In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the growing pushback from many in the academic community to colleges’ and universities’ reopening plans, focusing on two recent articles arguing that we’ll be all online in the fall.

* Inside Higher Ed article mentioned: “Flimflam: College in 2020”* Chronicle of Higher Ed article mentioned: “This Will Be One of the Worst Months in the History of Higher Education”

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill, and we’re back again with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman. And great to talk to you guys this day, even though it’s been a very interesting week.

Jeanette: Hey.

Kevin: Hey.

Phil: Let’s jump right into the topic, which I have to say ahead of time, it seems like the pressure in higher education has really been ramping up over the past few weeks on the decisions about fall plans. And that’s somewhat predictable. We talked in our podcast called Enter Darkness about how the fall was going to be entering into this period of uncertainty. And people would second guess you, no matter what the choice was, for an institution to open up. But I don’t think I really had in mind or understood just how intense a lot of the pushback was going to be.

And this week, we wanted to talk about a lot of the academic community pushback on [00:01:00] school plans for reopening a particular looking, as an example, two Op Eds that were published this week. They were really calling out, saying that colleges who were planning on any form of face to face reopening, having any students on campus, that it’s just going to end in disaster. And it’s a major mistake. And one of the Op Eds was at Inside Higher Ed. It was published this morning – today is Friday – by Ryan Craig. For each of these I’ll set up the premise, as they did it. His post is titled “Flim Flam: College in 2020.” And jumping ahead:. 

“The story of every mark who encounters a flimflam man is a carnival version of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. First, the flimflam man approaches the mark. Second, temptation, followed by a small payoff to demonstrate the scheme’s purported effectiveness. Third, the hard sell to go all in. Finally, a sudden unanticipated crisis or change of events that results in a complete loss.Millions of college students are now on this sucker’s journey. College students and their families are perfect marks. They’re told a degree is the only pathway to good jobs. After a remote spring and summer best characterized by the great They Might Be Giants lyric “If it wasn’t for disappointment/I wouldn’t have any appointments,” they’re primed for the temptation of a return to campus and normalcy.” [00:02:00]

That’s the end of the quote. The second one is from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it’s from Robert Kelchen, and his is titled “This Will Be One of the Worst Months in the History of Higher Education”.” It actually builds off of a Twitter thread that he put out that got a lot of attention. So in his first two paragraphs: [00:03:00]

“Summer is usually a period of relative calm for most of American higher educa...