Leaving 2020 Behind, Entering 2021 Burnt Out
Students, faculty and staff at institutions of higher education report mass burnout when reflecting on 2020 and planning for 2021. While the vaccine rollouts are promising, higher ed still faces a tough road ahead. As hubs of intellectual discourse and argument, college and university communities wrestled and sought to make sense of 2020: the coronavirus pandemic; economic instability; the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people, and resulting protests and discussions on structural racism and antiracist commitment; and divisive political campaigns. Concurrent with the sociopolitical and public health challenges, many students, faculty, and staff grappled with major lifestyle changes, and a new set of challenges: loss of income, balancing childcare and other family responsibilities while teaching or learning remotely, securing stable wifi and work space, struggling to develop key connections with peers and mentors over video calls, living and learning by new safety precautions on campus, and being infected with COVID-19, to name a few. Academically, colleges and universities thrive on thorough research, creative ideas, flexible adaptation, and engaged community members. The challenge going into 2021 will be maintaining academic work while nimbly adjusting to the changing circumstances in the local and global communities.
Rory Kelly, MCF Program Associate and MCFeed Contributor
Mental and Behavioral Health
A newly published study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) reports that COVID-19 mitigation protocols, including remote learning and stay-at-home orders had a modest, but persistent, impact on mood and wellness behaviors among first-year university students. The findings are based on surveys conducted during the Spring 2020 semester at the University of Vermont, and highlighted differences between students enrolled in UVM’s Wellness Environment (a program that encourages students to make healthier decisions and features educational and residential components) with the general student population. The study observed that students displayed increased levels of behavior and attention problems from the start of the semester-pre-COVID-19-to the end of the semester. However, students’ experiences of the pandemic varied; students with greater perceived personal disruption caused by the pandemic experienced an outsized impact on wellbeing. Researchers also found that students enrolled in the WE program had improved mood levels and fewer attention problems compared to the non-WE students.
The Dartmouth reports that while COVID-19 regulations at Dartmouth College successfully contained the virus on campus during the fall semester, students and parents are raising concerns that the restrictions negatively affected mental health. Students returning to campus this fall signed a “Community Expectations” agreement, violations of which resulted in some students losing on-campus privileges during the fall. In total, 86 students were asked to leave campus during the term. Nearly 300 Dartmouth parents signed on to a petition calling for more social spaces and loosened on-campus gathering restrictions in the winter. However, the school noted that their punishments for pandemic-related infractions are more lenient than peer institutions, as they are tied strictly to residential revocation, rather than suspension or probation.
Some college students who lived on campus this fall found the inability to visit family or friends from home very challenging, especially student-athletes, many of whom moved onto campus in June or July and returned home only at the end of the semester. As NCAA football teams hurdled toward their last engagements of 2020, bowl games, a number of teams either opted out or sought creative solutions to give the student-athletes a break. Football student-athletes at both Ohio University and Ohio State University, both bowl contenders, were allowed a short break over the Christmas holiday to support students’ mental health. Ohio University center Creed Humphrey commented, “We’ve had to stay isolated this whole season, haven’t been able to be around people, haven’t been able to see family. That definitely weighs heavy on you.”
In the Vanderbilt Hustler, Danny Nguyen criticizes the school for it’s “pursuit for a normal semester” and what he calls an effort to “uphold the traditional, in-person experience at all costs.” According to Nguyen, the new educational experience was overwhelming to many students who experience Zoom fatigue and burnout. A November survey of over 2,300 undergraduates conducted by the Vanderbilt Student Government found that 69 percent of students reported mental health issues and 94.5 percent preferred some pass-fail grading system this semester. Nguyen writes that Vanderbilt rejected requests to implement any pass-fail grading and eliminated Fall break. “Vanderbilt has taken its pursuit for a traditional semester too far, he writes. “Their actions have imposed unnecessary stress on many students already dealing with other pandemic-related issues. Their sole focus on keeping infection rates low has revealed the gross negligence of its student body.”
VT Digger reports on Vermont colleges’ efforts to maintain student mental wellbeing during the spring semester, while maintaining pandemic safety. Students and professors are feeling burned out after a fall semester where breaks were few and far between. Most colleges are offering single day breaks in lieu of the spring break which is prohibited by the state’s reopening guidelines for colleges. Richard Schneider, former Norwich University president and the head of Vermont’s college reopening team, explained that the state guidelines allow colleges to decide what constitutes a “household” on their individual campuses, so that students who live alone can form “pods” with other students. Students could “pick the six people that they’re the closest with, and that’s their household,” Schneider said. “We hope this will alleviate some isolation students living alone may feel.”
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
A federal judge blocked enforcement of the Trump administration’s executive order barring diversity training it regards as “divisive” in federally supported programs. Eight universities filed a legal brief supporting an injunction against the order. In a statement, the American Council on Education said the “ruling will halt the harm being done by this misguided order while President-elect Biden prepares to take office.”
In the Hechinger Report, Jimin Kang, a senior at Princeton University, discusses his experience as an international student during the Trump Presidency, the contentious 2020 election, and his reaction to Biden’s victory. ” For the more than a million international students in the U.S., the 2020 presidential election capped four years of anxiety-provoking policy changes and a growing unease about our presence here,” he writes. On behalf of his fellow international students, Kang writes, “Biden strikes many of us as a leader who sees us not as America’s great impediment, but rather as a complement to its identity.”
NPR‘s David Greene spoke with three new history-making Black student body presidents at top-tier schools: Jason Carroll the first Black man to be student body president of Brown University; Noah Harris, the first Black man to be student body president at Harvard; and Danielle Geathers, the first Black woman to be student body president at MIT. Carrol told NPR, “There is such a heavy renewed interest in civil rights and Black lives in old, often very white institutions. There is a lot more room for talking about race, talking about what it means to be a Black student at an institution like Brown.”
Student Success
Sara Goldrick-Rab, PhD, professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University and President and Founder of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, wrote a powerful op-ed in the Atlantic on the benefits of supporting students via immediate emergency cash assistance to combat housing or food insecurity, or to cover tuition. Unlike specific services like food pantries, emergency cash assistance can be used flexibly to stabilize the student and his or her family whatever the needs are. The Hope Center conducted research this spring and fall, finding that three out of five students were experiencing housing and food insecurity, and that enrollment in public and private institutions, especially among first-years or recent high school graduates, has plummeted from last year. Dr. Goldrick-Rab noted not only the need for funds, which are usually supplied through philanthropy, but also processing infrastructure so that students in need do not have to wait weeks before receiving financial assistance.
In an op-ed in Inside Higher Ed, David Soo, chief of staff at Jobs for the Future, argues that Jill Biden, PhD, a community college professor, can bring transformative change for community colleges while in the White House East Wing. According to Soo, amid the unprecedented upheaval of 2020, community colleges can provide students with opportunities to relaunch a career, gain skills to switch careers and, get connected to advisers, mentors or career navigators. However, Soo writes, in a rapidly changing world, “community colleges will need to dramatically innovate to keep up and continue to shrink equity gaps.” Here, Soo says, Jill Biden can challenge and encourage community colleges to continue innovating. “Biden can wield a tremendous amount of power by calling on community colleges to meet this moment, encouraging them to partner with one another and new technology, and educational providers to enhance what they do best,” he writes.
Coronavirus: Safety and Reopenings
Maddie Neville, a Temple University undergraduate and former competitive swimmer, defied the stereotype that young people do not fall seriously ill with COVID-19 when she fell into critical condition weeks after a COVID-19 diagnosis. Neville, who had experienced mild symptoms in October and recovered, was experiencing chest pain and difficulty breathing over the Thanksgiving holiday with her family, and was airlifted to the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania and treated for congestive heart failure, likely the result of her COVID-19 infection. She is now recovering.
Value of a Degree
In an effort to help students make informed choices, a collaborative program of the University of Texas system and the Census Bureau shows students how much money graduates earn, broken down by major and campus. However, two years after the pilot program was implemented, students haven’t changed their behavior. David Troutman, the system’s associate vice chancellor, who oversees the project, said, “What we find is that they’re not changing their majors. They’re following their passions.” But some experts believe that increasing attention to the return on an investment in a college education, accelerated by the pandemic year, may push students to start consulting this kind of data. The Texas pilot is being copied in Colorado, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
