Tag: Schools

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CDC research reveals academics might play ‘central position’ in Covid unfold at colleges

CDC study shows teachers could play 'central role' in Covid spread at schools

A student is seen walking down the steps of PS 139 closed public school in the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, United States on October 8, 2020.

Michael Nagle | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

School teachers and staff could play a “central role” in the transmission of Covid-19 in schools that fail to follow social precautions and precautions against facial covering. Vaccination for the disease could help get students back to class safely, according to a new state study released Monday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the spread of the coronavirus in eight Georgia public elementary schools in the same school district between December 1 and January 22, including 24 days of face-to-face study. During that period, the average number of cases per 100,000 residents of the county increases by nearly 300%, the study said.

The Federal Health Office, together with the state and local health authorities, found nine Covid-19 “clusters” in which 13 educators and 32 pupils at six of the eight primary schools were involved.

The median cluster size – defined as three or more linked Covid-19 cases – was six people, and one educator was the “index patient” or the first case identified in four of these clusters, the CDC found. One student was the first patient in a cluster while the other four clusters had an unidentifiable index patient.

All but one of the clusters included “at least one educator and a likely educator-to-student transfer,” according to the study.

“These results suggest that educators can play an important role in transmission in school and that transmission in school can occur when physical distance and mask compliance are not optimal,” the CDC researchers wrote in the study.

In the study, CDC researchers said they conducted interviews with parents, educators, and school principals and examined seating plans, classroom layouts, physical distancing, and adherence to recommended mask use in face-to-face learning to identify case links.

They found that social distancing recommendations were “less than ideal” followed across all nine clusters. Students sat less than three feet apart, and in many cases the virus was able to spread among students, and students could have spread in small group sessions, according to the study.

The results come just over a week since the CDC released new guidance on how to safely reopen schools to face-to-face learning despite the spread of the virus. Among the numerous recommendations, the CDC advises districts to introduce their reopening plans according to the severity of the outbreak in their areas.

It also states that schools should adopt “essential elements” for resumption of personal learning, including wearing masks, physical distancing, and monitoring the level of spread in the surrounding community.

While the CDC advised states to give priority to vaccinating teachers and staff “as soon as supplies permit,” the guidelines did not recommend it for reopening. However, the study, published Monday, suggested that vaccinating educators could be important in protecting the most vulnerable while reducing disruptions to personal learning and potentially preventing the virus from spreading in schools.

“While COVID-19 vaccination is not required for schools to reopen, it should be viewed as an additional mitigation measure that should be added as it becomes available,” the researchers wrote.

– CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.

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CDC Attracts Up a Blueprint for Reopening Faculties

CDC Draws Up a Blueprint for Reopening Schools

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday called for the K-12 schools to reopen soon and offered a phased plan to get students back into classrooms and resolve a debate that is dividing communities across the country .

The guidelines highlight growing evidence that schools can safely open if they take steps to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The agency said that even in communities with high transmission rates, elementary school students can at least safely receive some personal instruction.

Middle and high school students, the agency said, can safely take in-person classes if the virus is less common, but may need to switch to hybrid or distance learning in communities with high-intensity outbreaks.

“CDC’s operational strategy is based on scientific evidence and the best available evidence,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, in an interview with reporters on Friday.

The guidelines arrive in an intensifying debate. Even when parents in some districts with closed schools are frustrated, some teachers and their unions refuse to return to classrooms they consider unsafe.

Public school enrollment has declined in many districts. Education and civil rights activists are concerned about the harm to children who have been out of the classroom for nearly a year.

The recommendations strike a middle ground between those who seek resumption of personal learning and those who fear that reopening schools will spread the virus.

In advice that may disappoint some teachers, the document states that vaccination of educators should be a priority, but not a requirement for schools to reopen.

Nevertheless, both national unions thanked the CDC for the clearer guidelines.

“For the first time since this pandemic began, we have a rigorous, science-based roadmap that our members can use to fight for a safe reopening,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and ally of President Biden.

However, Ms. Weingarten and Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, argued that schools could find it difficult to implement the CDC’s mitigation strategies without additional federal funding.

The agency’s guidance reiterates the idea that schools should be the last to close in a community and the first to reopen. However, the CDC has no power to force communities to take action to reduce high transmission rates – such as closing unnecessary businesses – to reopen schools.

According to the agency’s new criteria, schools in more than 90 percent of the US states were unable to return to personal classrooms full-time, according to Dr. Walensky. Even so, the majority of districts offer at least face-to-face learning, and about half of the country’s students study in classrooms.

However, there are wide variations in the types of people who have access to in-person teaching. The neighborhoods are mainly educated to poor, non-white children who are more likely to have closed schools than in suburban and rural areas.

Researchers are not only concerned about the academic consequences of dropping out of school so long. Although the data are still very limited, many doctors and mental health experts report unusually high numbers of children and adolescents who are depressed, anxious, or have other mental health problems.

The agency’s approach striked the right balance between the risks and benefits of in-person teaching, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“We have done a tremendous amount of damage because we haven’t opened schools,” said Dr. Nuzzo. “This document is important to identify the risks related to this damage and to find a way forward.”

The CDC advised school administrators who were tailored to four levels of virus transmission in the surrounding communities.

The agency said elementary schools could stay open regardless of the virus concentration in the surrounding community, suggesting evidence that young students are the least likely to be infected or spread the pathogen.

Only in communities with the highest levels of transmission should elementary schools switch to a hybrid model of distance learning and in-person tuition, the agency said. Primary schools should in any case remain at least partially open. Middle schools and high schools should close completely and switch to virtual learning when transfer rates are highest, the agency said.

The guidelines also prioritized personal instruction over extracurricular activities such as sports and school events. In the event of an outbreak, these activities should be restricted before classrooms are closed.

Some experts expressed concerns about the strategy. Many schools in communities where virus transmission is high have been open to face-to-face teaching without virus outbreaks.

The agency’s guidelines lacked detailed recommendations on how to improve ventilation in schools, an important protection.

In a brief paragraph, the CDC suggested schools open windows and doors to increase circulation, but said they should not be opened “if it poses a safety or health risk”.

Updated

Apr. 12, 2021, 9:17 p.m. ET

“CDC pays lip service to ventilation in its report and you need to look for it,” said Joseph Allen, building security expert at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “It’s not as prominent as it should be.”

Other preventive measures the CDC has recommended for schools are those it has previously approved. Universal mask wear and physical distancing are most effective, but the agency also advocated hand washing and hygiene, cleaning, and contact tracing.

The agency noted that schools refer all symptomatic students, teachers, staff and their close contacts for diagnostic tests and that schools consider routine weekly tests for students and staff, except in communities where transmission is low. The costs and logistics of a comprehensive screening would place a heavy burden on school districts, some experts noted.

The CDC said in higher transmission schools, schools should ensure that individuals maintain at least six feet of physical distance. However, in communities with lower transmission rates, the agency said students and staff should only be physically distant “as much as possible”.

“We are concerned that if we mandate a physical distance of six feet, people will not be able to fully learn in person again,” said Dr. Walensky too.

“Many communities have followed hybrid approaches or, in some cases, simply didn’t open because they couldn’t figure out this distance problem,” said Dr. Nuzzo from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The whole attempt to bring children back to school doesn’t have to collapse over it.”

But Ms. Pringle of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, said there should be no leeway for physical distancing or other mitigation strategies.

“We need detailed guidance from the CDC that leaves no room for political games,” she said. “This is an airborne disease. Masks must be mandated, social distance must be maintained, and adequate ventilation is a must. “

As before, the CDC recommended using two measures to determine the risk of transmission in the community: the total number of new cases per 100,000 people and the percentage of positive test results over the past seven days.

Dr. Helen Jenkins, an infectious disease expert at Boston University, said the percentage of tests positive can depend on how many tests a community does. And the highest levels of community diffusion set by the agency are too conservative. Schools would be safe even if there were more cases in the community, she and other experts said.

Mr Biden has pledged to open the majority of the K-8 schools within the first 100 days of his administration. But on Wednesday White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president was referring to in-person tuition “at least one day a week.”

Under the agency’s new guidelines, many schools that are now working virtually should consider at least some personal learning.

For example, if the new recommendations had gone into effect last fall, San Francisco could have opened all of its schools for personal teaching in mid-September. Today San Francisco could open elementary schools in a hybrid mode under the guidelines, and the city is on the verge of opening middle and high schools in a hybrid mode.

Instead, the city’s schools have been closed since the beginning of the pandemic, and the district has reached agreement with its union on far more restrictive reopening standards. Officials haven’t set a date to bring young children back to school, and they have said they don’t expect most middle and high school students to return in person this year.

The new guidelines recommended states immunize teachers in the early stages of rollout, but said that access to vaccines “should still not be viewed as a requirement for schools to be reopened for personal instruction”.

Vaccinating teachers is very effective in reducing cases in both teachers and students in a high school transmission model, said Carl Bergstrom, an infectious disease expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. “It should be an absolute priority,” he said.

Still, he added, “I can see for sure why they chose not to make this a requirement as it may not be possible to open schools in time.”

Some teacher unions have also asked for strict air quality protection in school buildings, an issue that is not fully addressed by the CDC

In Boston, for example, air quality was a major issue in the resumption of negotiations between the school district and the teachers’ union. Their agreement included air purifiers in classrooms and a system for testing and reporting air quality data.

Ms. Pringle, the union president, said its members remained concerned about aging schools without modern ventilation systems. It was more likely these buildings were in low-income, non-white communities, which were hardest hit by the pandemic.

On Friday, Dr. Walensky, while the new guidelines should allow schools to remain open in most local conditions, if transmission skyrockets – possibly due to the contagious new varieties that are starting to circulate in the country – “we may need to reconsider . “

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175 Pediatric Illness Specialists: It’s Secure to Open Elementary Colleges Now

175 Pediatric Disease Experts: It’s Safe to Open Elementary Schools Now

Many of the usual school opening requirements – including vaccines for teachers or students and low rates of infection in the community – are not required to safely teach children in person, according to a consensus among pediatric infectious disease experts in a new survey.

Instead, the 175 experts – mostly pediatricians with a focus on public health – largely agreed that it is safe for schools to now be open to elementary school students for full-time and in-person tuition. This also applies in communities where Covid-19 infections are widespread, provided that basic safety measures are in place. Most important are universal masking, physical distancing, adequate ventilation and avoidance of activities in large groups.

The experts were interviewed by the New York Times last week. Most believe that the level of virus spread in a community is not a key indicator of whether schools should be open, although many districts still rely on this metric. Schools should only close if there are Covid-19 cases in the school itself, most said.

“There is no situation where schools can only be opened if they have evidence of transmission in the school,” said Dr. David Rosen, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Washington University in St. Louis.

The risk of dropping out of school is far greater, said many experts. “The mental health crisis caused by school closings will be a worse pandemic than Covid,” said Dr. Uzma Hasan, Head of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey.

These responses are largely in line with current federal guidelines that make no mention of vaccines and reflect key scientific evidence that schools are not a primary source of child or adult spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to publish new recommendations on how to run schools safely on Friday, and the Biden administration has given priority to opening schools.

However, the expert consensus in the survey contradicts the position of certain policy makers, school administrators, parent groups and teacher unions. Some in these groups have indicated that they do not want to return to school buildings next fall if it is likely that teachers can be vaccinated, although not most of the students. Some districts have put up stiff resistance to the reopening, especially in large cities where teachers have threatened to strike if they are called back to school buildings.

Some experts agreed that open schools pose a risk, especially for the adults working there, saying that many parts of the country have not yet controlled the virus enough to be opened safely.

“If we wanted schools to reopen safely, we as a society would have had to work hard to keep transmission rates low and to invest resources in schools,” said Dr. Leana Wen, Emergency Doctor and Visiting Professor of Health Policy at George Washington University.

About half of the country’s students are still studying from home, and while the majority of districts have at least some face-to-face learning and are trying to reopen this spring, many students offer just a few hours a day or a few days a week .

The mismatch between the experts ‘preferred guidelines and school opening rules in many districts reflects political considerations and union demands, but it also changes scientists’ understanding of the virus. Many school policies were developed months ago before there was mounting evidence that Covid-19 did not spread easily in schools where basic safety precautions were in place. The guidelines could change again, they warned: Almost everyone raised concerns that new coronavirus variants could disrupt schools’ plans to be open in the spring or fall.

More than two-thirds of respondents said they had school-age children, and half had children in school at least temporarily. Overall, they were more likely to support opening their own schools. About 85 percent of those in communities where schools were open all day said their district made the right call, while only a third of those in places where schools were still closed made the right choice.

Updated

Apr. 11, 2021, 3:40 p.m. ET

“Closing the school in spring 2020 was the right decision: we didn’t know much about Covid at the time and didn’t know what role children could play in the transmission,” said Dr. Mitul Kapadia, director of pediatric physical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “We know now, and we know schools can open safely. Fear guides decisions even against the guidelines and recommendations of the medical and public health communities. “

The point of most agreement was to require masks for everyone. All respondents said it was important and many said it was a simple solution that made the need for other conditions for opening less important.

“What works in healthcare, masks, will work in schools,” said Dr. Danielle Zerr, professor and director of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Washington. “Children are good at wearing masks!”

Half of the panel said a full return to school with no precautions – no masks, full classrooms, and all restored activity – would require all adults and children in the community to have access to vaccinations. (Vaccines have not yet been tested in children and will most likely not be available until 2022.)

But not everyone agreed that younger children need to be vaccinated to return to pre-pandemic school life. A fifth said a full reopening could occur without precaution once adults in the community and students were vaccinated, and 12 percent said it could happen once vaccines are available to all adults in the community.

The experts also questioned another strategy used by many districts that are open or due to open this spring: part-time opening for small and permanent cohorts of students who take turns participating in class schedules to reduce class size and the To maximize the distance between people. Only a third said it was very important for schools to do this, although three quarters said students should be six feet apart for some or all of the time. Three quarters said schools should avoid crowds, such as in hallways or cafeterias.

With universal masking, “school transfers are close to zero and cohorts are not required,” said Dr. Jeanne Ann Noble, Emergency Medicine Physician and Director of Covid Response at the University of California at San Francisco.

Limiting school hours increased other risks, such as disrupting children’s social development, disrupting family routines, and increasing the likelihood of children being exposed to a larger group of people outside of school.

The experts expressed deep concern about other risks for staying home students, including depression, hunger, anxiety, isolation, and learning loss.

“Children’s learning and emotional and in some cases physical health are severely affected by early school leaving,” said Dr. Lisa Abuogi, a pediatric emergency physician at the University of Colorado, and gave her personal opinions. “I spend some of my clinical time in the emergency room and the psychological distress we see in school-related children is no longer current.”

Respondents came from membership lists of three groups: the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, the Decision Sciences for Child Health Collaborative, and the American Academy of Pediatrics’ sub-specialty group in Epidemiology, Public Health, and Evidence. Some individual scientists also replied. Almost all of them were doctors, and more than a quarter of them had degrees in epidemiology or public health. Most worked in academia and about a quarter in clinical settings, and most said their daily work was closely related to the pandemic.

The survey asked experts about various strategies schools use to protect students and staff. The experts said many such measures would have some value, but identified two as the most important: wearing masks and distancing themselves.

Other widely used measures – such as frequent disinfection of buildings and surfaces, temperature controls, or the use of Plexiglas partitions – were seen as less important. A quarter said routine surveillance tests of students and staff are very important for opening schools.

“Masks are key,” said Dr. Noble. “Other interventions create a false sense of security.”

Many states have tied openings to community dissemination measures in the school, such as: B. the positivity rate of tests, the rate of new infections or the rate of hospital stays. But 80 percent of the experts said school districts shouldn’t base reopening decisions on infection data across the county. You should focus on virus cases in school.

Many districts have opened or are considering opening up to younger students before older ones. Research has shown that infection and spread in adolescent children become more similar to adults. The Biden administration has designed its reopening plans for children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Just over half of pediatric infectious disease experts said fifth grade should be the cutoff when schools are partially open. Only 17 percent said the eighth grade should be. Despite the greater risk faced by high school students, many complained about the long-term effects of a year of extreme isolation on teenagers.

Although these experts specialized in children’s physical health, many concluded that the risks to mental health, social skills, and education outweighed the risks of the virus. The future prospects of the students, said Dr. Susan Lipton, director of pediatric infectious diseases at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, are “torpedoed without the best academics, interaction with inspiring teachers who become mentors, clubs, sports and other opportunities to shine.”

“This is a generation devastating,” she said.

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Chicago Lecturers Attain a Tentative Deal to Reopen Faculties.

Chicago Teachers Reach a Tentative Deal to Reopen Schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union has reached a tentative agreement with Mayor Lori Lightfoot to reopen the city’s schools for personal teaching, the mayor said on Sunday.

When completed, the deal would stave off a strike that threatened to disrupt classes for students in the country’s third largest school district.

As part of the deal, preschool kindergarten and some special education students would return to classrooms on Thursday. Kindergarten staff through fifth grade classrooms would return on February 22, and students in those classes would return on March 1. Staff in sixth through eighth grade classrooms would be returning on March 1 and students on March 8.

The deal must be approved by the union’s elected governing body, the House of Delegates, the mayor said. The union leadership is expected to meet with their base on Sunday afternoon, and then the House of Representatives will meet, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the union did not want the deal before the public Members had the opportunity to see it.

The Chicago Tribune reported the existence of the deal on Sunday morning. Shortly thereafter, the union posted on Twitter: “We don’t have an agreement with the Chicago Public Schools. The mayor and her team made an offer to our members yesterday evening that requires further review. We will continue our democratic process of simple scrutiny throughout the day before an agreement is reached. “

Mayor Lightfoot and the union were embroiled in one of the most intense reopening battles in the country. The mayor has argued that the city’s most vulnerable students needed the opportunity to return to school in person, while the union condemned the city’s reopening plan as unsafe.

A similar battle is underway in Philadelphia, where pre-school through second grade teachers are due to report to school buildings on Monday in preparation for the return of students on February 22nd. The teachers’ union there has advised its members to continue working remotely. It was not yet safe to return to school buildings.

Ms. Lightfoot said Sunday that the fight with the union in Chicago had been bitter. She said she heard from parents who felt they were being held hostage and drowned out their voices. She tried to bring the vitriol to the past.

“My Chicagoans, we have to move forward and we have to heal,” she said.

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CDC director says faculties can safely reopen with out vaccinating lecturers

Biden's incoming CDC director says Trump administration 'muzzled' scientists

Rochelle Walensky, who was nominated as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks after U.S. President-elect Joe Biden started his team dealing with the Covid-19 on December 8 at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware. Pandemic commissioned, 2020.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

Teachers don’t have to get Covid-19 vaccinations before schools can safely reopen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

“There is mounting data to suggest schools can be reopened safely and that reopening safely does not mean teachers need to be vaccinated,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a White House press conference on Covid-19.

“Teacher vaccinations are not a requirement for schools to reopen safely,” she added.

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted for “key frontline workers”, including teachers, to have their turn to receive a Covid-19 vaccine after prioritizing healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities were. However, it can take a while for most teachers to get their recordings as US officials work to speed up the pace of vaccinations.

Even so, school systems in the US have been under pressure to reopen after switching to distance learning last year due to the coronavirus pandemic that infected more than 26.4 million Americans and killed at least 447,077 people in just over a year had.

Some parents had to stay home to watch their children instead of going to work. Meanwhile, teachers and other faculties have raised concerns about return to school that could potentially endanger their health.

A study by the CDC released late last month found little evidence of the virus spreading to schools in the US and abroad when precautions were taken, such as wearing masks, social distancing, and ventilation rooms.

The Biden government has released a bailout plan for Covid that includes $ 170 billion to reopen schools and universities. Some of the money would be used to scale tests. The government has stated that testing is a “critical” strategy for controlling the spread of the virus, but added testing is still not widely used and the US is still not effectively using the tests it has.

Walensky previously said schools should be the first to open and the last to close in the pandemic.

Jeff Zients, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 tsar, said Wednesday that Biden was “very clear” that he would like schools to “reopen and stay open”.

“That means every school has the equipment and resources to open safely,” he said during the press conference, calling on Congress to “do its part” by approving Biden’s Covid rescue plan. “Not just private schools or schools in affluent areas, but all schools.”

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Politics

Surge of Scholar Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Colleges to Reopen

Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen

That fall, when most school districts decided not to reopen, more parents spoke up. The parents of a 14-year-old boy in Maryland who killed himself in October described their son “giving up” after his district decided not to return in the fall. In December, an 11-year-old boy shot himself dead while in his zoom class in Sacramento. Weeks later, the father of a teenager in Maine attributed his son’s suicide to the pandemic’s isolation.

“We knew he was upset because he could no longer participate in his school activity, soccer,” Jay Smith told a local TV station. “We never thought it was that bad.”

President Biden has put in place a solid plan to expedite vaccinations, expand coronavirus testing, and spend billions of dollars to help district reopen most of their schools in his first 100 days in office.

By then, children in districts like Clark County with more than 300,000 students will not have attended school for more than a year.

“It feels like we’re running out of time every day,” said Dr. Jara.

On the road to the pandemic, youth suicide rates had increased for a decade. Until 2018, suicide was the second leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults after accidents. And the latest Behavioral Risk Survey, published last year by the CDC, which tracks student health trends, shows that the percentage of students who reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness has increased steadily over the past decade, as well as at those who planned and attempted suicide.

Districts have been reporting suicide clusters since the lockdowns, said Dr. Massetti of the CDC, and many said they had difficulty connecting students to services.

“Without personal tuition, there is a void that is not being filled right now,” she said.

Suzie Button, the senior clinical director for high school programs at the Jed Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit engaged in suicide prevention, said hundreds of schools and colleges – including Clark County’s – are involved with of the organization have partnered to provide better service to students during this time of the pandemic.

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Business

China Expands Grad Colleges because the Younger Search Jobs

China Expands Grad Schools as the Young Seek Jobs

Graduation was getting closer, but Yang Xiaomin, a 21-year-old student in northeast China, skipped her university’s job fair. Nor did she look for positions alone. She didn’t think she had a chance of landing one.

“Some jobs won’t even take resumes from people with bachelor’s degrees,” said Ms. Yang, who passed the national graduate school entrance exam along with a record 3.77 million of her colleagues last month. “Going to graduate school won’t necessarily help me find a better job, but at least it gives me more options.”

China’s economy has largely recovered from the coronavirus pandemic. The data released on Monday shows it may be the only major economy that has grown over the past year. Yet one area is sorely lacking: the supply of desirable, well-paid jobs for the rapidly growing number of university graduates in the country. Most of the recovery was driven by labor sectors such as manufacturing, which the Chinese economy remains heavily reliant on.

With government encouragement, many students are turning to a stopgap solution: stay in school. The Chinese Ministry of Education announced at the height of the outbreak that it would order universities to increase the number of master’s candidates by 189,000, an increase of nearly 25 percent, in an attempt to reduce unemployment. Undergraduate slots would also increase by more than 300,000.

Almost four million hopefuls took the graduate entrance exam last month. This corresponds to an increase of almost 11 percent compared to the previous year and more than double the figure compared to 2016.

Schools are a common landing site in times of economic uncertainty, but in China the urge to expand enrollment has been a long-term problem. Even before the pandemic, the country’s graduates complained that there were not enough suitable jobs. Official employment figures are unreliable, but authorities said in 2014 that the unemployment rate among college graduates was up to 30 percent in some areas two months after graduation.

As a result, many Chinese have feared that expanding college graduate slots will increase already fierce competition for jobs, dilute the value of advanced degrees, or postpone an unemployment crisis. “Are graduate students under siege?” read the headline of a government-controlled publication.

In recent years, the Communist Party has often linked the prosperity of college graduates not only to economic development but also to “social stability”, and fears that they could be a source of political unrest if their economic fortunes were to falter .

However, to keep unemployment among these workers low, the government must also be careful not to raise its hopes, said Joshua Mok, a professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong who studies China’s education policy. “It can create a false expectation for these highly skilled people,” said Professor Mok. “The Chinese government must pay attention to how these expectations can be dealt with.”

The government’s expansion push is part of a broader, decade-long effort to increase university enrollment. According to official statistics, China had fewer than 3.5 million undergraduate and graduate students in 1997. In 2019 there were more than 33 million excluding online schools and adult higher education institutions.

The number of university degrees per capita is still behind that of the industrialized countries. According to government statistics, there are around two doctoral students for every 1,000 Chinese, and around nine in the United States. Still, China’s economy has not kept pace with the rapid expansion of higher education, with each round of new graduates competing for a small pool of jobs.

The pandemic has exacerbated these concerns. A report from Zhaopin, China’s largest job-recruiting platform, found that 26.3 percent of college graduates were unemployed in 2020 last June. According to the report, jobs for recent college graduates decreased 7 percent from the same period last year, while the number of applicants rose nearly 63 percent.

“What the current Chinese economy needs is more people with technical qualifications than just general degrees from universities,” said Professor Mok. “There is a skill mismatch.”

The competition has made many students feel that an advanced degree is practically mandatory. Ms. Yang, who studies land resource management, said she had known for a long time that she would attend graduate school because her bachelor’s degree alone was “too inferior.”

She knew that competition for approval would increase after the outbreak. “If you choose to take the master’s exam, you can’t be afraid that there will be lots of other people,” she said.

Others accepted less. On Weibo, where the hashtag is “What do you think of the excitement for final exams?” has been viewed more than 240 million times, many feared that if enrollment skyrocketed, the quality of teaching or the value of their degree would decline.

Others have asked if the government is just postponing rising unemployment for a few years. Some feared that companies would raise their application standards. Still others wondered if there would be enough dorms to accommodate all of the students.

“Enrollment expansion is not just a matter of arithmetic,” wrote one person. “We need to think about how this will affect the general development of education and society.”

Concern reached such a high point that it sparked a government response. Hong Dayong, an Education Department official, admitted at a press conference last month that some universities were facing teacher shortages with increasing graduate programs. However, she said officials would put in place stricter quality control measures and that the government would encourage universities to offer more professionally oriented masters degrees to help graduates find jobs.

The government has also ordered state-owned companies to hire newer graduates and subsidized companies that hire them.

Some advice was blunt. Chu Chaohui, a researcher at China’s National Institute of Education, told the state-run tabloid Global Times that graduates should lower their sight. In doing so, they would find jobs in sectors like grocery or parcel delivery, he said.

Indeed, excessive expectations can increase competition for jobs. According to Zhaopin, the recruiting website, college graduates have around 1.4 vacancies for each applicant, even after the epidemic. But many graduates only look to the largest cities or expect high salaries, said Professor Mok.

Still, some students said that encouraging the government to pursue higher education would only bolster those expectations.

“Everyone has their own ambitions, even a little arrogance,” said Bai Jingting, a business student in eastern Anhui Province. Ms. Bai, 20, said she attended her college’s job fair in the fall but couldn’t find any jobs that seemed exciting enough. “Since I applied for a graduate school, I will of course think about how it should be easier to find a job afterwards and find a job that I want.”

Another incentive for the competition is the fact that many students who wanted to study or work abroad no longer have this option.

Prior to the pandemic, Fan Ledi, a graduate of western Qinghai Province, had planned to move to Ireland for a one-year master’s degree in human resource management. After that, he wanted to work there, excited about the prospect of learning about a new culture.

But he has ditched that plan and will be looking for jobs at home when he finishes his program, which he completes online due to travel restrictions.

“The Irish are struggling to find work, let alone foreigners,” Fan said. He added that he was concerned about discrimination as anti-China sentiment rises in many western countries. “I think it is decidedly impossible to go abroad to find work now.”

He’s already attending job fairs, but won’t finish school until November. Recruiters tell him he’s early but he asks them to take his resume anyway.

Faced with the jostling for jobs and college graduate positions, Ms. Bai shrugged when the government increased the number of masters’ seats in Anhui. Her major in business was one of the most popular, she said, and competition would always be fierce.

“How Much Can Enrollment Expand?” She said. “It’s just a drop in the ocean.”

Albee Zhang and Liu Yi contributed to the research.

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Health

What Does a Extra Contagious Virus Imply for Faculties?

What Does a More Contagious Virus Mean for Schools?

“When we look at what has happened in the UK and think about this new variant and see that all the numbers are rising, we have to remember that schools are open with virtually no changes,” said Dr Jenkins said. “I would like to see a real example of a country, state, or place like this that has managed to control things in schools.”

There are a few examples in the United States.

Erin Bromage, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, advised the Governor of Rhode Island and schools in southern Massachusetts on preventive measures to fight the coronavirus. The schools, which followed closely the guidelines, didn’t see many infections, even with the virus circulating at high levels in the community, said Dr. Bromage.

“When the system is properly designed and we take kids to school, they’ll be just as safe, if not more secure, than in a hybrid or remote system,” he said.

The children of the school that Dr. Visited Bromage, took extra precautions. For example, the administrators closed the school a few days before Thanksgiving to reduce the risk of family reunions, and worked remotely for the week after the vacation.

Officials tested the nearly 300 students and staff at the end of that week, found only two cases, and decided to reopen.

“That gave us confidence that our population was not representative of what we saw in the wider community,” he said. “We used data to see if we could get back together.”

The tests are costing $ 61 per child, but schools that can’t afford it might consider testing teachers only, he added, as the data suggests that the virus “is more likely to be from teacher to teacher than student wanders to teacher ”.

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World News

UK Lockdown: Colleges, Schools to Shut as Coronavirus Variant Rages

UK Lockdown: Schools, Colleges to Close as Coronavirus Variant Rages

LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed a tough new national lockdown on Monday as the UK’s desperate race to vaccinate its population could be overtaken by a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus that was on track to overwhelm the country’s beleaguered hospitals .

After several days of alarmingly high and escalating case numbers, Mr Johnson ordered schools and colleges in England to close their doors and switch to distance learning. He appealed to the British to stay home for all but a few necessary purposes, including essential work and the purchase of food and medicine.

The nationwide restrictions, officials warned, will remain in place until at least mid-February.

The decision was a new setback for Mr Johnson as the arrival of two vaccines after nine months and severe criticism of his handling of the pandemic appeared to offer a way out of the crisis.

On the day the first doses of a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University were given, the good news was drowned out by the reintroduction of the kind of sweeping restrictions put in place last spring when the pandemic first threatened to spiral out of control.

In the past few weeks, the new, highly transmissible variant of the virus has caught on in London and the south-east of England, causing the number of cases to rise alarmingly to nearly 60,000 a day and putting hospitals under acute pressure.

On Sunday, Mr Johnson admitted that current controls of daily living were inadequate. However, the first announcement of a full lockdown came not from England but from Scotland, where the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has consistently moved further and faster to tame the pandemic.

In Edinburgh, Ms Sturgeon said that mainland Scotland people must be required to stay at home and work from wherever possible, while places of worship would be closed and schools were largely operated by distance learning.

Mr Johnson followed on Monday evening to announce the lockdown in England that many predicted.

“It is clear that we must do more together to get this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out,” Johnson said in a televised address.

While the coming weeks may be some of the toughest, he believed Britain “is entering the final phase of the struggle because with every push that goes into our arms we tilt the odds against Covid and in favor of the British people. ”

The people of England have been encouraged to comply with the new rules immediately, although some of the new restrictions won’t take effect until Wednesday morning and a vote in Parliament will likely take place, specifically recalled on the same day.

Ministers had celebrated the deployment of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not only cheaper than Pfizer-BioNTech’s but also much easier to store. They said it could help turn the tide in Britain’s fight against the virus.

However, the UK is in a race to roll out its mass vaccination program before its overloaded health service is overwhelmed by the new variant. Covid-free treatment is already being postponed again, and pictures of ambulances piling up in some hospitals’ parking lots last week highlighted the challenge facing the country’s tired health workers.

Updated

Jan. 6, 2021, 3:48 p.m. ET

The government has raised its Covid warning for the first time and warns of a “material risk that health services will be overwhelmed”. There were more than 26,000 Covid-19 patients in hospitals as of Monday, up 30 percent from the previous week, Johnson’s office said. And cases are increasing rapidly across the country, it said.

Mr Johnson has set an ambitious goal for the country’s vaccine campaign: to have a first dose of the vaccine to the most vulnerable populations by mid-February. If the government does this, the restrictions could be lifted.

Most Britons are already exposed to severe restrictions in everyday life. Non-essential shops, pubs and restaurants are already closed in much of England, where those who live by the strictest rules in the areas are not allowed to mix between households.

Now all parts of England will be under these curbs and schools will be closed to most students.

However, some restrictions will be a little less onerous than those imposed last March when the virus marched relentlessly across Europe and the country was first put into lockdown.

This time around, people in England are still allowed to meet someone else to exercise together outside, and the places of worship remain open, as are the playgrounds. Elite professional football games continue, although some games had to be canceled recently after players became infected.

For critics, developments on Monday showed Mr Johnson’s tendency to postpone decisions until the last moment, in part to balance public health issues with concerns of many of his ruling Conservative Party about the devastating economic impact.

On Sunday, after Mr Johnson used a BBC interview to warn that new restrictions were likely, opposition Labor Party leader Keir Starmer called for immediate new national restrictions.

But on Monday morning, Mr Johnson initially appeared to be resisting being forced to take a quick decision, insisting that the government still measure the impact of the toughest restrictions already in place on a hospital visit. He acknowledged that “tough” weeks were ahead and said there was “no question” that tougher measures would be announced “in due course”.

Even within his own Conservative Party, pressure mounted when a senior lawmaker and former health minister, Jeremy Hunt, wrote on Twitter that it was “time to act” and “schools, close borders and immediately ban any confusion. ”

The main lesson from dealing with the pandemic was that “Countries that act early and act decisively save lives and quickly get their economies back to normal,” Hunt said.

Medical experts said that given the rapid spread of the new variant, Mr Johnson had no choice but to take more draconian measures. Some said the prime minister was already behind the curve given the number of cases and hospital admissions skyrocketed over the past week.

“He’s running late,” said Devi Sridhar, director of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. “The situation is bad with the new variant. You have to manage boundaries, pause schools, and stop mixing between households. “

The government’s scientific advisory body known as SAGE recommended on December 22nd that the UK consider a national lockdown and close schools and universities. The variant is on the way to become dominant in many parts of the country.

New infections have risen to almost 60,000 per day, twice as many as a few weeks ago.

Hospital admissions in London have doubled every week since early December, wrote Christina Pagel, director of clinical operations at University College London, on Twitter. The UK already has the highest death toll in Europe, with 75,024 deaths, and medical experts are warning that it will rise again after more modest growth in the summer.

Others expressed concern about the constant changes in the message of a government that often seemed to respond to fast-moving events rather than anticipating them.

After the national lockdown last year, the government promised to do everything possible to keep schools open. However, the return of students on Monday after the winter break was confusing as some schools had to close in areas with high infections while some school principals decided to do it themselves. In some cases it was because too many employees were sick, in others it was reports that children might be more susceptible to the new variant than to the original virus.

A teachers’ union called on all elementary schools to switch to distance learning in the first two weeks of January, with the exception of classes aimed at vulnerable children and the families of key workers.

After days of chaos over school policy, Mr Johnson reluctantly and belatedly agreed to the proposal on Monday.

“Parents whose children were in school today reasonably wonder why we didn’t make that decision sooner,” he said, adding, “the answer is simply that we have done everything in our power to make schools keep open. “

Categories
Business

Academics on TV? Faculties Strive Artistic Technique to Slim Digital Divide

Teachers on TV? Schools Try Creative Strategy to Narrow Digital Divide

The concept quickly spread to Fox stations in Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, all of which partnered with local school districts or teacher unions to get teachers on television. (The initiative ended in Houston and Washington after the spring, but it still airs every weekday in San Francisco and Saturdays in Chicago.)

In Houston, an average of 37,000 people watched the show every time it aired in the spring, and about 2,200 people watched the San Francisco version every day this fall, the television network said. We Still Teach, the Chicago version of the program that began in May, reaches 50,000 households in the region every weekend, according to Nielsen.

“We’re not solving the digital divide, but based on my experience of personal connection getting into a viewer’s kitchen or living room, I thought this could be an immediate way to fill that gap,” Ms. Spaulding Chevalier. “We’ll let you know you haven’t been forgotten.”

The educational gap between families who can afford laptops and strong Wi-Fi signals and those who cannot has been well documented and often affects rural areas and color communities. In 2018, 15 to 16 million students did not have adequate equipment or reliable internet connections at home. This comes from a report by Common Sense Media, a child advocacy and media rating group that receives royalties from Internet service providers who distribute their content.

The gap between owners and non-owners has been exacerbated by school closings. As recently as October, at least thousands of students in the United States were unable to enter remote classrooms because they did not have access to a laptop. According to Nielsen, 96 percent of Americans have a working television.

Ms. Spaulding Chevalier’s sister Tamika Spaulding, who is producing the Chicago version of the program with her friend Katherine O’Brien, said they acted urgently.

“There are many plans to close the digital divide, but there are four-year rollout plans,” said Ms. Spaulding. “So what are you doing today for the student who is not getting any educational content?”