The findings presented below are separated into findings about challenges students faced and the resources they drew on to mitigate the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used a mixed-method approach in presenting these findings by bringing the survey data together with the interview data to highlight the major points that emerged from multiple data points.
Challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic was a major disruption and affected students' academic decision-making on short-and long-term scales. We asked students to what extent the pandemic was impacting the decisions they made (e.g., enrollment in classes, progress towards a degree, formulating future plans) in both the fall and spring semester. In the fall of 2020, 80.5% of participants reported that the pandemic had affected their academic decision-making at least “somewhat.” By the spring of 2021, this number had increased to 85.8%. A significant number of participants reported that the pandemic affected their decision-making “to a great extent”—26.3% in the Fall and 31.2% in the Spring (See Figure 2).
We examined whether there was a significant difference between the way participants rated the impact of the pandemic on their academic decisions in Fall 2020 versus Summer 2021. We found a small increase in average rating of impact between Fall 2020 and Summer 2021; however, this difference was not significantly different than 0 (two-tailed p>.05). Though perhaps unsurprising (given the magnitude of the COVID-19 disruption), the number of students reporting that the pandemic was impacting their academic decisions is concerning—college students already face barriers to making sound academic and career decisions, and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these barriers.
Figure 2
Participants rating of the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic affected academic decisions
[Insert Figure 2 about here]
Note. Participants rated the extent to which the pandemic affected decisions they made on a five-point scale, ranging from “to a great extent” down to “not at all.” The figure shows the percentage of participants in fall and spring that provided each rating.
To uncover the ways in which the pandemic affected academic decision-making, we asked students if the pandemic was presenting challenges to their ability to complete their degree or major requirements in both the fall and spring semesters. Challenges to degree and major requirements were most severe for students who were finishing their second year of college, with 42.6% of second year students reporting challenges compared to 25.0% of first year, 29.6% of third year, and 16.0% of fourth year (see Table 3). Interview findings highlighted how advanced level coursework and key decisions about the timing of declaring a major presented more severe challenges for second-year students.
Table 3
Percentage of participants in each year of college reporting challenges to their degree progress.
|
|
Yes (%)
|
Beginning to present challenges (%)
|
No (%)
|
|
Completed first year
|
25.0
|
9.4
|
65.6
|
|
Completed second year
|
42.6
|
17.0
|
40.4
|
|
Completed third year
|
29.6
|
22.2
|
48.1
|
|
Completed fourth year
|
16.0
|
0.0
|
84.0
|
|
Other
|
30.0
|
30.0
|
40.0
|
Note. This table shows the percentage of participants in each year of college that reported that the pandemic was presenting degree-related challenges. These challenges included lack of access to courses required for graduation and lack of academic support for major-specific classes.
We asked students to rate their concerns about multiple, specific challenges related to school and work, including finding internships, financial needs, and preparedness for courses and degrees. The top-rated concern was “finding research or internship opportunities or jobs.” Students also reported concerns about “feeling unprepared for courses required for [their] major.” Using paired t-tests, we found that participants reported less concern regarding “finding paid research or internship opportunities,” “finances necessary to pay tuition/buy books and other class-related resources, “and “finances necessary to support daily expenses” during the summer than they reported during the fall (see Table 4). This finding may indicate that colleges and universities enacted policies to mitigate immediate financial impacts; several interview participants described these types of policies. However, students remained concerned about feeling unprepared for courses required for their major—the ratings of this concern increased slightly (though not significantly) between fall and spring.
Table 4
Participants’ average ratings of concern about different pandemic-related challenges
|
How concerned are you about the following challenges related to school and work during the COVID-19 pandemic?
|
Fall
(n=189)
Mean (SD)
|
Summer
(n=141)
Mean
|
|
Finding paid research or internship opportunities and/or jobs
|
4.11 (1.14)
|
3.67*
|
|
Finances necessary to pay tuition/buy books and other class-related resources
|
3.47 (1.42)
|
3.08*
|
|
Finances necessary to support my daily expenses
|
3.40 (1.40)
|
3.16*
|
|
Feeling unprepared for courses required for my major
|
3.49 (1.34)
|
3.54
|
|
Feeling unprepared for college courses, generally
|
3.26 (1.37)
|
3.27
|
|
Feeling unsure that my chosen degree/career is my passion
|
3.05 (1.33)
|
3.12
|
|
Feeling a lack of supportive community in my pursuit of my degree
|
2.83 (1.31)
|
2.86
|
|
Feeling a lack of supportive community in my pursuit of my chosen career path
|
2.76 (1.32)
|
2.77
|
|
Experiencing bias based on any component of my identity
|
2.47 (1.31)
|
2.23
|
|
Experiencing imposter syndrome (i.e. the feeling of not belonging)
|
3.35 (1.39)
|
3.46
|
|
Unsure how to pursue next steps for my desired career
|
3.37 (1.29)
|
3.55
|
|
Worry that my desired career will not pay enough
|
2.99 (1.41)
|
3.08
|
Note. Each item was rated on a scale from 1 (“Not at all concerned”) to 5 (“Very concerned”).
* indicates that the average rating in Spring was significantly different than the average rating in Fall, p<0.05.
Interviews with students provided a more detailed understanding of the challenges students were facing while attending college during the pandemic. Supporting the survey finding that a primary concern was feeling unprepared for coursework, a theme in the interviews was challenges in adjusting to remote learning environments. More than half of the students we interviewed (n=17) attended college under a constantly fluctuating hybrid model over the 2020-2021 academic year. This meant that students were most often attending courses virtually, either from their dorm rooms or in off-campus housing, and only accessing in-person socially distanced courses and the limited campus resources (e.g., dining halls, libraries) if their campuses were open at limited capacity when infection rates were low. This pattern is similar across our larger dataset, with survey responses showing that close to 70% of students learned entirely remotely during the 2020-2021 academic year and approximately 30% having limited access to in-person learning environments under a hybrid model.
The challenge of adjusting to hybrid and/or virtual learning environments was mentioned in every interview we conducted (n=26). Students reported missing critical opportunities for engagement in coursework, which led them to worry about their ability to learn deeply, understand content, and feel prepared for advanced-level coursework, research experiences, and internships. This was especially true for students in STEM and health-related majors (n=24), who struggled with virtual environments that were predominately lecture-based and had limited opportunities for collaborative interaction, including hands-on components of labs. Students reported a complete loss of hands-on, practical experiences, especially in lab courses. Instead, they were instructed to watch prerecorded videos and simulations of experiments, dissections, and other scientific practices. Students who attended colleges that enabled them to participate in labs in-person were able to engage in more hands-on learning experiences; however, requirements to mask and physically distance meant collaboration was limited.
Participants described significant barriers to participation in practical coursework. For example, Manuel, a third-year health science major, reported that, at his university, students who attended lab classes virtually were required to pay more for courses to buy the equipment necessary to participate in labs when they were unable to access their campus. Amber, a third-year life sciences and geosciences major, described how campus shut-downs impacted her ability collect and analyze data.
One of the lab classes I was in was microbial diversity. Right when we were leaving [campus], we had been starting our final project research. I was meant to be working in the lab for the rest of the semester and collecting data and doing observations. When everything got shut down . . . our professor said, "Okay, we're going to skip right to the data analysis, and—I'm sorry that you can't continue the work that you were planning, but here are the data sets from the past five years of student research [to analyze].
Amber felt that not being able to collect and analyze her own data prevented her from gaining valuable experience that would prepare her for graduate school.
The loss of hands-on activities was exacerbated by limitations to collaboration during online learning, especially early in the pandemic when faculty lacked the technological knowledge to facilitate such remote collaboration. A key challenge described by all students we interviewed was that, often, professors implemented their classes in ways that impeded direct communication between participants (both between students and faculty and between students and their peers). The primary mode of delivery for STEM classes was Zoom lecture or pre-recorded videos. Students felt that synchronous classes where the professors lectured lacked opportunities for questions or comments and were not conducive to learning. Faculty disabled the chat box option in Zoom or Google Classroom, making it impossible to ask questions. Jada explained how accessing support from faculty while taking online courses was frustrating:
As a STEM major you have to build relationships with your professors and that's necessary for internships or whatever you want to do in STEM. It's really hard to do that when everybody's on mute and the professor is the only one talking and sharing a screen and doesn’t even know your name. Because most of the time those professors didn’t even take questions. They were just like, listen to the lecture and then okay, class dismissed.
Students expressed frustration at the loss of opportunities to engage with faculty and each other, particularly in courses where collaborative problem solving was a core component of their learning experiences. Sanvi, a second-year student in engineering explained how “just being in the same room as other students really helped me get through homework problems or class problems.” Mari, a student who changed her major from computer science to public health during the pandemic, talked about the loss of community among computer science majors. Prior to the pandemic, she collaborated with other computer science majors to master difficult assignments and drew strength from the other students going through the experience of challenging coursework. However, when everything shifted into a remote environment, she lost this supportive community. She said:
Before the pandemic when I [was] still taking computer science classes, it was kind of like a culture of working [together]. Computer science is generally very hard and the classes are very rigorous, so the students have a culture of helping each other, going through it together. There’s this community of understanding it, and it’s easier just knowing you could talk to a friend or a student next to you and be like, I don’t understand the code.
Thus, in addition to fewer opportunities for practical experiences, students also felt the loss of collaboration and community among classmates.
Several participants reported a preference discussion-based courses during the pandemic because they provided opportunities for students to work collaboratively. Imani, a second-year life science major who ultimately switched her major to health sciences during the year of the study, stated that she could communicate with peers “efficiently” during discussion-based classes, where breakout rooms provided space for collaborative problem solving. The lack of casual, everyday interaction impacted students’ abilities to make connections with other students, including forming study groups and asking questions about course content, which led to a sense of isolation for some students. Jada stated, “I was isolated taking these classes all by myself. Nobody to talk to about the class afterwards like hey, do you know what the professor said about so-and-so right? All of that was gone.” Both Imani and Jada ultimately switched their majors to ones that included more discussion-based coursework.
Students varied in their knowledge and capital to seek resources and support via virtual environments. Students attending college virtually used platforms like Discord and GroupMe chats. Students also referenced Slack, Zoom, and texting with classmates as ways they were able to obtain academic support. However, despite the myriad of digital communication options, students struggled to make connections. For example, Julietta, a third-year student who switched from majoring in chemistry to accounting during the pandemic, reported that when attending college remotely, “the whole rhythm of asking for help is just a bit complicated.” Students who had some access to their college campuses struggled to navigate office hours and support centers with limited staff and hours. Asher explained how difficult it was for him to obtain support during the pandemic:
I haven’t been able to find [academic support offices] easily, such as going for tutoring. Throughout the semester when it was in person, it was very easy for me to go upstairs, go into the computer lab and receive help from a TA. Nowadays it's a lot harder to do that. It would require me to set up a meeting with them to make sure it corresponds with their time and my time.
Students discussed the need for faculty to adjust their expectations. Students reported that flexibility around workload and deadlines was central to their success; however, over half of the students we interviewed did not experience that flexibility from their faculty. Detailing her frustrations with faculty expectations, Mari pointed out that, “expecting students to do so much all at once” was not reasonable. “It’s different circumstances.” Students reported how important it was to have flexible deadlines, including the opportunity to adjust or drop deadlines all together for coursework. Jayanti explained her experiencing with her professors as supportive in this way:
I had professors being like, yeah, I’m being a very reasonable person if you tell me your particular situation, you can get an extension. Just let me know in advance. I think people were going through a lot of stuff and having a professor say that to you really allowed space for you to get what you need to be able to be fully present.
However, flexibility about expectations varied. Approximately 50% (n=15) of students interviewed experienced a lack of flexibility around workload and deadlines. Participants had the impression that faculty believed remote instruction meant students had time to take on additional workload, and they found the extra work to be “tedious” rather than interesting productive work to support learning.
Participants described how faculty felt it was important to push through their course materials. In larger courses, faculty lacked awareness of how students were making sense of material. Cierra stated that in her larger online courses it was difficult for faculty to gauge understanding. She said, “You don’t really get that interaction . . . If you were confused, the professor wouldn’t really know.” Summer described a shift in her experiences with faculty as the pandemic lagged on:
Professors in my departments were maybe more empathetic or a little more understanding in the earlier part of the pandemic. I think by the end, they were like, "This is my material. This is what we have to get through. This is the work you have to do. Sorry if it's hard, and sorry if it sucks.
Despite the reports of struggles, many students we interviewed felt faculty listened to their needs and concerns regarding academic pressures and deadlines. These faculty held extra office hours to listen to students’ needs and concerns. Dharah explained that it was helpful to have faculty verbally state an openness to communication with students during courses, which could encourage students to ask for help:
Just verbally affirming that if you need help or if there’s something—or if you can’t do this right now, just let me know. Just verbally saying that was really helpful because sometimes I feel like professors just assume that maybe if someone needs help, they’ll just ask, right? But kind of stating that to students directly on a repeated basis helps students reach out for help.
Finally, a theme that emerged in interviews was concern that despite persisting in STEM classes, participants felt a lack of meaningful learning. For some students, the pace of online learning made it increasingly difficult to keep up with courses, and they felt as though they were unable to engage deeply in the content. Other students studied to get a good grade but realized that they retained very little from the course. Some were even frustrated by what they perceived as some faculty’s lenient approaches to grading and low expectations. Describing her experiences in her STEM major, Cierra said:
I understand that chemistry or calculus is supposed to be hard. I understand that, but I also feel like at times we are being rushed before we can even understand what we are doing. And I just feel like with just the limits of how much we can do with COVID restrictions in place, I feel I am lagging and that I am not absorbing as much information.
Isolation and Mental Health Impacts
In addition to the academic challenges students faced during the pandemic, students reported that campus shutdowns and living conditions during quarantine contributed to an increased sense of isolation and had the largest impact on students’ academic and personal motivation. 84.6% (n=22) of the students interviewed said campus shutdowns negatively impacted their mental health. Living predominantly in isolation during quarantine with limited opportunities to socialize with others on their campuses and attending classes virtually for months at a time led to an increased sense of isolation, reduction in motivation, and a sense of exhaustion. Kavita noted, “In the past I enjoyed going to lectures and stuff in person. Now, it’s Zoom fatigue.” The blurring of lines between personal and academic life while living isolated in their dorm rooms or at home made it difficult to stay motivated. Summer explained that not having in-person classes and opportunities to connect with other students impacted her motivation and her ability to rest, despite deciding to live on campus rather than at home. She said, “I felt like my work ethic this semester fell apart.”
Imani reported that as a Black female, the isolation of the pandemic made it even hard for her to network with people like herself. She explained the awkwardness of networking with peers in virtual environments:
[Pre-pandemic] I could speak to people at my school who I know have done similar internships or had taken similar classes or had similar goals. But I think it's kind of awkward to just approach someone and be like, "I read your LinkedIn. I know that we're into similar things.”
Students who lived at home with family during campus shutdowns struggled to be productive in home environments that were often not conducive to focused academic work and struggled to balance their academic responsibilities with their expectations of their families. For students living in small apartments in New York City with parents and siblings, attending college while in quarantine was stressful. Students detailed their home situations as lacking privacy and quiet spaces for productive studying and academic work. Some students were consistently distracted by the need to provide attention and support younger siblings. Multiple students (n=4) described the ways in which their family members did not understand what they were doing as students attending college remotely, especially given the number of hours they spent on their computers every day. For some students, the stress of attending college virtually in these environments was exacerbated by faculty expectations that students keep cameras and audio on during class. In response to how faculty might be more supportive of her learning remotely in a busy home environment, Luciana said:
First of all, allow communication between students, but also I have seen some professors that weren’t very patient with their students, like sometimes students can’t turn on their cameras because they live in busy households. And they would dock points over not being able to turn on their cameras.
Participants we interviewed held an awareness that the personal and emotional toll of the pandemic on their lives was a shared experience across their campuses. Lora described the real and urgent hike in mental health concerns on her own campus during the pandemic:
I think a lot of people on campus struggled in general. Halfway through this semester the school newspaper published an article that said a record number of people were going to counseling and psychological services and record number of people who were being hospitalized.
More than half of the students interviewed stated that their and their peers’ ability to access reliable mental health resources through their campuses was limited. Most students reported that it was difficult to obtain mental health appointments through their institutions' health services for a variety of reasons: their college did not have counselors to meet demand, counselors were working remotely and for fewer hours, and offices were slow to respond to requests. Imani explained her difficult semester, saying, “Fall semester of 2020 was definitely my most difficult semester. … my GPA dropped. It was very hard to cope. Imposter syndrome definitely impacted my mental health a lot.” Imani and Summer noted the challenges finding help: therapists were working remotely and were used for emergency mental health crises rather than preventative care. Summer also noted that the cost of care was prohibitive for her.
Participants critiqued institutional attempts to provide stress relief and mental health resources. Five students mentioned their campuses had provided events such as a “wellness week” or “stressbusters” events, which were perceived as inadequate. Nathalie said, “If there were events, they were all remote…. And anybody who had all remote classes, like you didn’t feel like sitting on more Zoom calls.” These events were perceived as good attempts and helpful for some; however, students also admitted that these events did not provide the kind of support many students needed. Nathalie also described a sense of frustration around her university’s approach to “pushing mental health counseling all the time” by addressing thousands of students as a collective group with limited appreciation for the lack of resources individual students needed. She pointed out, “Every student has individual needs and experiences, right? So, if you just try to treat us like we're one big group of people, it doesn't really work.” Students also explicitly discussed the need for mental health support that accounts for their race and ethnic identities. For students like Raine, the need for social and emotional support were directly related to her identity as an Asian. She discussed desiring more support from her community:
A lot of anti-Asian hate crimes have been going on because of coronavirus and the sentiments against Asian people. During this time, I really wanted emotional support. A lot of my friends are empathetic, but they're not East Asian and they don't share the similar fear of going out in the middle of the pandemic.
Mental health support was inadequate during the pandemic and this negatively impacted participants in this study.
Shifting Trajectories within STEM
The themes that emerged from our interview analysis above led us to consider the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting students’ decisions about whether they should continue in STEM majors. Over the course of the year-long study, fourteen participants, or about 7.4% of the sample, reported that they had switched their major (See Table 5).
Table 5
Participants in STEM and non-STEM majors who switched majors during the study
|
|
STEM major in Fall 2020
|
Non-STEM in Fall 2020
|
Total
|
|
Switched majors during 2020-2021
|
10 (6.8%)
|
4 (9.5%)
|
14 (7.4%)
|
|
Did not switch majors during 2020-2021
|
137 (93.2%)
|
38 (90.5%)
|
175 (92.6%)
|
|
|
147
|
42
|
|
Note. This table displays the number and percentage of participants that switched majors during the 2020-2021 academic year.
An additional 10% reported that they were considering switching their major because of the pandemic. This rate of major switching is not higher than previous reports (e.g. Chen, 2013; Leu, 2017). Students typically consider switching majors while in college for a range of reasons even in the absence of pandemics. However, these students stated that they switched or planned to switch specifically due to learning conditions caused by the pandemic. The percentage of STEM and non-STEM majors reporting major switches was similar, with the percentage of non-STEM majors switching slightly higher in this study (the previous reports reference above found similar percentages of STEM and non-STEM switches also, with one report finding higher switching in STEM and the other report finding higher switching in non-STEM). The interviews were valuable in uncovering the reasons for major-switching in this study.
Of the twenty-six students we interviewed, five participants discussed their decision to switch majors. Two (Jada and Julietta) switched from a STEM major to a non-STEM major. Two students switched majors within STEM (Imani began as a life science major and switched to health science; Mari began as a computer science major and switched to anthropology). One student, Laura, was considering majoring in ecology and evolution and anthropology; ultimately, she decided to pursue anthropology. These students highlighted the major challenges they were facing with respect to pursuing a STEM degree.
Participants had difficulty making connections with faculty who could help them make key decisions about coursework. This was especially true for the seven students we interviewed who were in their second year of college and intending to major in a STEM field. All of them reported that this was a critical year for preparing to declare a major and this process was fraught due to limited access to advising. These challenges were exacerbated by the coursework required during the second year of college, which included 200-and 300-level classes, which students reported had content that was especially difficult to learn in a virtual environment. These subjects included advanced calculus, physics, and lab-based courses. These courses were often large, (100-200 students) lecture-based with few opportunities for interaction and required students to watch videos of activities rather than engage in them, which made content difficult to absorb.
Dhara, a second-year student, explained how her limited access to campus led to a struggle to determine her area of focus to plan her major and future plans for graduate school. Without access to classes on campus she didn’t have enough exposure to various subfields to settle on a direction. She said:
I’m hoping to maybe go to graduate school in computer science with a focus in maybe computational biology or neuroscience. Or maybe even artificial intelligence. But I think the pandemic . . . was a struggle, figuring out what classes I wanted to take.
Of the seven second-year students we interviewed, four considered switching their majors because of the pandemic; two did. Lora, who entered college intending to major in anthropology, but was also considering ecology and evolutionary biology, experienced frustration in her required virtual labs that lacked hands-on opportunities and required students to watch videos of lab managers completing experiments. These experiences led her to drop her major in ecology and evolutionary biology and pursue anthropology because the coursework was more discussion-based and engaging in virtual formats.
For students majoring in STEM, the challenges of remote learning in courses that required computational thinking and mathematical problem-solving were particularly difficult and resulted in students avoiding these courses during the pandemic. This led to two interview participants who changed their majors between fall and spring semesters, switching from one type of STEM major into another STEM major. They explained that they moved to courses that were more discussion-based and connected to community and policy (e.g. Public Health, Economics) compared to majors that required computational thinking and collaboration around mathematical problem solving (e.g. physics, math, CS).
Imani, a second-year student pursuing biology and premedical studies decided to switch her major to public health after realizing she would have to take physics online. She realized that she would rather participate in discussions online than try to solve computational problems. She said:
I'd be able to communicate with people more efficiently without having to work on problems because we won't be able to see each other's work if they were to do math problems or physics problems. But in discussion-based classes [in public health], we'll be able to communicate in breakout rooms, we'll be able to just have discussion questions to do in those discussion groups. Like honestly, it'll be much easier.
For Imani, the benefits of engaging in discussions during remote instruction were sufficient to drive her decision to switch out of biology and toward public health.
For Jada, originally a physics major, the pandemic had a major impact on her pursuit of her intended major. When the pandemic hit, Jada had just completed her prerequisites for her major and was starting to take more advanced courses, including math-intensive advanced calculus and chemistry. When she had to move back home due to campus shutdowns, her family responsibilities (e.g., helping her sibling, supporting her family financially, aiding sick family members) impacted every component of her college experience. She described how being a first-generation college student and the expectations of her as a daughter living at home made it increasingly difficult to continue taking advanced coursework remotely. She said, “I needed a lot of time to study and focus and I couldn't do that when I needed to help my younger brother who is also in school.” The impossibility of balancing the requirements of her major with her home life led her to switch her major from physics to economics for the spring semester. She described the decision as “sad” because she had to “do what’s best for me and my GPA and my financial aid [and] make this adult decision to pursue something more sustainable.”
Though many students experienced challenges that hindered their pursuit of STEM, there were examples of unintended, positive impacts as well. For at one least one student in our group, a shift in trajectory, from biology to computational biology, was based on a positive development during the pandemic. Odela, a third-year biology major, described how her planned summer internship switched to a virtual one which meant she couldn’t work on her original project and instead had to learn computational thinking. She ended up liking the computational thinking component of her virtual internship so much that she decided to incorporate it into her plans for her graduate work. She shared:
The summer in 2020, I did a virtual internship. Since it was virtual, it ended up being a computational biology internship [rather than life science]. The researcher I was paired with had me do a mathematical modeling project that I had no idea how to do at all when I was doing it. So, it was a very big learning experience. But it was so much fun, I loved it way more than I thought I ever would, and I decided to go for only computational biology PhD programs. So, every single program I applied to was in that field, even though previously I had no interest in that area.
Our findings suggest that for some students the pandemic posed major challenges to their ability to persist in their desired STEM major. While the number of students in our study who left STEM because of the impact of the pandemic on their academic experiences is small, their experiences point to the challenging contexts many students of color face in their STEM pathways (Chen, 2015). In this way, the pandemic may have exacerbated the challenge of Black and Latina/o students switching out of STEM majors and earning degrees in another field (Rigel-Crumb, King & Irizarry, 2019).
Resources Sought
To combat the challenges posed by the pandemic, students sought a variety of resources. Survey findings revealed that class content support (e.g., tutors, teaching assistants, faculty office hours), academic advising, and career pathway planning were the most sought out academic resources in both fall and spring semesters (see Table 6). Higher percentages of participants reported accessing additional resources as the 2020-2021 academic year continued. For example, in the fall, 38.9% of participants reported seeking academic support of tutors and TAs; in the spring that number increased to 53.2%. In fall, 45% of participants reported seeking support with career pathway planning; by spring this had increased to 64%.
Table 6
Percentage of participants who sought resources during the time period of the survey
|
Additional resource
|
Accessed resource in Fall 2020 (%)
|
Accessed resource in Spring 2021 (%)
|
|
Class content support (e.g. accessing tutors, TA hours)
|
38.9
|
53.2
|
|
Emotional/social/community support (e.g. peer support, college counselor)
|
35.3
|
42.6
|
|
Financial support
|
32.1
|
44.7
|
|
Academic/career pathway planning (e.g. academic advising)
|
44.7
|
63.8
|
|
Support finding or landing a job, internship or assistantship
|
37.4
|
48.2
|
|
Physical or mental health (flu shot, doctor’s visits, telehealth)
|
41.1
|
46.1
|
|
How to function within an institution or environment due to COVID constraints
|
26.8
|
15.6
|
|
Decision making about continuing my studies/work during COVID
|
32.1
|
27.7
|
|
Other (Please describe)
|
2.1
|
3.5
|
Two-mode Social Network Analysis
Two-mode social network data and interview data provided insight into how students accessed help from people in the context of the pandemic. We asked participants to list up to five people who they had reached out to, or who had reached out to them, to support them during the pandemic. For each individual (alter) named, we asked participants to identify the primary role of each person in their life (e.g., professor, parent, friend), and the types of support they provided (e.g. financial, academic, socioemotional). To understand the multifaceted roles individuals can play in a relationship, we examined the potential multiplex ties of students’ networks. This enabled us to explore the ways in which individuals that students identified as resources potentially held multiple roles: for example, a colleague can also be a mentor; a teacher can also be an academic advisor; a classmate can also be a friend. This analysis also enabled us to examine how individuals provide multiple types of support: a friend can offer socio-emotional support and financial advice and a mentor can offer support with schoolwork and offer advice about how to navigate the undergraduate process.
We found that 68.3% of students reached out to at least one person for support during the pandemic. On average, participants reached out to 3.51 people; practically, this means that they reached out to between 3 and 4 alters. We found no significant differences by gender or ethno-racial category in the number of people reported. The four most frequently named roles were friend, family, faculty, and academic advisor (see Table 7). These represented 33.3%, 26.9%, 15.4%, and 14.6% of all alters named, respectively. All other role groups represented 9.7% (each represented 5.5% or fewer of alters named). On average, alters were sought for between two and three different types of supports (Table 7).
|
Table 7
Roles and the support they offered
|
|
Role Type
|
Total Alters named in role
(Percent of alters)
|
Average number of support roles per alter type
|
|
Friend
|
151
(33.3%)
|
2.4
|
|
Family
|
122
(26.9%)
|
2.9
|
|
Faculty
|
70
(15.4%)
|
2.4
|
|
Academic advisor
|
66
(14.6%)
|
2.6
|
|
All other roles
|
44
(9.7%)
|
—
|
While friends were named most frequently, they were the least likely to be sought for multiplex support: only 57.0% of friends were sought for more than one type of support, compared to 77.9% of family, 77.3% of academic advisors, and 74.3%. This indicates that while friends were frequently sought for support, it was usually for a single reason. Faculty and academic advisors were frequently sought for socio-emotional support, representing one-third of the support sought. Figure 3 below provides a visual representation of the types of support provided by alters.
Figure 3
Support type given by each alter in participants’ social networks
[insert Figure 3 about here]
Interview findings confirmed social network findings, with 81% of interviewees identifying peers and friends as the most critical resource for personal and academic support. We asked students directly about the alters they identified in the social network component of the survey. Students reported that friends and classmates were important resources for navigating remote learning environments necessary during the pandemic. Peers provided space to talk about frustrations about virtual courses and grades, but also provided a source of motivation to push through difficult courses and hold each other accountable to attend online courses. Luciana, an interview participant, shared how attending courses virtually in the pandemic led to her classmates becoming vital sources of support. She said, “I barely, if at all, communicated with classmates prior to the pandemic. We connected because we were online and had to communicate online which bonded us together.”
Friends and classmates were also important resources for decision making, including determining what to prioritize for coursework and homework when remote learning felt overwhelming, advising each other on course loads and what courses to potentially drop. Some students formed virtual study groups or met outside to study together. Students also drew on friends who were further along in their degrees and had already taken prerequisite courses in person for advice on courses they were struggling to complete virtually.
The most common strategy used to access academic support via collaboration with peers was virtual environments like WhatsApp and Discord. Students described how these groups were critical for them because it was where they felt comfortable revealing where they needed help. Julietta described using these platforms to engage with peers for academic support:
We use Discord or WhatsApp, and then we have a group chat. And that’s helped, but it’s more of an academic thing. No one’s going to really put their personal struggles there, unless they know most of the students in the group chat. But not really. It’s more like, oh, what did you get for this question, or how did you figure out this question?
The sentiment shared by students was that engaging in these virtual environments, especially group chats, were ideal for asking about one problem set or question related to classwork but were not useful for collaborating more holistically. In the few instances that in-person study groups were an option, students described the complexities involved gathering in ways that were safe, including socially distancing, masks, and being sure peers are COVID negative and/or vaccinated. These experiences led to students feeling as though their in-person experiences were very isolating learning experiences.
A large percentage (85%, n-22) of students we interviewed told us that friends and classmates provided vital personal and social support, in addition to academic support, stating that these relationships provided spaces to express frustrations and sadness, and to vent about difficult living situations and relationships with family members during quarantine. Amber described how her friends were supportive in that they all felt frustrated with having to go back to live with their families during campus shutdowns:
I'm lucky to have a very close friend group. They were definitely a social support for me. Again, because we were all frustrated, and we were all suddenly living with our parents again, and—I mean, I haven't really lived with my parents this much since I was in middle school, because I was so busy in high school.
Students also drew on their peers to motivate each other to perform self-care, like taking the time to exercise daily, meditate, and have down time. Rae described being connected to her friends virtually and using the isolation of quarantine “to grow closer to certain people.” Jayanti and her friend utilized each other as accountability buddies for both personal and academic support, checking in with each other every day to provide each other with consistent support.
For students of color pursuing STEM degrees, the role of friendships as key sources of support was central to combatting the isolation of quarantine and virtual learning environments. Raine, a third year East Asian female pursuing a degree in computer science, described the way the pandemic exacerbated feelings of isolation as a woman in computer science. During the pandemic, she cultivated a community of women with shared interests in computer science on virtual platforms.
When I started at [college] being a woman in STEM was very isolating for me because a lot of people in my classes didn’t really share similar experiences and I just felt like I couldn’t connect with them. I've always felt that way going through [college] as a woman in computer science. During the pandemic, it was magnified, like, ‘Wow. This is very isolating as woman in tech.’ I reached out to my friends and over time I was able to build a small community of women who share similar experiences.
66% of students (n=17) we interviewed identified parents and other family as important resources for support. Parents provided living situations for students during quarantine, and financial support, especially with respect to rent and food. Mothers were most often cited as people providing emotional and mental health support. Hailey, a third-year Engineering major, describes the role of her mother when there was a sudden shutdown of her campus:
To calm me down, my mom brought me back and really helped me understand that this is a situation that’s happening to everyone. This is pretty serious, like don’t even think about what you’re missing out on, like you’re lucky in the sense that you’re lucky be alive. You’re lucky to even have a school to go back to. So that definitely helped me.
Parents played an important role in supporting students during periods of quarantine and isolation. Hailey described being grateful that her parents helped her deal with her stress and giving her space to get through her coursework and attend classes. Amber, also a third-year geosciences and life sciences major, spent part of the pandemic taking courses from her family’s New York City apartment while her parents worked from home and her younger brother attended high school remotely, described a shared level of burnout she experienced alongside her parents, and an awareness of the lack of boundaries that emerged within families during quarantine:
...like me trying to work from my room, and my father trying to work from the dining room table. And we would just like meet in the hallway and be like: This is the worst. I can't do this anymore. I hate this. I miss my designated mental spaces. Like I go here to do my work, and then I go here to relax, and now there's no boundary. So he was very helpful just sort of in a comradery kind of way as well as advice and support.
In addition to drawing on friends and family for support, 55% of students (n15) we interviewed identified faculty and academic advisors as key resources during the pandemic. Jayanti, a third-year Computer and Information Sciences major, described the ways one of her professors made himself available to herself and her classmates.
I really appreciated that particular professor because he was there to answer all of our questions. No question seemed like it wouldn’t get any answers. It felt like he was completely invested in us fully grasping the material in lecture. I’m really grateful that I had him as a professor during this pandemic because I’d never seen other professors be so dedicated to students fully grasping the content.
Students also shared ways in which faculty provided opportunities for students to engage with each other during courses. Luciana, a third-year STEM major said, “I even had a good experience where the professor themselves made the group chat so that the students can ask each other questions about the homework and asked the professor questions about the homework at the same time.” When professors were able to make themselves available, students gratefully took advantage of that resource.
Four students we interviewed said that faculty provided support in ways that enabled them to talk about personal aspects of their lives with someone who was not a family member and to set realistic expectations for themselves during the pandemic. Amber explained the ways in which her research advisor helped her navigate living at home again by supporting her in setting realistic expectations of herself:
My research advisor supported me in trying to navigate how to live at home again and still be productive and how to adjust my expectations for what I was going to be able to do. I was really struggling with the fact that I would try to sit down for eight hours and do my work, and I ended up only getting five hours’ worth of work done in a whole day.
Students were drawn to faculty who were honest about their own difficulty working under quarantine conditions. Amber also explained how knowing the ways in which her advisor was also struggling to figure out how to work remotely while home with children supported her emotionally.
I think she ended up being sort of the emotional support animal for me, all of her other advisees, and the entire staff of the Geology Department because she was also working from home, and she has two young children. Just the knowledge that somebody I look up to is struggling in the same way that I am [is helpful].
22% of students we interviewed discussed how cultural organizations provided them with a sense of community and social well-being. Dhara highlighted the role that student organizations on her campus played in providing emotional and social support, as well as the role of the alumni network from her prior internship:
I’ve been a part of the Pakistani Student Association and the Muslim Student Association. They have been helpful as far as having the community that I could rely on for emotional support and having strong friendships in those circles. When I was in high school, I was a part of this organization affiliated with New York Public library called BridgeUP. And even though the program has since ended, there’s a program called BridgeOUT for the alums. They’ve been very supportive, reaching out, offering support— financial support as well and just reaching out and making sure I was okay. I know I can rely on that community if I ever need anything.
Based on survey findings, family and friends provided the most frequent support during the pandemic because the barriers seemed lowest to access them. However, when faculty and campus community groups were available, students reported them as a valuable resource.
Future Concerns and Desired Resources
Students continue to contend with pandemic-related roadblocks on their academic trajectories, and a goal of this work was to determine what students foresaw as future challenges and desired resources. Despite widespread agreement that learning online was less effective than in-person, in most cases, survey responses revealed that returning to in-person learning was the biggest area of worry for our students one year into the pandemic (See Figure 4). A first-year college student shared:
I am concerned about the transition between online classes and in-person classes. I feel that during this online semester students became more accustomed to a different type of learning setting that is not like it would be in an in-person setting and so we became more introverted in a way.
The second highest concern was about finding jobs and internships. A third-year college student explained, “I am quite worried that because more students will be on campus for the upcoming academic school year, many of the internship and job opportunities might be taken. This will increase the competition for internships and jobs.” A few students were concerned that there would not be jobs available when they graduated and considered going directly to graduate school, even though that was not their original plan. A third-year student shared the way he interpreted the challenge:
Companies are hiring less people, and they're going through a more selective process for internships and jobs. I'm feeling like I literally don't have a chance of getting a job. Now the companies be like, ‘Hey, we need like the best out of the best.’ You can't really be like, Oh, I'm like one of the best.’ No, they want the best. I don't consider myself ‘the best,’ so I feel a little bit scared what the future is going to be like.
For some students pursuing health sciences and health-related majors, the lack of in-person internships and job opportunities was a major obstacle. Students lost internship opportunities in medical settings like hospitals, hindering their ability to fulfill requirements for their major. For example, Manuel lost access to an internship. He reported:
A lot of these internships do not exist anymore or they’re not accepting students. I’m an undergraduate and they’re trying to focus on graduate students because it’s more useful, especially since a lot of internships want to do studies on COVID or epidemiology studies, they prefer somebody who comes with more experience, which is graduate students.
Figure 4 summarizes participants worries for the upcoming academic year.
Figure 4
Open-ended responses about participants’ worries for the upcoming academic year.
[Insert Figure 4 about here]
Note. 125/141 participants (89%) provided a text entry for “What are you most worried about this academic year.” The figure shows the number of times each worry was mentioned.
The final question on the spring survey asked students which resources they wished existed. This open-ended item was designed to collect practical steps colleges and universities could take in the future to address pandemic-related challenges. Figure 5 shows the number of participants mentioning a particular resource. Though mental health was not a top worry mentioned in Figure 5, the most participants mentioned “mental health resources” as a resource they wished existed. One possible explanation is that many participants had concerns about their mental health, but it wasn’t what they perceived they were “most” worried about. Participants also mentioned “academic support” at a high rate. This desired resource connects with the concern that surfaced in both surveys and interviews about the depth of learning that occurred virtually; many participants described studying to pass a class, but later realizing that they did not understand the material well.
Figure 5
Additional resources desired
[insert Figure 5 about here]
Note. Participants wrote in responses to an open-ended item that asked, “What additional resources do you wish existed? The number of participants that mentioned each resource is displayed.
Our data identify ways that students drew on individuals in their communities, specifically their peers and their families, to support them in their academic goals during the pandemic. However, we found that students’ academic communities were limited in their abilities to support critical aspects of students’ academic and socioemotional needs during a year when campus shut-downs and online learning restrained students’ access to much-needed supports, including mental health resources, highlighting the need for academic communities to strive for more stable and flexible practices to accommodate students’ needs during educational emergencies.