The Colleges That Took the Pandemic Seriously

Until vaccines against COVID-19 are available to all, the public will need two things: a reason for hope and a vision of how to live more safely and productively in the meantime. For both, Americans can look to the examples set by a number of colleges and universities—a surprising turn, perhaps, given the widespread anxieties that these institutions’ reopening in the fall created.

Since last summer, many news stories have by individual universities to manage the pandemic. Outbreaks have occurred, and some data even suggest that college reopenings in the counties in which they are located. That’s only part of the story, though. Many schools—including the one where I work—took on the job of preventing the spread of the coronavirus among their students, employees, and host communities and have sought to manage the problem in a comprehensive manner. Schools that have succeeded have done so by learning from one another, by redeploying people and resources, but too few areas of the United States have adopted.