Nothing to Sneeze At

Following the progress of COVID-19 with grim fascination. It feels like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Among the businesses and industries that are going to be disrupted by this: universities.

For a few past generations Canadians and Americans have more or less stopped having children. One might expect the universities to have been emptying out. The more so since they now face growing online competition.

Yet they have mostly been growing, while tuitions have been spiraling upward. I am amazed, on returning to Toronto after some years, at how Ryerson has expanded to take over much of the downtown. And new universities keep being founded.

Looks like another bubble bound to pop.

Until now, universities in Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK have been making their budgets by offering the traditional American/European university experience to international students. Especially large cohorts from China and Korea, where education is deeply valued. Walking through the Annex, the old U of T student shopping strip, I find mostly Korean stores and mostly Asian faces.

Now, suddenly, that finger is going to be yanked out of the dam, at least for a semester or two.

We’ll see how well the red tide will be contained.

In other coronavirus news, latest reports are that Israeli scientists think they have an oral vaccine, using new technologies, that might get through testing within ninety days.

It might fit well with a God-directed viral plague to have the hated Jews gallop to the rescue. Making it rather more difficult for a time to sustain the growing tone of antisemitism everywhere.