Back-to-College Plans Devolve Into a Jumble of Fast-Changing Rules

About 50 miles away, first-year students will be among the only ones on campus at Bowdoin College. “It was not prudent to bring everyone back,” said Clayton Rose, the college president. “We’re walking before we run.”

With fall semester just a few weeks away, the Covid-19 pandemic has stumped the brightest minds at universities across the U.S. There is no consensus about how college campuses are going to open, and what they will look like if they do. There are as many plans as there are institutions, and their guidebooks are being written in pencil, leaving families and students in limbo.

At stake are the health and well-being of more than 20 million students, faculty and staff—as well as billions of dollars in revenue from tuition, dormitories, dining halls and sports competitions. If colleges allow students back on campus, they could be inviting a public-health nightmare. Yet keeping classes online risks a drop in enrollment by students transferring elsewhere or sitting out the year. The University of Michigan, which plans to have students on campus, estimated this spring that its losses from the pandemic could reach $1 billion.

“College presidents are basically in an impossible situation,” said Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. “If they announce they’re going online too soon, they run the risk of losing students and probably making some alumni mad at them. If they open up in person there are serious health concerns, and they run the risk of protests and a vote of no-confidence.”

Michael Young, president of Texas A&M University, helped draft a plan to unify East and West Germany when he worked for the State Department three decades ago. He said that was easier than figuring out how to bring back 65,000 students, 3,500 faculty, and thousands of staff this fall to the campus in College Station, Texas. At present, the plan is for some students to come back to campus to take small, in-person classes, while others will take them remotely.

And if the disease crops up on campus? Mr. Young said the school hasn’t yet set a threshold, but 100 new infections a day has been discussed as one measure for triggering a renewed shutdown. It might depend on who is getting sick. “If it was 100 professors a day, it would be game over,” he said. “We can’t lose 20% of professors and continue to run the university.”

Competing demands and the pandemic’s spread have yielded a cascade of chaos for just about everyone in higher education. Some students want a tuition discount if classes are offered only online. Faculty and staff worry about the health risk of face-to-face work. Professors complain about the extra burden of preparing for in-person and online versions of their classes. President Trump is demanding schools reopen, and football fans want games.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given some general guidelines, like noting that large, in-person classes carry more risk than remote instruction and encouraging schools to close communal dining rooms and lounges, but says its advice should supplement, not replace, local rules. While Ohio has issued guidance including minimum standards for reopening and best practices—including urging remote learning where possible—not all states have provided such detailed recommendations, or they don’t align with city regulations, leaving school leaders to their own best guesses.

University presidents who had only weeks ago forecast campus life returning to normal this fall are now walking back those plans. Many are still juggling options while waiting for Covid-19’s next turn.

According to the most recent tally by The Chronicle of Higher Education, 49% of schools plan to bring students back for in-person classes; another 13% will offer only online instruction; and 35% will have a mix of both.

Even those planning to reopen campus to students have different ideas about how best to do that. Duke University announced Sunday that it would limit campus housing to mainly first-year students and sophomores, rather than bringing back juniors and seniors as well. Stanford University will alternate groups of students by class year for each 10-week academic quarter; Harvard University plans to allow mainly just first-year undergraduates on its Cambridge, Mass., campus. The neighboring Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus is hosting mainly seniors.

This year, getting to college looks like it will be about as tough as getting into college. In upstate New York, Ithaca College plans to open its campus to students—except those arriving from the 31 hard-hit states on New York’s 14-day quarantine list. Those students can only take classes remotely because there isn’t enough room at the school to wait out their quarantine.

Some residents in Amherst, Mass., oppose plans by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst to bring students back, fearing a flood of newcomers from virus hot spots. Like some other colleges, students are expecting to take classes online but many will live on campus.

Matt O’Brien, a biomedical engineering student at Michigan, is eager to get back even though he knows it won’t be the same: no big lecture halls, no tailgate parties. The virus threat makes his return to school “equally as frightening as it is exciting,” the rising junior said.

Some schools are asking students to sign a pledge saying they won’t leave campus, socialize in large groups or bring others back to their dorm rooms. Most require masks in public settings. A Cornell University committee issued a 97-page report in mid-June that, among other health-related recommendations, suggested students take shorter showers to avoid a pileup in communal bathrooms and try not to brush their teeth while other people are at the sink.

Cornell currently plans to return students to its Ithaca, N.Y., campus, with a mix of face-to-face and online classes. But it and other schools acknowledge that few plans are final.

“By the time a report is produced and a decision is made and announced, the situation has changed yet again,” said Kim Weeden, a sociology professor at Cornell who participated in deliberations for that school’s reopening.

In May, Timothy White, chancellor of the California State University System, said classes at all 23 of its campuses would be held online. It would be irresponsible, he said at the time, to “wait until August to only then scramble.”

The University of California, Berkeley announced last week that fall classes would begin online, and said face-to-face instruction won’t start until the Bay Area’s Covid-19 resurgence is reversed.

University of Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins, by contrast, said all students would be back on campus in August. Masks will be mandatory and the school has asked everyone to limit off-campus travel as much as possible. “We recognize the challenge,” he said, “But we believe it is one we can meet.”

Liberty University allowed hundreds of students back to campus last spring after other schools closed but recorded no positive Covid-19 cases among residential students that term, school officials said. Now, the school plans to fully reopen in late August with in-person classes. It will make some adjustments, like staggering move-in times, requiring masks in some settings and encouraging them in others, and splitting a weekly campuswide worship event into two services so students can spread out more, according to a reopening plan submitted to the state.

Many college instructors face a greater risk from the virus than students do because they are generally older, which has led to tension over more-aggressive reopening plans. Close to 40% of tenure-track faculty are ages 55 and above, compared with 23% of all U.S. workers, according to the College and University Professional Association of Human Resources.

Faculty at Pennsylvania State University, Appalachian State University, Boston University and elsewhere have circulated petitions calling for more freedom to teach remotely.

Early in July, more than 800 faculty at Georgia Tech signed a letter opposing a decision by the state’s board of regents to forbid public universities from requiring face masks. “It was a betrayal of Georgia Tech,” said Dr. Janet Murray, an associate dean for faculty affairs and the lead signatory on the letter. “The faculty was just so outraged.”

The board later reversed course, and Georgia Tech will require face masks in classrooms. As of July 27, the state of Georgia has had 166,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 3,500 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Families and students aren’t all convinced that online classes should cost the same as taking them in a bricks-and-mortar campus. Decisions this spring to send students home drew lawsuits from families who wanted tuition discounts and refunds, saying they didn’t get what they paid for. This fall, most colleges will charge the same tuition, whether classes are in person or via computer screen.

A few schools, including Williams College, Georgetown University, Princeton University and Spelman College, have cut their tuition for the year, with some giving discounts for remote learning and, in some cases, even for students returning to campus.

Most schools can’t afford any breaks for tuition or room and board. Many university budgets were stretched thin by millions of dollars in refunds they paid to students for a shortened spring semester. They worry about the same thing happening this fall.

Washington State University said on July 1 that it wouldn’t issue refunds for housing and dining if the campus had to close midsemester. After a flood of complaints, the school changed the new policy a few days later. Last week, it said it would only open dorms to students who really have nowhere else to go, as classes will be shifted online.

Nashville has reported record-high Covid-19 cases in recent days, yet Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier, who has been following the occupancy rates of intensive-care units at local hospitals, said the virus so far hasn’t affected his decision to reopen for fall. Vanderbilt University won’t refund housing costs if it has to send students home early.

Football ticket sales, merchandise and TV contracts generate tens of millions of dollars and serve as a marketing and fundraising tool at some schools. “Some people have incorrectly framed the issue as safety versus revenue generation,” Iowa State University Athletic Director Jamie Pollard wrote to fans on July 13. He said safety was paramount, but pointed out that losing the football season would be financially devastating to the school.

Some institutions, including those in New Jersey and Massachusetts, are looking for protection from potential lawsuits if student athletes fall ill at school. Ohio State University, the University of Virginia and others required student-athletes to sign waivers clearing the school from fault if they got sick when returning for voluntary workouts. Michigan State University and Rutgers University have quarantined their entire football teams recently because of virus exposure, while others have paused preseason practices.

The Ivy League, which doesn’t earn huge payouts from football, was the first of several lower-tier athletic conferences to cancel its fall season. The Big Ten and Pac-12 teams will play matchups only within their respective conferences. Other major football conferences are expected to announce plans this week.

Pamela Wexler knows that her son, Seth Kahler, is eager to get back to Gainesville, Fla., for his sophomore year at the University of Florida. She said he has been taking such precautions as wearing a mask. Yet two things have made her nervous: Some of Seth’s friends visited the family in Washington, D.C., this spring without bothering to wear masks, and the number of Covid-19 cases in Florida keeps rising.

The family must decide about travel, whether to drive or risk a flight, as well as figure out exactly when Seth needs to arrive in Florida.

“You create this story in your head that he’s going to be fine,” Ms. Wexler said. “Because if you don’t, he’s staying in the basement for the rest of his life.”

Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com and Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com