In August, colleges across the country opened their doors for in-person classes, only to switch to online learning within weeks after spikes in the number of COVID-19 cases. This was entirely predictable, and anyone with half a brain could have anticipated that putting thousands of students who have been cooped up for months in the same city during a pandemic was not going to end well. But it happened, and in the weeks since there has been a huge wave of outrage about the perceived failure of administrators to protect their college communities. But the problem isn’t that the administrators opened the schools back up. The problem is that they had to.
A myriad of factors has led to universities becoming dependent on student tuitions for their financial well-being, the chief of them being the drastic decrease in the amount of government funding they receive. As government revenues have fallen due to the crisis in production brought about by the “microelectronic revolution” (Robert Kurz), education spending has become the favorite target of politicians concerned with “balancing the budget.” Now, roughly half a century later, universities are almost entirely reliant on tuition payments to finance their operations.
Much attention has been paid to the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic by university administrators. A lot of it is justifiable. After all, these administrators made the conscious decision to endanger their university communities by inviting students back to campus for in-person classes. However, this critique is incomplete. If we are serious about understanding why administrators across the country have decided to open the doors for in-person classes, then we must analyze the external factors that made this decision the only viable option. If we do not, we will remain in the eternal struggle for control over the management of the crisis (Roswitha Scholz), and will never address its underlying causes.
Oliver Blackwell 