U.S. colleges returning to online classes

With COVID-19 cases surging just as students are about to return from winter break, dozens of U.S. colleges are moving classes online for at least the first week or so of the semester — and some warn it could stretch longer if the wave of infection doesn’t subside soon.

Harvard is moving classes online for the first three weeks of the new year, with a return to campus scheduled for late January, “conditions permitting.” The University of Chicago is delaying the beginning of its new term and holding the first two weeks online. Some others are inviting students back to campus but starting classes online, including Michigan State University.

Many colleges hope that an extra week or two will get them past the peak of the nationwide spike driven by the highly contagious omicron variant. Still, the surge is casting uncertainty over a semester many had hoped would be the closest to normal since the start of the pandemic.

For some students, starting the term remotely is becoming routine — many colleges used the strategy last year amid a wave of cases. But some fear the latest shift could extend well beyond a week or two.

Jake Maynard, a student at George Washington University, said he is fine with a week of online classes, but beyond that, he hopes officials trust in the booster shots and provide a traditional college experience.

He already had a year of online learning, which he said “did not work” and wasn’t what he expected from a school that charges more than $50,000 a year.

“I’m a junior, but about half my schooling experience has been online,” said Maynard, 20, of Ellicott City, Md. “You lose so much of what makes the school the school.”

The university is inviting students back to campus starting Monday, but classes will be held online until Jan. 18 as officials ramp up virus testing and isolate any infected students. The school has more than doubled its isolation space and moved up the deadline for a new booster shot requirement by three weeks because of omicron.

“The omicron variant hit us at a terrible time, basically the last couple weeks of the fall semester, which doesn’t give us much time to prepare for spring,” said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington’s school of public health.

The university was among many that saw infections soar in the days before winter break. The campus averaged more than 80 cases a day during finals week, compared with just a few a day for much of the fall. While most recent cases were mild, nearly all were among students who had received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

So far, more than 70 colleges across 26 states are starting the term online, and others say they are considering it.

Many of those shifting online are in virus hot spots, including George Washington, Yale and Columbia on the East Coast, along with Northwestern University near Chicago. The list also includes most of the University of California campuses and Rice University in Houston.

Some other colleges are delaying the new term without offering remote classes. Syracuse University pushed its semester back a week, citing projections that the first three weeks of January will be “the most challenging of this surge.”

At Northeastern University in Boston, one of a growing number of schools requiring boosters, students are returning as planned.

The 50,000-student campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign plans to resume in-person classes after one week of online instruction. Students are being encouraged to return during that first week so they can take two virus tests, which will clear them to resume in-person activities if they test negative.