UC San Diego ends up with 5,000 fewer dorm students than projected
Gary Robbins, 10-9-2020, San Diego Union-Tribune
UC San Diego has 9,655 students living in campus housing this fall, a figure that’s nearly 5,000 less than the campus has been projecting since the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The university also disclosed this week that the COVID-19 financial losses it expects to suffer will be about $200 million for 2020 and 2021. The school had been saying the losses would be in the $350 million to $450 million range. The huge cut in student housing represents a largely unpublicized effort to staunch the spread of the virus. Campus housing executives weren’t available to discuss the matter, according to Leslie Sepuka, a UCSD spokesperson.
UCSD began fall 2019 with 15,500 students living on campus, a figure that was expected to rise to 17,600 this year as new housing came online. When the pandemic began to hit hard this spring, the university adjusted its estimates, saying that it was more likely that 14,500 students would live in campus housing in the fall. UCSD told the Union-Tribune in mid-August that it was standing by that estimate. But the campus was actually moving to reduce the number of dorm students due to health safety guidance from the state, according to an email Sepuka sent this week to the U-T.
By early September, UCSD suddenly shifted to saying that it would have about 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students in housing this fall. The number reflected further efforts by UCSD to “de-densify” dorms in hopes of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The dorm population was 9,665 on October 1, the university says.
UCSD also has been telling the public that its COVID-19 financial losses could amount to as much as $450 million, with nearly half of the costs affecting the UCSD Health System. When asked for an update this week, Sepuka said that the campus expects to suffer $140 million in unexpected costs in 2020 and 2021, and that the health system would take a $60 million hit in 2020. The total: $200 million.
“The earlier high-level estimates are no longer accurate because they were exactly that: estimates based on the best assumptions at the time,” Sepuka said in email on Thursday. UCSD Health originally expected to lose $200 million alone. The estimate fell to $100 million, then to $60 million after the university received some government support.
“We have very good financial people. But this was a difficult situation which made it hard to make estimates,” said Dr. David Brenner, vice chancellor for health sciences. “This is the first time we’ve ever had an estimate that was this far off.”
UCSD has fared much better in forecasting COVID-19 infections. The school said in August that it expected that only 20 to 40 of the students who would move into campus housing this fall would prove to have the virus. So far, the number of positive tests has been in that range. The university is trying to prevent an outbreak by regularly testing its students for COVID-19, and examining the waste water from school buildings for signs of the virus. UCSD has shown that it can use such monitoring to identify and locate people who have contracted COVID-19. The university also is offering the campus community the opportunity to download a cellphone-based app that notifies people if they’ve come into contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
As we have noted in prior posts, it would be nice to have clearer data in estimated losses. Are they gross or net of federal aid? Are requests for additional aid that have some likelihood of success still pending?
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