On the 3rd of July, 1638, George Garrard  wrote Viscount Wentworth to tell him:

The Plague is in Cambridge; no Commencement at either of the Universities this year.

On October 2nd of that same year, Cambridge canceled all lectures. Even if history does not repeat (but historians do), one is tempted to look to the past for hints about the future.

From the Annals of Cambridge  (compiled by Charles Henry Cooper ) we learn that the plague combined with the residency requirements for a degree at Oxford, prompted a rush of Oxford students to Cambridge to obtain their Masters of Arts degree. We know this from an anonymous letter to Oxford’s Chancellor:

…..many of Batchelor of Arts of Oxford came this Year for their Degrees of Masters of Arts here, which this Year they could not obtain at Oxford, which I endeavored to prevent……..

This prompted a complaint to Cambridge. Its vice-chancellor replied,

I Pray receive this assurance from me, and I doubt not but the Practice of our University will make it good……

Oxford, in the meantime, maintained country homes for its scholars where they could hide from the Black Death. The plague lowered property values which allowed the colleges to expand their land holdings.

What effect on the intellectual life of the University? Anna Campbell’s 1931 book entitled `The Black Death and Men of Learning‘ estimates that about a third of European intellectual leaders perished during the plague and Universities were in a precarious position.

James Courtenay, writing in 1980  with access to more detailed data about Oxford suggests a less bleak outcome.

The mortality rate was not particularly high , either of brilliant or of marginal scholars and masters. The enrollment levels across the next few decades do not seem to have been seriously affected.

He notes an argument for a drop in the quality of higher education but that would have been a response to a drop in the quality of primary education.