Jalam Ford
4/12/22
Prof. Weaver
Covid’s Effect on College
March 2020 was a very hard time for everyone, the world began shutting down in response to the quickly spreading virus Covid 19. At the end of November, when it was first brought up no one really thought too much of it until February 2020 when the death tolls began to climb. Stores began closing earlier, businesses started closing temporarily and schools switched to online with no option of being face-to-face. There were many students who stopped out or even dropped out, postponing their college education.
Firstly, a leading reason to students holding off on their education was the rising college costs after covid effects settled in. Families had to make sacrifices to keep their financial stability and for a lot of households’, college was unfortunately one of those sacrifices. The students who went from high school after an entire year online in 2020 immediately went into another year of online schooling. Hechinger report shows “Out of the country’s 2.6 million students who started college in fall 2019, 26.1 percent, or roughly 679,000, didn’t come back the next year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That was an increase of 2 percentage points over the previous year’s level, and the highest share of students not returning for their sophomore year since 2012.” Several students even lost parents and some even both due to covid with them being left without a way to pay for school. According to the article “College Dropout Rates” by Melanie Hanson, she mentions that nearly around 3 out of 10 freshman students in college have dropped out before their sophomore year, and 38% of college students have recently dropped out due to financial pressure.
Secondly, Covid not only came with illness, but also some other unavoidable effects. Some student’s jobs were the reason why they were getting through school. Once covid hit, a lot of students lost their jobs because either the companies could no longer afford them, or they had to permanently close because of the new health complications. According to the Mckinsey article “after ten years of working to pay for school, LeKisha Finkley was preparing to graduate with an associate degree in spring 2020. She earned enough scholarship money to finish her last semester at Southwest Tennessee Community College. She walked the tightrope of bartending while getting a near 4.0 grade point average in her classes. Her plan was to go to Howard University to get her bachelor’s degree in psychology. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.” She lost her job and just as her classes switched to strictly online, she could no longer afford to pay for internet. That is only one of thousands of situations that occurred to college students.
Then, very many students were left not knowing which direction to go in. Very many students were feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and stressed because of these new changes. Online schooling being the only option for students and teachers had most in disarray. The communication wasn’t great. Often there was always at least 2 students with connection issues so if they couldn’t get it fixed, they couldn’t do too much about the issue and it’s not like anyone could help them fix the issue because everyone was on their own. Since online classes were on a tight schedule sometimes students couldn’t get their questions answered because there were so many other students per class. A lot of students also dropped out because of having to work as well as school, so once they left work, they had the stress of having to get classwork done afterwards. The pressure became too much, and a lot of students postponed their college education and others indefinitely.
Work cited
Martinez, J. (2021, December 13). College dropout rates increase during COVID-19. The Telescope. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://www.palomar.edu/telescope/2021/12/13/college-dropout-rates-increase-during-covid-19/
Cheng, Wan-Lae, et al. “Covid-19 Crisis Pushes Us Students into an Uncertain Job Market.” McKinsey & Company, McKinsey & Company, 7 Jan. 2022, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/future-of-america/covid-19-crisis-pushes-us-students-into-an-uncertain-job-market.
Dickler, Jessica. “25% of Students Postponed College during Covid, Some Indefinitely.” CNBC, 16 Apr. 2021, www.cnbc.com/2021/04/16/college-enrollment-sank-due-to-the-covid-pandemic.html.
Krupnick, Matt. “More Students Are Dropping out of College during Covid — and It Could Get Worse.” The Hechinger Report, 10 Feb. 2022, hechingerreport.org/more-students-are-dropping-out-of-college-during-covid-and-it-could-get-worse/