A fascinating and diverse set of short essays in the @chronicle about the future of post-pandemic #highered. Twenty-three pieces covering the gamut, briefly summarized here. /thread: https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Will-the-Pandemic-Change/248474?cid=wsinglestory_hp_1a

1/ @rkelchen predicts 1-2 years of cost-cutting; identifies liquidity as a determinant of survival; and predicts that boards will "require colleges to shift further toward hiring non-tenure-track faculty members and ... more programs to pass a return-on-investment test."

2/ Joseph Aoun (prez of @Northeastern) envisions a hybrid future, in which the institutions that thrive "embrace online platforms, not just a hastily assembled, short-term replacement ...but long-term expansions of classroom instruction, campus life, and off-campus learning."

3/ @seeshespeak sees a diminished future for college towns, as "students' and staff's interactions with their surrounding physical environs will grow more detached and casual as they come to see a campus not as the site of learning but, merely, as one of many possible sites."

4/ @marc_bousquet provides a darkly cynical view of how leadership will respond: "Make no mistake: The virus and market crises are very bad, and both will be made immeasurably worse by any 'cure' developed to maintain 'sustainability' — the god term of the modern university."

5/ G. Gabrielle Starr (prez of @pomonacollege) is more optimistic in reimagining community in higher ed: "American higher education will be essential not only in the immediate challenge of stopping the coronavirus but also to...finding new ways to learn, teach, form communities."

6/ @kevincarey1 predicts winners (mega-universities poised for massive online presence) and losers: "Tuition-dependent, non-elite private colleges with shrinking endowments and growing discount rates were already in trouble...[absent a] government bailout, many will go under."

7/ Patricia McGuire (prez of @TrinityDC) says the crisis should force colleges to reflect on social inequity, not just teaching: "This crisis demands that colleges step back from self-absorption and focus on how we can better serve our neighborhoods and the larger community."

8/ @nkalamb imagines a resurgent college sports enterprise; absent collective action by faculty, students, and staff, in the coming austerity "college sports will become more valuable than ever as an enticement to lure steep tuition from students."

9/ Pearl Dowe of @EmoryUniversity emphasizes that an HBCU campus is "a collective space that embodies the love of family, the sacrifice of a community, and the promise of education... where the mission of the HBCU is fulfilled. It is — and will be — a tremendous thing to lose."

10/ @phil_christman advocates seizing this moment to become "ungraders": "It’s not even a question of 'tradition': Historically, our grading system is newish. Grades persist, I suspect, because they allow institutions to sell prestige by rationing the appearance of excellence"

11/ @erin_bartram emphasizes the value of good teaching (online or not): "good and valuable teaching and research happen at all levels, in all kinds of institutions" ... "working together in solidarity might be the only ways to build something better. If we get the chance."

12/ My neighbor and colleague @STS_News celebrates university staff: "Whatever roads forward higher-education leaders choose...we need to do a better job recognizing, compensating, and planning for the work of maintainers, without whom our colleges would fall to pieces."

13/ Amy Hungerford of @Columbia reminds us that the liberal arts and sciences support society and that we "must refocus on shoring up, once and for all, the basic infrastructure of higher education: research, teaching, and student access (both financial and technological)."

14/ @leifweatherby cautions that widespread hiring freezes are really "adjunctification on an unprecedented scale" and that universities must find ways to resist the austerity measures that devalue labor and redouble the adoption of a higher-ed gig economy.

15/ @AgnesCallard invites us to use this moment to break down the walls around academic writing: "The walls around our classrooms are essential, and that means we ought to be prepared to make sacrifices when it comes to the walls around our research."

16/ @nathan_d_grawe says the covid crisis represents a giant social science experiment: "Some of these changes have the potential to improve student outcomes. When the pandemic abates and campuses return to normal, we should permanently employ the best of those changes."

17/ @malavkanuga and Jaskiran Dhillon ask us to rethink pedagogy as a kind of mutual aid: "We must care for our students in ways that recognize that they are more than students, and that their capacities to be students are interconnected to insecurities."

18/ @huahsu says this is a time to reassess: "We must wean ourselves off the hierarchies and inequalities...Teaching should be a priority. So should reassessing administrative bloat, the richly profitable and exploitative academic-publishing cartels, and the necessity of travel."

19/ @PatrickDeneen envisions "a renaissance of liberal-arts education at the local level.. humanist teachers may connect with families who crave an education in the classics for their children... such education will resemble the liberal-arts education of the 19th century."

20/ @saragoldrickrab calls for increased aid and support services for students in need: "Meeting students’ basic needs was always central to the work of being a student-ready college. Now it is increasingly central to higher education’s very survival."

21/ BoJohn McClung, a custodian @UW, decries how "years of neoliberal rot have made our institutions — and especially the people who live, learn, and work in them — particularly vulnerable to the current crisis...Many who work with me feel the same, and we’re taking a stand."

22/ @mxmcadam, a publisher at @JHUPress, suggests that this crisis "might finally put to rest what I call the college-admissions model of academic publishing" and invites scholars to strike up new (if momentarily virtual) relationships with editors and publishers.

23/END/ @cwellmon imagines an altered, yet urgent, post-university intellectual life: "people gathering to read, to talk, and to think together, not because they need a credential for a middle-class life, but because they desire the goods such activities promise."