UC campuses to offer most classes online this fall

SAN JOSE — All but two of University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses have now formally announced plans to offer many classes — if not all — online this fall, as the four-year university system moves forward amid the coronavirus pandemic.

On Wednesday, three UC campuses — Berkeley, Riverside and Santa Cruz — became the latest to disclose detailed plans for the fall, joining Davis, Irvine, Merced and Los Angeles. In general, the campuses will deliver the vast majority of classes virtually, except for classes such as science labs and small discussion seminars that are difficult to provide remotely.

At the same, those seven universities have also said they will allow some students to return to campus this fall and stay in dorms, with variations from campus to campus in how they envision doing that.

UC San Diego has yet to formally announce its plans for the fall, but Chancellor Pradeep Khosla wrote in an op-ed Wednesday in the San Diego Union-Tribune that the university will “offer a mix of remote and in-person instruction.”

UC Santa Barbara is the only undergraduate UC campus that has yet to say anything publicly about how classes will operate in the fall. A spokesperson for that university did not return a request Wednesday seeking details about the university’s plans for fall instruction.

The announcements come as the coronavirus continues to spread across California and the United States. Hospitalizations are increasing in some parts of California, including in Orange and Ventura counties, as well as in the San Joaquin Valley, according to the Los Angeles Times. California is also among nine states that on Tuesday registered either new single-day highs in cases of the virus or a record for seven-day new case averages, the Washington Post reported.

Classes across the UC system first transitioned to being delivered virtually in March, as the coronavirus began to spread rapidly across the state.

The plans being put forward by UC campuses for the fall are in line with the expectations set by system president Janet Napolitano, who said last month that “most of, if not all of, our campuses will operate in some kind of hybrid mode.”