{"id":67253,"date":"2023-02-22T00:03:02","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T05:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=67253"},"modified":"2023-02-22T00:03:02","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T05:03:02","slug":"3-things-the-pandemic-taught-us-about-inequality-in-college-and-why-they-matter-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/3-things-the-pandemic-taught-us-about-inequality-in-college-and-why-they-matter-today\/","title":{"rendered":"3 things the pandemic taught us about inequality in college \u2014 and why they matter today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019 one-bedroom apartment after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020.<\/p>\n

It was tough to get a good night\u2019s 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\u2019t ask her parents to buy her a new computer to replace the one that was breaking down, she explained, because she knew they couldn\u2019t afford it.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Elise\u2019s classmate, Bella, a business student and the daughter of two Ivy League-educated professionals, had two empty bedrooms at her parents\u2019 home. She used one for sleep, the other for schoolwork. Her parents had purchased \u201ca monitor and all these other accessories to help make studying easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0doctoral candidate in sociology<\/a>, I study inequality among young adults. Elise and Bella are two of the\u00a048 undergraduates I interviewed<\/a>\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

Just because most college students have gone back to in-person classes doesn\u2019t mean these\u00a0disparities<\/a>\u00a0have gone away. Here are three lessons from the pandemic that can help colleges better address\u00a0student inequality<\/a>\u00a0going forward:<\/p>\n

1. The digital divide disrupts learning<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Elise wasn\u2019t the only student in my study who didn\u2019t have the learning technology she needed. \u201cIt was a solid two and a half weeks where I didn\u2019t have a laptop,\u201d 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\u2019t have Wi-Fi in his off-campus apartment.<\/p>\n

Before the pandemic, college students could typically use their school\u2019s computer labs and internet hot spots on campus. During remote instruction, however, many had to\u00a0join classes from smartphones<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0park outside stores<\/a>\u00a0to access free Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n

Although most undergraduates\u00a0own a cellphone and laptop<\/a>, the functionality of these devices and their ability to stay connected to the internet\u00a0are not equal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Living conditions are learning conditions<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When residential universities sent undergraduates home in March 2020, some students\u00a0did not have a home they could safely return to<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t even have a desk at home,\u201d recalled Jennifer, a STEM major who stayed in a friend\u2019s living room before moving to her grandparents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n

Even before the pandemic, students living in dormitories were in the\u00a0minority<\/a>. Far more undergraduates\u00a0live off campus<\/a>, many with their parents. In a fall 2019 survey, 35% of four-year college students and half of community college students reported\u00a0housing challenges<\/a>, which included being unable to pay rent and leaving a household because they felt unsafe.<\/p>\n

The struggles of students like Jennifer call attention to\u00a0socioeconomic divides<\/a>\u00a0among students who were living off campus all along. These include inequalities in space, quiet and furniture for studying.<\/p>\n

3. Many students are family caregivers, too<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Finally, the pandemic increased many students\u2019\u00a0caregiving responsibilities<\/a>, which sometimes limited the time they could spend on schoolwork.<\/p>\n

For example, Ashley, a social sciences major, described how she shopped, cooked and managed her younger siblings\u2019 remote schooling while her mom worked a retail job. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing that I was [home] to help, but it definitely impaired my studies,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Contrary to the popular idea of college as a time of self-focused exploration, recent studies describe ways that some students \u2014 often from low-income, minority or immigrant families \u2014\u00a0support their families<\/a>. These include\u00a0sending money home<\/a>,\u00a0helping siblings with homework<\/a>,\u00a0assisting parents with digital technology<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0chaperoning medical appointments<\/a>. Such responsibilities are often invisible to university instructors and administrators.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But empathy won\u2019t fix students\u2019 laptops or pay their rent. The pandemic highlighted inequalities that are reinforced by universities designed for so-called\u00a0\u201ctraditional\u201d college students<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 fresh out of high school, living on campus, financially supported by their parents, and having few caregiving responsibilities. Yet\u00a0such students are a privileged minority<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Elena G.van Stee is a Doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019 one-bedroom apartment after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. It was tough to get a good night\u2019s sleep as family members passed through to the kitchen or the front […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[27834],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-67253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-inequality"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n3 things the pandemic taught us about inequality in college \u2014 and why they matter today - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/3-things-the-pandemic-taught-us-about-inequality-in-college-and-why-they-matter-today\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"3 things the pandemic taught us about inequality in college \u2014 and why they matter today - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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\u2019 one-bedroom apartment after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. 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