Cambridge University scraps in-person lectures for 2020-2021
LONDON (AP) — 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 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 U.K. 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 U.S. 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 socializing. Some students who were due to start in the fall are likely to...
