Campuses Are Virus Incubators, but These Colleges Can’t Require Vaccines

University of Texas at San Antonio will begin with mostly remote classes, because of the city’s high infection rates. Other schools are trying to avoid that fate.

It is what many universities fear. After months of gearing up for a fall semester that seemed like normal, with in-person classes and packed football games, the University of Texas at San Antonio announced Wednesday that almost all courses will be held online for the first three weeks. The university’s president, Taylor Eighmy, notified the campus of 30,000 students of the shift, blaming a surge in Delta variant cases in San Antonio. Fully remote classes are something leaders of universities across the country hope to avoid this fall, after three semesters of pandemic disruption on their campuses.