As the school year wrapped in May and June, higher education administrators immediately began re-entry planning for the 2020-2021 academic period, amid the COVID-19 pandemic increasing in severity across the U.S. As some schools re-open, certain regions are seeing declining infections, yet a handful of states are experiencing spikes in cases and revisiting or even rolling back re-opening plans.
With more than 6,600 cases linked to colleges nationwide, significant risk remains around returning to campus. This, of course, is making distance learning a very real possibility for many students. Harvard, University of Washington, Princeton, and Rutgers are expected to be mostly or fully remote, for example, while schools like Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology will pursue a combination of remote and in-person coursework.