When the University of Washington became the first major U.S. campus to close its doors due to the global COVID-19 outbreak on March 6, almost no one could have predicted the pandemic would have swelled to the massively widespread proportions now disrupting higher ed across the country.
As of Oct. 22, The New York Times had recorded more than 214,000 positive cases of COVID-19 at over 1,600 college and university campuses across the country. According to the publication’s tracker, there have been over 75 COVID-related deaths on college campuses since the pandemic started.
The response to COVID-19 has been mixed this fall. Some campuses, like the Atlanta University Center institutions in Georgia and the entire California State University system, pulled back in-person instruction and moved totally online. Others moved forward with in-person instruction but found themselves having to scale back amenities and implement social distancing protocols on campus. Roughly 60% of institutions across the country chose to re-open their doors to students for the fall 2020 semester, many with modified academic calendars that end the semester at Thanksgiving. Other institutions, including Harvard and Princeton, have opted for hybrid models that welcome some students back to campus, while having others continue their learning online.
As institutions continue to navigate the best ways to serve students amid these unprecedented times, experts warn that higher ed leaders should be bracing themselves for a second wave of the pandemic in 
Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, a founder professor of computer science and director of the Simulation and Optimization Laboratory at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, points to the surge in cases happening now, particularly in the Midwest and places where localities have not adhered to the guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The numbers that I’ve been running for the country have been frighteningly large,” says Jacobson, who expects December, January and February to be particularly brutal as students go home for winter break and then return to campus. “The challenge is when it starts to spread into the community — in Ann Arbor, for instance, where the number of university cases overtook the number of county cases.”
COVID-19 cases among college students
