Berklee College of Music announced Wednesday it will offer courses exclusively online for the fall semester because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The announcement signals a change of course for the Boston school, which had announced last month it would offer a hybrid model that allowed in-person and remote learning.
But with coronavirus cases rising across the nation, school officials said “we simply don’t feel confident that it would be healthy and safe for our community to be on campus this fall.”
“As we have all been looking forward to our return to campus, we realize that news of a remote-only semester may be deeply disappointing. Please know that we share these feelings,” Berklee President Roger H. Brown wrote in a letter to the Berklee community.
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Berklee is the first college in the area to reverse course from its hybrid reopening to a completely remote fall semester.
All classes offered at Berklee, as well as the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, will be fully remote for the fall semester. Study abroad programs at the college’s campus in Valencia, Spain, will not be offered this year.
The college said it will provide a one-time, $2,500 grant to full-time degree students that can be used for equipment or to offset tuition. The school said this represents a 17 percent savings for students.
Full-time students are also eligible for two tuition-free credit-bearing courses to be taken next summer.
In June, the school announced it was eliminating a 3.45 percent tuition increase that was planned for this year and waiving its comprehensive fee for students who enroll in the fall.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com. Follow him @NickStoico.