Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing for colleges and universities in the state to give more COVID-19 tests so that they can stay open.

He says with more testing, he hopes students won't have to flip-flop on a whim between in-person and remote learning.

Pace University, like other local colleges, let all students back on campus last semester. But just before the holidays, Pace switched to completely remote classes because of an uptick in cases.

For this spring semester, Pace ramped up its testing from 25% to the majority of students.

Under Cuomo's new guidelines, colleges and universities that test at least 25% of people on-campus will not be required to shut down as long as their positivity rate isn't over 5% throughout the course of two weeks.

A shutdown means only online classes, dining halls switch to take out only and no sports or in-person extracurricular activities.

Colleges and universities that test less than 25% of their population must shut down if more than 100 people, or 5%, are positive over the course of two weeks.