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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

As some have pointed out elsewhere, the idea that "they can just do the courses remotely from their home country" has some issues:

- live classes may happen in the middle of the night

- tools like GSuite are blocked in China

- internet connection quality varies

Given the amount of revenue foreign students bring in, this seems like the admin is using access to those students as a lever to force schools to reopen prematurely.

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There's also the sad reality that for many students, it's not possible to work unimpeded on school work at home. For many, university is the a psychological retreat from home circumstances that are distracting at best the best of times and downright abusive at the worst. It doesn't matter if your Internet is solid if you can't actually focus on the work.

Post quals grad students are going to be hard pressed to get a PCR machine, vivarium, or fluoroscope up and running in their parent's house. You know, machines vital to figuring out covid vaccines.

I've no idea how most of them will get any quality lab-bench research done. It pretty much nukes them.

Campuses are going to be closed in the Fall. Nobody is going to have access to those things.

Limited lab access is a lot easier to safely implement with shift reservations and people looking after each others projects than classes, so I'd expect that to happen to a degree. At least some universities here in Germany already do allow occasional lab access if needed, with appropriate precautions.

You seem to be very convinced of this. At my institution, research activities has resumed for the past month (albeit with restrictions on occupancy).

I know a few grad students at 'closed' campuses currently. Though the admin says the labs are off limits, the PIs are turning blind eyes to it. The labs are effectively open.

At the school where I work, they disabled key card access for everyone campuswide. You need to special permission to have them unlock it for a limited time period to get in.

Of course a few old buildings still use regular keys so people can sneak in potentially.

> Though the admin says the labs are off limits

so the labs are closed then, despite your anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

I mean, they are closed, but a lot of people seem to come in anyway and do things just as before, so I am told.

Define that how would wish to.

Nothing is stopping students from living in their own apartments for online school.

That last point seems particularly apt. I didn't consider that, but maybe should have, it explains this decision in the context of Trump's desire to punish people into getting what he wants.

the money they save on rent they can use on getting a kick ass internet connection. internet is pretty good in most countries if you are willing to pay up. GSuite is blocked, means use word online? not insurmountable barriers

You pretend like you have solved things here, clearly you have not. Please stop trolling

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