Colleges Take Spring Break Off Their Calendars Already

The chaos of 2020 is reaching into 2021 for college students. Worried about the coronavirus being brought back to campus after vacation, schools are starting to remove spring break from their calendars. The University of Michigan and University of Kentucky did that last week, ABC reports, with Kentucky saying it will have "a condensed semester in which students remain engaged in coursework on campus." The school had scrapped its 2020 fall break, as well, per the Courier-Journal. The list of schools canceling spring break includes the University of Florida, Kansas State, Perdue, Iowa State and Texas Christian.

A few colleges have made winter break longer instead, which helps with another threat. Carnegie Mellon said that change will "reduce the number of weeks we are in session during flu season." The school will sprinkle "break days" or "reading days" throughout the semester instead to give students a little time off. At the University of Tennessee, per WBIR, students' only day off next semester will be Good Friday. By dropping spring break, Kentucky announced, the school will be "assured that we did everything we could to protect the health, safety and well-being" of students and employees. (In March, a group of students on a spring break charter flight tested positive.)