Commuters, as a tribe, tend to be “unloved”.  Victorians called them “the dark horde”. T.S. Eliot compared them to the souls in hell. But now suddenly we need them, desperately. “Come back, commuters. Rally to your city. It needs your fares, your rents, your Starbucks, your Prets, your nights on the tiles.” Without them, cities are dying. In London, Tube travel is down around 75%. “Shopping is crippled, at 32% of normal footfall.” Boris Johnson is urging us to return to our offices, without success: a third of UK office workers have returned to their desks, against 70% to 83% in Germany, Italy and France.

But while the PM was encouraging us to go back, the Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, was declaring that there was “absolutely no reason” for people to stop working from home. Besides, Britons seem to have fallen in love with working from home , or WFH, as it is now known. And no wonder. One manager at a big insurance company told me that there had been a 15% improvement in productivity among home workers – perhaps because they were no longer enduring long, stressful commutes, and were able to sleep for longer, and spend more time with their families. So what if the rail unions and coffee chains charging £3 a cup lose out as a result? A YouGov survey found that 68% of homeworking newcomers would like to keep working from home when the crisis is over.

That’s all very well for them, but not so good if you live in a tiny flat, or work in a company serving commuters. Few phrases make the heart sink more than: “You are invited to a Zoom chat.” Cue “a screen full of squinting faces”, some periodically disappearing, everyone saying: “No… no, you first… you… what?” For all its benefits, the technology is deeply frustrating, and it’s no long-term a substitute for meeting colleagues face-to-face. “Please let tech-distancing be for the pandemic, not for life.”  (Simon Jenkins, London Evening Standard, repeated in The  Week, 15 August 2020).

My comment:  I wonder how an improvement in productivity of 15% was measured.  Or is it a figure plucked from the air?  All I know is that my British family members and friends are, indeed, working successfully at home, and are not complaining.  I can see an argument for an Epicurean solution: splitting time between office and home (50% each?), a compromise.  It does help to talk face to face with your colleagues, especially when it comes to people management. Awkward interviews may be even more awkward if you are dealing with them online.  I used to like looking into the eyes and watching the body language.

The British, it would seem, are keen on the new trend – induced by Covid-19 – of working from home. In a recent YouGov poll, only 13% of British adults felt workers able to do their job from home should return to the office; and as a Morgan Stanley survey has shown, only a third of UK office staff have returned to their usual workplace, compared to 83% in France and 76% in Italy.

But fans of home working would do well to bear in mind the case of “Bob”, says Andrew Hill. He was the US software developer for a big company who in 2013 outsourced his job to a Chinese consulting firm, giving them a slice of his salary while he traded on eBay and watched cat videos. His work didn’t suffer: on the contrary, “quarter after quarter” his bosses marked him as “the best developer in the building”. Except, of course, his work wasn’t being done in the building. And there’s the rub. For if working from home makes it easy for you to outsource your job without being detected, it also makes it easy for your boss to outsource you. If you can do your job anywhere, anyone can do your job. (Andrew Hill, Financial Times).

Comment:  “ Bob” was  dishonest and devious.  As such he was un-Epicurean.  Makes a good story, but you don’t do that to the boss; you hope he will have the integrity not to do it to you.

Universities with huge endowments are pretending remote learning is the same experience as in person teaching.  Harvard, for instance, is offering the bulk of their courses online, as are the University of California system, Yale, and Princeton.

What they all are not doing is reducing tuition, even though a significant portion of the value these educational institutions provide is now lost indefinitely. Princeton offers a 10% price cut, but  Harvard  ($40bn endowment ) still charges full tuition. 

Remote learning, no matter how well-intentioned, is a diluted product, and students deserve a tuition reduction for sitting at home and staring at a laptop screen. Professors cannot connect with students in the same way. And the ancillary benefits of college – making friends, networking, joining clubs, playing  sport– are  lost.

College costs have soared, and now almost every institution, in the age of coronavirus, faces a reckoning. There is an argument that students, especially at prestige schools, are still getting the value of a (prestigious) degree and therefore should pay the full freight. Isn’t the diploma ultimately what matters? But that’s not how colleges and universities pitch themselves to unsuspecting freshmen.

College life is supposed to be an experience. Part of the tradeoff of taking on crippling debt is supposed to be the creation of unforgettable memories, those four life-changing years you’ll never have again. Remote learning promises none of that.

Public schools are in a tougher position than their wealthier private counterparts, generating much of their revenue from tuition.  Many states have left world-class public institutions begging for money, especially after the 2008 economic crash. . Without a massive federal bailout package, public universities and community colleges will be suffering for years to come, starved of tax revenue in the wake of the pandemic.

College costs have soared over the decades owing to declining public aid, expensive athletics, increased demand, and the rising cost of staff, particularly those not tied to the faculty – and now almost every institution, in the age of coronavirus, faces a reckoning. They can continue to overcharge students. Or they can attempt a measure of economic justice.   (Ross Barkan, The Guardián July 11 2020, edited for length)

My comment: What universities should do is to stop the “arms race” in athletics, which has consumed huge sums of money and added to the indecent cost of university education. The writer was an oarsman during his time, always making academic work the priority, so I have nothing against sport; it just has to be kept in sensible perspective.  Epicurean moderation!

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