Coronavirus Impact
Colleges across the nation are taking the unprecedented step of sending students home for the rest of the spring semester in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. The abrupt closures have been particularly distressing for the most disadvantaged students. For low-income and first-generation students, college is their primary source of security, provider of meals and health care and a place to sleep. Many of these students lack the funds to get home, or may not have a home to go to. They may not have reliable internet connections for their now-online classes. Some students remain exiled from the home of their parents due to their sexuality or gender identity.
Advocates for such students worry that their needs have not been front and center as colleges made their coronavirus-contingency plans. “In situations like this, you’re only as good as what you’re doing for your most vulnerable people,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher-education policy and sociology at Temple University and founder of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice. Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), told The Hill that universities and colleges need to consider the implications of going online for underserved students without access to the necessary resources. Pasquerella also stressed the importance of training faculty to conduct online courses.
Many vulnerable students will be unable to recover from the displacement, which will incur unexpected costs. According to the Hechinger Report, all colleges should allow some students to stay if they have nowhere else to go, and campus leaders must remember that racism and classism put students of color and low-income students at risk of dropping out. In the Atlantic, Sara Goldrick-Rab said, “There’s a very real chance that students facing financial crises-which are about to get worse-will not be coming back to school. This is a disaster. You’re putting the most disadvantaged students at a bigger educational disadvantage.”
The Nation published perspectives from students struggling with their new reality. One Harvard student wrote, “My mother lives in a homeless shelter. Never mind not knowing where to go, I now had a new question: How do I get there with all my stuff?” He wrote about the difficulty of continuing classes and midterms amid the upheaval. “It’s midterms week. Homework is still due on time. Classes are still to be attended,” he wrote. “Not only are we supposed to go to class as normal, do our homework as usual; we’re also supposed to pack up everything we own-in five days.”
Students are also grappling with the personal losses that come with leaving college early, being torn from their friends and missing out on graduation rituals. One senior, Justin Welfeld, said, “I feel like a lot of experiences have been stolen from me.” The editor of Cornell’s Daily Sun, Maryam Zafar, 21, said, “I think everyone is experiencing a degree of sadness, definitely some loss. At Cornell, you feel like you’re working toward something, and theoretically, that would probably kick in around spring of senior year.” In an op-ed in the Washington Post, several Amherst College students argue that shutting down college dorms shifts the burden of handling a coronavirus outbreak to the local communities that schools are sending students back to.
According to the Chronicle, the stress of an uncertain future is taking a toll on students. The stress of uncertainty can be very unnerving, says Alise G. Bartley, a clinical assistant professor in the department of counseling and director of the community-counseling center at Florida Gulf Coast University. Laura Horne, the chief program officer for Active Minds said that students might also “go through a period of mourning, and that’s normal.”
The New York Times Upshot blog reports that it is impossible to transform college courses into virtual ones overnight. The Times cited one recent study that found that roughly 20 percent of students have trouble with basic technology needs, and those with technology challenges are disproportionately low-income and students of color. According to the blog, tools for communicating at a distance have improved over time, but it takes practice and skill to teach effectively at a distance.
In an op-ed in The Hill, C. Ronald Kimberling, Ph.D., a research fellow with the Independent Institute who was the U.S. assistant secretary for postsecondary education during the Reagan administration wrote that the long-term impact of the coronavirus disruption will radically transform higher education, one benefit being online education. Kimberling cites research on online college coursework which concluded that benefits outweigh its limitations. According to Kimberling, a 2017 study by the Brookings Institution noted, “Online courses offer the promise of access regardless of where students live or what time they can participate, potentially redefining educational opportunities for those least well-served in traditional classrooms. Moreover, online platforms offer the promise, through artificial intelligence, of providing the optimal course pacing and content to fit each student’s needs and thereby improve educational quality and learning.”
In an op-ed in the Hechinger Report, Lis Kenneth Regula. a lecturer in the Department of Biology at the University of Dayton in Ohio, outlined her concerns about the dangerous precedents emerging for higher education during the crisis. According to Regula, the online courses created during the crisis are ways to survive, not to thrive in online education. “While having more options for students to access higher education is good, these hasty shifts to online teaching may become an excuse to further inject privatization into U.S. higher education,” wrote Regula. “In-person classes facilitate an active learning atmosphere and participation in service-learning or other more interdisciplinary and holistic educational opportunities.”
Standardized tests – including the SAT college admissions exam – are being postponed or canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Texas announced that it is waiving standardized testing requirements for the 2019-2020 school year, following Washington state in what is likely to be widespread canceling of federally mandated exams.