I'm mostly wondering about how a university or college responded to events such as the Spanish Flu, or other pandemics/epidemics/plagues. Did they remain open and bring the student body back or were universities closed until the disease had passed?
I've answered a similar question about the Spanish Flu and American colleges that you may find interesting. From that answer:
One thing to establish is that in 1918, attending college was a fairly uncommon event in a young person's life. According to the NCES, there were 1,041 designated institutions of higher education in 1918. By 1992, there were 3600. Also according to NCES, 3.4% of 18 to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college in 1917-1918, 4.7% in 1918-1919. By 1991, the percentage was up to 51% (but also, in 1990, 44% of enrolled students were over the age of 24.) In contrast, there were hundreds, if not thousands of K-12 schools in some cities and states as districts were only just beginning to merge.
In addition, Fall semester of American colleges doesn't nearly track onto the Fall months. Many colleges of the era started in mid to late-August and ended after Thanksgiving or in mid-December, meaning young people arrived during a lull in the pandemic while others were attending college near where they lived. It's safe to say everything that happened at universities during the pandemic was fairly idiosyncratic. However, we can see a few patterns and it looks like most colleges made the call to quarantine sick students, require masks, and teach outdoors when possible.
Genevive Carlton did a nice round-up here of different moves at different colleges. Her findings are interesting and speak to what was happening around the country, which include:
Stanford was hit hard by World War I, which impacted how the college operated University of Montana held classes in the open University of North Carolina went into lockdown and quarantined as many students as possible, with limited success "At Elon College, the influenza epidemic struck in mere days, spreading to 75% of the students. With no time to close campus, the college transformed its gym into a makeshift infirmary, with healthy students nursing those who fell ill."
One thing that can't be separated from the pandemic is the impact of World War I on student populations. It looks like there was a policy for closing schools due to Student Army Training Corp activities, concurrent to the flu so it's possible there were schools that closed for the activities, which helped reduce the spread.