麻豆影视

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Elise, a nursing student at an elite U.S. university in the Northeast, found herself back home and sleeping on the floor of her parents鈥� one-bedroom apartment after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020.

It was tough to get a good night鈥檚 sleep as family members passed through to the kitchen or the front door. Such interruptions also made it difficult to concentrate during lectures and exams. Sometimes, limited internet bandwidth made it impossible for Elise to attend class at all. She couldn鈥檛 ask her parents to buy her a new computer to replace the one that was breaking down, she explained, because she knew they couldn鈥檛 afford it.

Meanwhile, Elise鈥檚 classmate, Bella, a business student and the daughter of two Ivy League-educated professionals, had two empty bedrooms at her parents鈥� home. She used one for sleep, the other for schoolwork. Her parents had purchased 鈥渁 monitor and all these other accessories to help make studying easier.鈥�

As a , I study inequality among young adults. Elise and Bella are two of the to understand how college students from different socioeconomic backgrounds dealt with COVID-19 campus closings. Although all attended the same elite university, upper-middle class students like Bella often enjoyed academic and financial benefits from parents that their less affluent peers like Elise did not.

Just because most college students have gone back to in-person classes doesn鈥檛 mean these have gone away. Here are three lessons from the pandemic that can help colleges better address going forward:

1. The digital divide disrupts learning

Elise wasn鈥檛 the only student in my study who didn鈥檛 have the learning technology she needed. 鈥淚t was a solid two and a half weeks where I didn鈥檛 have a laptop,鈥� said Shelton, a social sciences major, describing how he wrote a four-page research paper on his phone. Although Shelton had secured a laptop by the time I interviewed him in June 2020, he still didn鈥檛 have Wi-Fi in his off-campus apartment.

Before the pandemic, college students could typically use their school鈥檚 computer labs and internet hot spots on campus. During remote instruction, however, many had to or to access free Wi-Fi.

Although most undergraduates , the functionality of these devices and their ability to stay connected to the internet .

2. Living conditions are learning conditions

When residential universities sent undergraduates home in March 2020, some students . Others, including some in my study, feared exposing parents to COVID-19 or being a financial burden. Still others had concerns about space, privacy, internet access or disruptions from family members.

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 even have a desk at home,鈥� recalled Jennifer, a STEM major who stayed in a friend鈥檚 living room before moving to her grandparents鈥� house.

Even before the pandemic, students living in dormitories were in the . Far more undergraduates , many with their parents. In a fall 2019 survey, 35% of four-year college students and half of community college students reported , which included being unable to pay rent and leaving a household because they felt unsafe.

The struggles of students like Jennifer call attention to among students who were living off campus all along. These include inequalities in space, quiet and furniture for studying.

3. Many students are family caregivers, too

Finally, the pandemic increased many students鈥� , which sometimes limited the time they could spend on schoolwork.

For example, Ashley, a social sciences major, described how she shopped, cooked and managed her younger siblings鈥� remote schooling while her mom worked a retail job. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 necessarily a bad thing that I was [home] to help, but it definitely impaired my studies,鈥� she told me.

Before the pandemic, Ashley had helped support her family financially from a distance. But her responsibilities grew when she returned home and was the only adult available to help her younger siblings.

Contrary to the popular idea of college as a time of self-focused exploration, recent studies describe ways that some students 鈥� often from low-income, minority or immigrant families 鈥� . These include , , and . Such responsibilities are often invisible to university instructors and administrators.

Students are members of families and communities, and they enter the classroom with different resources and responsibilities. Inclusive classrooms require instructors to demonstrate awareness, empathy and flexibility around these differences.

But empathy won鈥檛 fix students鈥� laptops or pay their rent. The pandemic highlighted inequalities that are reinforced by universities designed for so-called 鈥� fresh out of high school, living on campus, financially supported by their parents, and having few caregiving responsibilities. Yet .

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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