> Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs. Sure, but the key is

> Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs. Sure, but the key is like-minded individuals, and it's fun (at least for many people) to be thrown together with hundreds or thousands of other people who are at the same life stage as you. Sports clubs, and many similar clubs and societies, amongst university students only really work when those students are substantially located in roughly the same geographical location. You're conflating being in a lecture hall with attending university. Being in lectures is a small part of the whole experience. Much of the rest of that experience relies heavily on being mostly colocated for the academic year. A really small example: Cambridge University will not be able to continue fielding a top quality rowing squad unless the squad members are all able to train together as a team. It will not be able to recruit new members to its rowing teams to build that top quality squad unless it can bring all those people together. On the teaching front it's pretty difficult to do a substantial proportion of, e.g., practical physics, chemistry, and biology labs from home or your hall of residence. It's also going to be impossible to meaningfully participate in practical engineering labs, or many of the activities that medical students need to do in order to qualify as doctors. Even the more practical aspects of the arts and music present serious challenges, and nobody can make me believe that a remote experience in these disciplines will be anything more than second rate. For some people I'm sure it's fine (Open University and its associated remote learning have after all been available in the UK for decades) but for most people remote university is going to be an extremely impoverished experience. If I were university age now I'd seriously consider deferring until the pandemic is in the past.