How can quarantine of students make sense? The degrees of separation render our entire population connected.
You do understand that in college, kids sit in classrooms together for hours each day, right? That repeated long-term close proximity exposure dramatically increases the chances that one infected student infects multiple more. Those infected students then go out and infect more. It is great that the young students have much a lower chance of dying and likely to have a milder illness. However, they become vectors to spread it to more vulnerable populations, and they will get sicker and be more likely to die. Young people are out and about more than the elderly, so lower the number of students infected, and you can lower the spread of disease. It isn't very had to grasp.