Covid-19 has forever changed society and education is certainly among one of the many arenas that is going to evolve out of this experience. As a Dean, I made it my mission to determine how to best support students during this crisis. It was important that I heard the concerns directly from the students themselves. I initially convened a virtual town-hall and had hundreds of students online ready to engage with me. Unfortunately, our session was virtually-bombed by jerks screaming obscenities and hatred speech. That experience was not going to deter me, rather it made me more determined to engage students and advocate for them.
To gauge the impact of this crisis on college students, I sent out a survey to all of our students asking questions about the impact of Covid-19 on their educational experiences. Normally, I am lucky if I receive a 20% response rate to any survey. For this survey, I received an 82% response rate!
Every educational institution has had to move all education online. Since, today’s students are digital natives, moving to online instruction really didn’t freak them out as much as it did for the thousands of institutions and professors who had to scramble to learn, implement online platforms and port their lectures and office hours to occur virtually. The top OMG! issues outcomes from the survey were more about the loss of students’ educational environments conducive to learning and studying. Here is the ranked summary of the survey’s top findings.
1. The top challenge reported was finding a quiet distraction free place for students to listen to lectures and to do their work.
Students are now home with other siblings trying to do online education, and parents who are trying to work remotely from home. Simply finding a conducive space to learn is a challenge.
2. Access to robust and reliable communications. Even students with internet access cited experiencing network slowdowns and competition for bandwidth in their own homes, since other family members are all online at the same time.
3. Stress from unhealthy domestic living situations. Not everyone has great supportive families at home and students openly shared that being home subjected them to more abuse or witnessing family members be victims of domestic violence and verbal abuse.
4. Food insecurity. Students living away from home who can’t go home to be with their families found it difficult to get access to healthy foods. Many students cited outrageous price increases at local markets, which required students to take health risks to take public transportation to reach other grocery stores with more affordable prices.
5. Loss of job offers and summer internships. Schools and Colleges have committed to helping students graduate on time, yet students who were recently excited to graduate are now having their job offers rescinded in record numbers. Graduation is now a death sentence because it comes with an uncertain future that has students feeling like they are being thrown to the lions. With no financial support in sight, especially for international students who can’t return back to their home countries, students are concerned they will be destitute and homeless. Students who had planned on starting new college programs in the fall of 2020 are now in a catch-22 situation. Many students stated that they are considering holding off on attending college next fall, because they don’t know if their families will financially be able to afford it, yet, these students also have no jobs.
Staying home with no job and nothing to do is one of the most devastating waste of human resource potential for our country and the world!
6. Students are now responsible for helping out with home schooling siblings or responsible for homeschooling their own children. This has impacted students’ ability to put emphasis on their own education. Students cited that classes that are offered asynchronously have been a tremendous help in this regard.
7. The loss of peer cohorts, social interactions and the freedom to engage in social, physical and entertainment activities. Students routinely cited being depressed.
8. The loss of the ability to participate in hands-on laboratories, conduct experiments and research has robbed the richness of the learning experience from many programs, especially for the STEM disciplines and students at research institutions.
The goal of this article was to bring awareness to the top educational related issues students are experiencing. It is in no way intended to state that anything on the list is more important than the health and well-being of our people Many of our students have lost loved ones to the virus and they feel like life has them under siege.
I hope this article provides some timely insights and that our educational institutions and government leaders will keep these perspectives in mind as we work together to survive from this pandemic and come out stronger as a community.