As COVID-19 arrived in the United States in January, our leaders were woefully unprepared. In lieu of creating a national public health strategy, the White House abdicated its responsibility to keep us safe and left fifty states to create plans on their own, as if a virus cares about state borders. Last month, the number of infections at the White House alone were greater than those of entire nations. While most of my generation did not expect this administration to rise to the occasion, we expected much more from higher education leaders.

Higher education administrators now offer Zoom classrooms, partial in-person learning, inadequate quarantine processes, and harsh penalties that only apply to students. Before the start of the current semester and new academic year, amidst rising COVID-19 case numbers, university leaders throughout the country faced a crisis to adapt higher education in a global pandemic. Could they reopen in the fall without risking inevitable outbreaks? Could they justify charging full-tuition without in-person learning? Could they prepare professors to deliver quality educational experiences remotely?

As a student at the University of Southern California, I was not surprised to learn that absolutely every single one of my classmates ardently disliked learning from professors through a webcam. Students from colleges across the country reported lack of satisfaction with remote learning on university2021.com, a website I created to gather information about how students were navigating this academic year. I attend one of the most expensive universities in the country, and some of my friends are suffering immensely from crushing student debt and food insecurity. In a normal academic year, many students have campus jobs and work-study programs that pay for food and books. Now, they are left without adequate options. Our provost will make almost a million dollars this year, while our Pell grant classmates are left to figure it out on their own. They cannot easily go to the campus libraries to get access to computers when many of these buildings are closed and they have no resources to pay for expensive textbooks. They cannot borrow from and share resources with classmates down the hall, since students are banished from the dormitories.

Our professors are ill-prepared to offer a fraction of the quality of education that is advertised in our brochures. If they expect the same level of output from students during non-pandemic periods, then they themselves should offer the same level of instruction as they provided the year before. Administrators and professors should have worked together over the summer to understand how to effectively deliver their teaching through Zoom. They should not have required students to install malware to monitor student behavior during remote examinations. Instead they could have adapted their curricula to make remote assessments fair and reasonable. They should have understood the difficulty for students to manage their work across multiple American and international time zones. They should have expected that some students, while at home, would have to support their younger siblings or elderly parents as caregivers. Offering university counseling as the primary response to potential student complaints and increased mental health issues underscores that they believe that we, the students, are the problem, but this is not the case. Administrators are ignoring that the underlying system itself is broken and needs fixing.

In lieu of taking responsibility as leaders of some of the best universities in the world, they chose to “open school” for the fall, rake in the tuition and student housing money, and then manage a pandemic with a patchwork approach. Last month, Southern Methodist University kicked out a large group of students from the football game for not following safety guidelines. Students at the University of Colorado Boulder were suspended for gathering in groups larger than two people. While punishing students who break rules may appear to make sense, they do not seem to consider administrators’ decisions to open schools or promote football games in the midst of this national emergency. Socializing was inevitable–anyone who was once a teenager could predict this outcome. Students are being penalized for expected behaviors that administrators themselves do not follow. The President of the University of Notre Dame, John Jenkins, for example, could not bring himself to wear a mask at a nationally recognized “superspreader” event at the White House. It shouldn’t matter that he believed that everyone was tested; he knew this was going to be a highly publicized event. He should have worn a mask to set a good, moral example–one that his constituents would feel compelled to follow. This was a catastrophic failure in leadership. It is astounding to my peers how a major university President could demonstrate such carelessness and reckless disregard of the rules. Why should college students be held to a different standard when the adults are not following their own rules?

Amidst expected difficulties from a once-in-a-century pandemic, higher education administrators had an opportunity to lead, to set an example, and to invent new standards for 21st century education. They could have made plans to ensure that every single professor was prepared to teach remotely. They could have reduced tuition by 10% and spend down a small fraction of their endowments. They could have offered cash grants to our most vulnerable classmates. They could have instituted reasonable penalties, rather than harsh disciplinary actions, to reduce the irresponsible behaviors of a small number of students when schools reopened. If they were concerned about the budget, they could lower their own salaries. They could have created policies that would ease the burden on hardworking students who are already being asked to meet the future challenges of the twenty-first century saddled with student debt. Rather than adopting creative measures in response to this pandemic, they seemingly panicked and added to the chaos and instability.

Students have such little say in how our current higher education system operates. We have more voice in our local and national elections than in our own school systems. Private companies around the world adapted much more quickly to our new reality. Instead of embracing new opportunities for growth, schools have been unable to adapt. Stuffing the normal curriculum through Zoom is not how to adjust to this disruption. With million-dollar salaries, tenure, and billions and multi-millions of dollars in endowments, schools are passing the hardship onto students.

Twenty-something students in America today confront the substantial challenges of a dysfunctional and inequitable world that our parents and their parents have left for us. We are left to address climate change as fires burn down the west and hurricanes drown the south. We have the task of redressing the societal harms of persistent, generational and systemic racial inequality. We are left to recover from a damaged democracy led by a president who refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. We face a future in which globalization and automation have eliminated higher paying jobs for high school graduates as we enter a shrunken economy for college graduates.

As we approach 2021, university leaders have another opportunity to institute meaningful changes in higher education. They have a chance to improve the capstone educational experience for the next generation. If they want our system to produce the greatest scientists, the most creative artists, and the most conscientious entrepreneurs, in a world of racial equality, they must themselves construct an improved system that can help students achieve the future greatness they demand of us now. Teach us how to lead by modeling moral and ethical actions. Establish new paradigms for success, and if you are unable to do so, it is time to make way for bold and courageous leaders who are genuinely committed to our future!