Campuses Respond to COVID: “Pandemia” Not Making the Science Grades

ABSTRACT

In this chapter, we turn our gaze to campus reopening plans and COVID mitigation strategies enacted by colleges and universities in the early months of the pandemic. We found that higher education administrators’ pandemic responses were consistent with concerns for institutions’ bottom line, expressed largely in fears of losing enrollment, rather than the concern for the well-being of their students, their employees, and the community at large. We examine the dual response of colleges and universities ready to embrace public health solutions on the one hand, and stubborn refusals to heed science in favor of political conformity on the other, even when that repudiation is at odds with the best science, with the will of the faculty, and at the urging of student leaders. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.