On April 12th, Kim Weeden, Professor of Social Sciences and Chair of the Sociology Department at Cornell tweeted out some pretty jarring visualizations. Professor Weeden and fellow Cornell Professor Ben Cornwell had decided to put the concept of Six Degrees of Separation to the test on college campuses. When Professor Weeden shared the summary of their findings on Twitter, complete with colorful data visualizations, people took notice.
Zooming out a little bit, there is a lot of talk right now about whether colleges will have students on campus this fall. Across the country, students have been sent home. With only a few irresponsible exceptions, colleges have transitioned to distance learning. Summer programs are up in the air and likely to be canceled. So, what happens next? Do first-year student orientation programs launch in the late summer as if nothing ever happened? That seems unlikely.
One of the reasons bringing students back onto campus is a risky proposition is the very same reason that living and learning together on a college campus is so valuable: the network. In their working paper, Weeden and Cornwell reveal that 98% of students at Cornell are connected by only three degrees of separation or less. Most of our students look for colleges that offer close-knit community and strong networking potential, but providing those things is dangerous right now. The closer people are together, the higher the risk of the Coronavirus spreading.
Weeden and Cornwell found that putting the largest courses online (those with the highest number of students), while letting smaller courses continue in person, would slow the spread of an epidemic, but not enough to stop it entirely. Canceling events outside of courses wouldn’t work either. College students are just too good at connecting. If students are allowed back on campus before the Coronavirus is stamped out or a vaccine is found, the results could be devastating to not just the students, but also the college faculty and staff, and students’ families.
Colleges are reluctant to make a final decision yet, though, and our students have been asking whether the opportunity to start on campus in the fall is something they should be taking into account while making their own final decision on where to go to college. We understand why students are stressing. Seniors have lost proms, graduations, sports seasons, and now they are facing losing part of their freshman year of college. However, if a college is prioritizing profit over student safety by letting people back on campus too soon, that says a lot about how much they care about their students — which is to say, not a lot. Colleges that rank student health over housing and food service income are on the right side of the crisis. And yes, we know this is terrible and frustrating.
We thought we could tell where things were going before Weeden and Cornwell released their working paper. Now we are fairly confident that many colleges will be entirely or predominantly online this fall. This is especially likely for colleges located in areas with a high number of cases, and we hope that schools will continue to prioritize students over profit. Losing a traditional freshman fall semester is nothing compared to our collective health and safety.
If you’re looking for guidance on how to navigate the new normal of the Coronavirus pandemic, send us an email. We specialize in helping students succeed in the strangest of circumstances.