Cambridge has become the first university in Britain to cancel all face-to-face lectures for the 2020-21 academic year because of the coronavirus pandemic, after 800 years of welcoming students to its cloisters, quadrangles and classrooms.
It likely won’t be the last, as the virus threatens the foundations of the traditional student experience, and the finances of universities around the world.
Cambridge said late on Tuesday that all lectures will be held virtually and streamed online until summer 2021. It said it may be possible to hold tutorials and other teaching in small groups — a key part of the university’s system — when the new academic year starts in October, as long as social distancing can be followed.
The university, which has about 12,000 undergraduate students, said in a statement that “the decision has been taken now to facilitate planning, but as ever, will be reviewed should there be changes to official advice on coronavirus.”
The pandemic has already upended student life. Cambridge sent students home and moved all its teaching online in March as the UK went into lockdown, and exams are being held remotely. Across Britain and around the world, graduation ceremonies and spring balls have been scrapped.
California State University announced last week that it will hold a virtual fall semester and keep classrooms closed, becoming the first major US college to cancel lectures for the fall.
British universities are warning they will face a financial crisis if students decide they don’t want to pay tuition fees — currently 9,250 pounds ($11,300) a year in England — for a college experience shorn of in-person teaching, extra-curricular clubs and socialising. Some students who were due to start in the fall are likely to defer for a year in hopes things get back to normal by then.
Nicola Dandridge, who heads Office for Students — the independent regulator for higher education in England — said this week that universities needed to come clean about what kind of experience students could expect before June, when school graduates decide whether to take up college places for the autumn term.
“What we don’t want to see are promises that it’s all going to be back to usual — an on-campus experience — when it turns out that’s not the case,” she told parliament’s education committee.
Lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed because of the pandemic have also cut off the flow of international students, who pay higher fees and form a major source of income for UK universities.
For now, Cambridge and other British universities are preparing for some students to return in the fall. The University of Manchester said it has moved all lectures online for the fall term, but still expects students to move into its halls of residence.
Edinburgh University said it would adopt a “hybrid model” rather than going fully virtual.
“Having hundreds of students packed into lecture theatres close together probably isn’t going to be safe or possible,” vice chancellor Peter Mathieson told the BBC on Wednesday. “But we intend to provide small-group teaching and all the other campus experiences that distinguish us.”
