And yet... universities aren't where the big numbers are coming from, at least not in my state. Because university students can be held to standards of behavior and their schools can impose consequences for non-compliance. The number of college cases here isn't negligible - about 4800 over the 9-10 weeks since students went back to campus - but the outbreaks have been documented and traced and quarantines have been imposed and new campus cases/outbreaks are on the decline.
It is the general public, who can do what they want consequence-free, that is responsible for 90+% of new cases here. And most of them are spreading it not in the pursuit of something valuable, like education, but because they just can't watch the Big Game in their own living room or stay in on a Friday night or cook dinner every day. There is absolutely no sense in keeping the colleges closed while the restaurants (and bars, as long as they serve food) and gyms and theatres and casinos and other purely recreational spaces are open and encouraging social spread. But as long as we're prioritizing by economic and tax revenue impact, rather than by the value something adds to society or the damage done by interrupting it, that's bound to happen.
