Colleges combating coronavirus turn to stinky savior: sewage

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Days after he crossed the country to start college, Ryan Schmutz received a text message from Utah State University: COVID-19 had been detected at his dorm.

Within 10 minutes, he dropped the crepes he was making and was whisked away by bus to a testing site.

“We didn’t even know they were testing,” said Schmutz, who is 18 and from Omaha, Nebraska. “It all really happened fast.”

Schmutz was one of about 300 students quarantined to their rooms last week, but not because of sickness reports or positive tests. Instead, the warning bells came from the sewage.

Colleges across the nation — from New Mexico to Tennessee, Michigan to New York — are turning tests of waste into a public health tool. The work comes as institutions hunt for ways to keep campuses open despite vulnerabilities like students’ close living arrangements and drive to socialize. The virus has already left its mark with outbreaks that have forced changes to remote learning at colleges around the country.

The tests work by detecting genetic material from the virus, which can be recovered from the stools of about half of people with COVID-19, studies indicate. The concept has also been used to look for outbreaks of the polio virus.

Sewage testing is especially valuable because it can evaluate people even if they aren’t feeling sick and can detect a few cases out of thousands of people, experts say. Another wastewater-flagged quarantine of 300 students at Arizona State University, for example, turned up two cases. Both were students who were asymptomatic, but they could potentially still have spread the virus.

“That’s just tremendously valuable information when we think about the setting of a college dorm, and how quickly this disease can spread through that population,” said Peter Grevatt, CEO of The Water Research Foundation, which promotes studies of water and wastewater to ensure water quality and service.

Wastewater tests also flagged the possible presence of the virus at University of Colorado residence halls.

Utah has used the method more widely, including to track an outbreak at a meatpacking plant. The British, Italian and Dutch governments have also announced similar monitoring programs, and the Massachusetts-based company Biobot tests wastewater from cities around the country.

The method remains imprecise, though. It can spot infection trends, but it can’t yet pinpoint how many people have the virus or the stage of infection. That means it’s not yet quite as useful on a larger scale in cities, which don’t always have a university’s scientific resources or ability to require people to get tested.

The technology is being closely studied, though, and it is evolving rapidly, Grevatt said, adding that it’s best used along with other methods like contact tracing.

It’s not a panacea for colleges either. Utah State, for example, can only closely monitor sewage from the relatively small portion of students who live on campus — not the thousands of other people who come and go every day. The university has an enrollment of about 28,000.

And this week, Utah State’s positive wastewater test could be narrowed only as far as four residence halls that share the same sewer system. The test came back positive late Aug. 29, and the quarantine started the next day. Students were required to stay in their rooms, eating meals delivered by a “COVID care” team and barred from walking more than a few steps outside the residence hall.

The buildings are laid out in apartment-style suites, and students were released from quarantine in small groups if every roommate in a suite tested negative. The tests had turned up four coronavirus cases as of Thursday.

Schmutz, who tested negative along with his roommates, didn’t miss much in-person class time during his four-day quarantine.

But he’s a little disconcerted that he and his family weren’t told about the sewage testing. “It felt like we were kind of out of the loop on everything. It’s definitely hard to process,” he said.

Utah State has heard from parents and students similarly frustrated, though many others are grateful, spokeswoman Emilie Wheeler said. “They see it as a noninvasive early detection system,” she said.

The program is relatively inexpensive, too. The school takes samples daily to monitor several living areas, and the tests are run by a team of students.

“Wastewater has a story to tell about the public health status of communities,” Grevatt said. “There’s so many folks working on this right now. It’s just remarkable to see how quickly it has moved forward.”

Associated Press

The Lows of Higher Ed

Welcome back, college students! Always nice to see you.

Although we are sort of worried by those bleak stories about student debt, which suggest a lot of you may graduate owing a ton of money and unqualified to do anything more remunerative than selling socks.

This year, Newsweek cheerfully welcomed the Class of 2016 by asking, “Is College a Lousy Investment?” And in The Times, Andrew Martin reported that the Department of Education is paying more than $1.4 billion per annum to folks whose job it is to collect on $76 billion in defaulted student loans. “If you wait long enough, you catch people when their guard’s down,” one debt collector told Martin after garnishing the savings of a disabled carpenter.

Look on the bright side, students. Perhaps when you graduate, some of you will be able to qualify for a good job in the booming accounts receivable management industry.

Higher education is still the key to most good jobs, but the nation is starting to ask some questions about the way we finance it. Shouldn’t there be more of a match between the cost of school and the potential earning power of the graduates? Who speaks for the art history majors? And why is tuition so high, anyway? (Parents, if your kid is planning to take out student loans, you might want to avoid any college where the dorm rooms are nicer than your house.)

“People don’t believe much any more about the altruistic motives of colleges and universities,” sadly noted Pat Callan of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

Not without some reason. In his reporting, Martin uncovered a newsletter aimed at college admissions officers that advised them to avoid using “bad words” such as “cost” or “pay” in their admissions materials. Instead, it suggested: “And you get all this for ...”

In Washington, Congress is holding hearings! The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is considering a bill — co-sponsored by Democrat Al Franken and Republican Charles Grassley — that would require all schools to fill out the same form telling the student loan applicants useful facts like exactly how much per month they’ll be forking over when they start paying.

That would be the superminimum, right? How amazed are you that this isn’t happening already?

“Some of the packages don’t delineate what’s a grant, what’s a scholarship, what’s a loan,” said Franken. “And the information all comes in an award letter, so you’re thinking: Award!”

The Obama administration, which can’t do much about this without Congress, has been working to get the schools to voluntarily adopt a “shopping sheet” that would provide clear basic information so students could compare different schools’ financing before making a choice. “We’ve been encouraged by the feedback from the higher-ed sector,” one of the experts working on the program said. “I think we have 100 individual colleges and universities.”

The good news is that controlling college costs really does seem to be an administration priority. The bad news is that there are more than 4,000 colleges and universities.

People, don’t you think young adults should get the clearest, most easy-to-compare information conceivable before they sign a huge, life-changing loan deal? Don’t you think there should be somebody in charge of calling them up once a week and yelling: “Eight hundred dollars a month until you’re 51 years old!”

Maybe I’m underestimating the ability of teenagers to make serious, well-thought-out decisions about their higher education. All I can tell you is that when I was 21 years old, I signed up to go to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts because I had always wanted to live in Boston. I had no idea the main campus was on the other side of the state until I got there.

Franken is hoping the Senate might take up his proposal next year. I presume you weren’t expecting anything sooner. Congress can’t even get it together to keep the Postal Service from defaulting. And the Senate leaders admitted the other day that they’re not going to be able to pass a bipartisan bill to legalize Internet gambling on poker, which seems to be a really high priority for some important people. If they can’t do poker, they are not going to get to student loan transparency.

The House is planning hearings on student loans, too. The chairwoman of the subcommittee assigned to this task is Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who once said that she worked her own way through college and had “little tolerance” for people who complain about their huge student loan debts.

“New ideas to advocate for financial aid transparency are always welcome in this discussion,” Foxx said in an e-mail on Friday. “But we have to question whether the federal government’s dictating the terms of every college and university’s financial aid communications will actually achieve the desired results.”

So maybe a little less sense of urgency there.

source: nytimes.com

Cut college tuition by getting 4-year degree in 3 years

A 25% tuition break first offered three years ago by Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., paid off this spring for a dozen new graduates. All they had to do was squeeze four years of study into three.

Hartwick, a small private liberal arts college, is at the forefront of a recent upswing in colleges that, spurred by the recession and concerns over crushing college debt, are encouraging students to save money by shortening the time it takes to earn a degree. This fall, three-year degrees will be an option at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Minnesota State University in Mankato plans to make them available in 2013. Missouri's Office of Economic Development is reviewing applications for grants to offer three-year bachelor's degrees this fall in high-demand fields such as health care and information technology.

The initiatives are aimed mostly at highly motivated students, such as 2012 Hartwick grad Samantha Hart, who earned 23 college credits while in high school and took heavier course loads while in college. "I saved a lot of money, and I got to do everything that I wanted to," says Hart, 21, who is about to start an internship that she has been told could lead to a job.

Yet for all its pocketbook appeal, the three-year concept hasn't taken off, particularly at public universities. Legislation in Rhode Island in 2009 and Washington last year encourages public universities to develop three-year options, but no programs have been proposed to date, officials in both states say. State budget challenges have pushed a University of California committee's recommendation to a back burner, says system spokesman Steve Montiel.

At Ohio State University, which must phase in three-year degrees beginning this fall, provost Joe Alutto says a three-year degree may be "misdirected for an institution such as ours." He told legislators last year that students who earned college credit in high school tend to add a minor or second major rather than graduate early.

Some skeptics worry about quality. "It's as if they put students on a conveyer belt and just speed them up and spray them with a fire hose and the students catch what they can," Southern New Hampshire University professor Marty Bradley says of models that compress four years into three. He pioneered a three-year degree on his campus in 1997 that required an overhaul of the curriculum.

Some education groups argue that resources, particularly at public institutions, should focus on students who are most at risk of dropping out. A study of 33 states by the non-profit Complete College America found that just 26% of students enrolled at public institutions earn a bachelor's in four years; 54.3% take six years. About 2% of students earning a bachelor's in 2007-08 did so in three years, federal data show. Hartwick's four-year graduation rate in recent years averages about 46%.

"Time is the enemy of college completion, but Getting more of our best students to finish their bachelor's degrees a year early won't be enough" to raise the nation's overall graduation rate, says Complete College America president Stan Jones. "We must ensure that more finish college on time: a four-year degree in four years, not five or six."

Wesleyan President Michael Roth says the three-year option ought to be available to students who want it. "Four years is just a habit," he says. "It isn't some magical number."

source: USA TODAY

Top US colleges to offer free classes online

Five prestigious US universities will create free online courses for students worldwide through a new, interactive education platform dubbed Coursera, the founders announced Wednesday.

The two founders, both professors of computer science at Stanford University, also announced that they had received $16 million in financing from two Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

Coursera will offer more than three dozen college courses in the coming year through its website at coursera.org, on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to neurology, from calculus to contemporary American poetry. The classes are designed and taught by professors at Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan.

Coursera joins a raft of ambitious online projects aimed at making higher education more accessible and affordable. Many of these ventures, however, simply post entire lectures on the web, with no interactive component. Others strive to create brand-new universities from scratch.

Founders Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng say Coursera will be different because professors from top schools will teach under their university's name and will adapt their most popular courses for the web, embedding assignments and exams into video lectures, answering questions from students on online forums -- even, perhaps, hosting office hours via videoconference.

Multiple-choice and short-answer tests will be computer scored. Coursera will soon unveil a system of peer grading to assess more complex work, such as essays or algorithms.

Students will not get college credit. But Coursera may offer "certificates of completion" or transcripts for a fee. The company may also seek to turn a profit by connecting employers with students who have shown aptitude in a particular field, a spokeswoman said.

For their part, participating universities expect to benefit by boosting their reputation overseas, connecting with far-flung alumni and - they hope - bringing in donations from grateful online students.

"It will increase our impact on the world," said Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania.

In trial classes Coursera hosted this year, the production values were a bit rough.

Scott Page, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, filmed his lectures for a class called Model Thinking in front of an unpainted door in an addition being built on his house. Interruptions forced him to reshoot several segments - and as a result, he looks undeniably grumpy in some takes. A few of his online quizzes contain errors. His slides are sometimes hard to read. From time to time, his dog wanders into the frame.

Yet 30,000 people from around the globe stuck with the class week after week, doing the homework, watching the lectures and chatting with one another in lively discussion forums. "It's awesome," Page said. He has calculated that it would take 150 years of teaching in person for him to reach as many people as he did online.

A course Ng taught in artificial intelligence was just as popular: Nearly 25,000 students completed most of the work - and 13,000 scored high enough to earn a "statement of accomplishment" from Stanford. Some even translated the lectures into their native languages and posted subtitles. "People really get engaged," Ng said.

The concept does have pitfalls.

There's no way for professors to tell who is completing the work, so "doors are wide open for cheating," said Michael Winckler, a mathematician at Heidelberg University who took Page's course on models. It's difficult, he added, to replicate the collaborative learning that takes place in a traditional classroom when students puzzle through problems together.

Still, Winckler was impressed enough with the quality and rigor of the online class to let his doctoral students count it toward their required coursework.

As online education matures, students may be able to build their own first-rate college education for free through sites like Coursera, said Richard DeMillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Institute of Technology.

That may make it tough for some universities to survive. "They can't assume a never-ending supply of students" willing to pay for a pricey campus education, DeMillo said.

But Phil Hanlon, a provost at the University of Michigan, said he wasn't worried the free offerings would cut into his school's appeal. On the contrary, he said the technology would enhance the campus experience. Professors could direct students to watch online lectures to learn the nuts and bolts of a given subject, freeing class time for hands-on activities that can't be replicated in cyberspace, he said.

The two venture capital firms backing Coursera are Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates, both in Menlo Park, Calif. Each invested $8 million.

source: interaksyon.com

Metro Manila hosts most number of colleges allowed to hike tuition

Metro Manila will have the most number of private universities and colleges to increase their tuition in June, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) said, adding that it already approved fee hikes for 256 schools nationwide.

Higher tuition will be charged in 67 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Metro Manila, followed by 41 in Region XI (Davao Region), and 36 in Region IV-A (Calabarzon), the Commission said.

The Commission added that 30 schools have been allowed to impose increased tuition in Region VI (Western Visayas), 28 in Region III (Central Luzon), and 16 in Region V (Bicol), 15 in Region X (Northern Mindanao), and 14 in Region IX (Zamboanga Peninsula).
Tuition fee increases have also been approved for 12 schools in both Region VII (Central Visayas) and Region XII (SOCCSKSARGEN), 7 in Region I (Ilocos), and six each in the Cordillera Administrative Region and CARAGA.

Five schools in Region IV-B (MIMAROPA) and two in Region VIII (Eastern Visayas) were also allowed to impose higher tuition, the body said.

Increase in tuition ranges from seven percent up to 15 percent.

Schools in Region II are reported to have the highest percent of increase at 15 percent, followed by CARAGA (13 percent); Region 1 (12 percent); Regions XI and V with 11 percent; Region 3 (10 percent); NCR, Regions VI, VII, VIII, and IX (9 percent); Regions IVA and CAR (8 percent) and Region XI (7 percent).

The number of schools that have sought--and eventually secured approval to hike fees--is lower, compared to last year’s 324 HEIs, CHED said.

These schools comprise "roughly only 10 percent" of the 2,247 HEIs nationwide, including in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

source: interaksyon.com