Every week, more colleges and universities are reversing their plans to bring students and faculty members back to campus for the upcoming fall semester. Three liberal-arts colleges—Occidental College, Rhodes College, and Dickinson College—are among the latest institutions to alter their decisions.

As colleges establish coronavirus safety measures on their campuses, they also need to transform how students act and think. As part of its norm-setting, the University of Miami in Florida is tasking student leaders with modeling and advocating new campus behaviors on the grounds that "peers listen to peers."

The university also plans to hire—for $10 an hour—a cadre of 50 students as public health ambassadors to enforce mask-wearing, six-foot distancing, and more. The idea is to create positive peer pressure, according to school leaders.

Hammered by mounting coronavirus costs and anticipating lost revenue from international students, fall sports and state budgets gutted by the pandemic, colleges and universities nationwide have begun eyeing what until now has been seen as a last resort—thinning the ranks of their faculty.

The cuts underscore the growing financial crisis sweeping across higher education, which in recent years has struggled with shrinking state support and declining enrollment amid concerns about skyrocketing tuition and the burden of student debt.