? How long will people be able to afford that
tuition? Is this a recipe for long term
economic collapse of the University?
So, you may say, who cares?
Don’t we have enough Universities?
I think the bigger issue is that opening up our economy before we have a
solution to a health threat that we don’t understand means that we are playing
Russian roulette not just at the level of the University, but at the level of
state and National economies. Someone is
going to have to pay the bills for the long term health care (if COVID recurs)
and that someone is going to be all of us.
If we are saddling ourselves with a long-term health crisis
that will sap our economic strength for a generation in order to prevent short
term difficulties, what will that look like in five or ten years? Wouldn’t it be prudent to slow things down,
err on the side of safety, protect our health, and protect our long term
economic interests by figuring out how to survive short-term economic
difficulties? In the meantime, we should
be social distancing, washing our hands and wearing masks – to protect each
other’s health and our long term economic well-being.
Ultimately we are not the lone individual in the wilderness
fighting to create our own, personal destiny and outcome. We are a community of people that depend on
each other. We need to act like that.
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You are spot on in your analysis. I would add that the short-sightedness about getting back to the hybrid, masked and disinfected classroom deprives us of the chance to really revision what the future of higher education should look like. We have (had?) an opportunity to create a future, but chose instead to rearrange the past.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about your vision... What does the future of higher education look like?
ReplyDelete