Page 16 - BusinessWest January 6, 2021

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK 2021 >>
Education
School Presidents Project Multi-year Emergence from Pandemic
Jamie Birge was searching for a piece of wood to knock on.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), which he serves as president, had essentially made it through a very different fall semester with only a handful of positive cases of COVID-19. He considers this a victory for his institution, and a clear indication that the many protocols put in place were effective.
“For the full semester, our positive rate was 10 times lower than the Commonwealth’s positive rate, and each week we outperformed our host city [North Adams], the county, and the Com- monwealth,” he explained. “We were actively hunting the virus through our testing protocol, and through our tracing protocol, we made sure there was no spread. I think we had six cases, and in each of those cases, none of them spread on campus, because we were able to identify
the virus through testing, we were able to either quarantine or isolate individuals, and we went to remote learning after Thanksgiving, which turned out to the best time to do that because there was an uptick in positive cases in Berkshire County, and our students were already off campus learn- ing remotely. From a numbers perspective, we
did extraordinarily well.” The semester was a
“Even in the era of online and remote learning, students still want to be on campus; they want that traditional experience.”
already committed to where they will be attend- ing school in the fall, although the next four or five weeks are critical. “I think that’s a soft figure, and, overall, we think this is going to be a multi- year emergence to return to where we had been. But I’m encouraged by the fact that we’re only off 3%.”
He said that number seems to be consis- tent with what the other eight state schools are reporting, although there is some variation. And
Education
Continued on page 18
success on many levels, he
went on, but for the stu-
dents living on campus in
singles or in off-campus
housing, it certainly wasn’t
the “typical residential
college experience,” he
noted, adding that those
on campus were all in sin-
gle rooms, and access was
limited between residence
halls. “You couldn’t go visit other people.”
Focusing on the future, Birge is obviously look- ing forward to the day when the school can again offer that full experience. He’s not sure when that will happen — certainly not before next fall and perhaps not even then — but there are signs of encouragement, he said, referring to everything from the introduction of vaccines to the projec- tions for enrollment for next September.
“The latest I’ve seen for the 2021 cycle is that we’re within 3% of the pre-pandemic numbers, so we’re feeling good about that,” he said, noting that, by this time of the year, many students have
JAMIE BIRGE
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ECONOMIC OUTLOOK 2021
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