Professors are in no hurry to return
Many not willing to teach live classes amid the pandemic
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, California, 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 system have signed petitions complaining 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 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-toface 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% of the 9,000member 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 tenuretrack professors skew significantly older than the wider U.S. labor force — 37% are 55 or older, compared with 23% 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 noquestions-asked policy for those who want to teach remotely, saying 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 at 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.”