Stanford Plans to Hold Most Classes Online for Next Year

(Bloomberg) -- Stanford University plans to hold most of its classes online for the next year and will create a four-quarter school year to limit crowding on campus.

The private school in Palo Alto, California, also intends to start the next school year one week early on Sept. 14, Stanford said Wednesday in a statement.

Colleges are grappling with how to bring back students after clearing their campuses in March to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. Schools including New York University and Harvard University are beginning to articulate what life could look like, including wearing masks on campus and having fewer students in classrooms. The outbreak has taken a toll on higher education, causing universities to cut staff, freeze pay and delay plans for expansion.

Read more: Harvard's New Era Likely Means Smaller Classes, Deeper Cleaning

“Assuming that public health conditions allow, we intend to have undergraduate first-year and transfer students among those on campus for the fall quarter, to allow them to get to know our campus, form community and begin their Stanford careers in the most positive way,” President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell said in the statement. “We also intend to have graduating seniors on campus in the spring.”

Online teaching will remain the default option for the 2020-2021 school year, they wrote, adding that it will be “supplemented by in-person instruction as much as is safe and feasible for students and faculty who are present on campus.”

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