Education

Pandemic Marches On: Higher Ed’s Spring Semester, The New Normal, And The “Lost Year”


With just weeks left until Thanksgiving, a time at which most colleges and universities will pivot entirely to remote learning (even those that have operated successfully in a hybrid or mixed-mode of in-person and remote learning), institutions are announcing their plans for the Spring 2021 semester. With very few exceptions, colleges and universities will continue in their current mode of instruction in the spring. Those that had to pivot mid-semester this fall away from in-person instruction are likely to continue in that mode in the spring as well. There are several reasons universities are making this decision. First, the investments have been made to accommodate remote, hybrid, and mixed-mode instruction. Second, it’s working. The all-remote and mixed-modality approaches to teaching and learning are working reasonably well, perhaps better than skeptical faculty once thought possible. Third, the pandemic is ongoing with many states experiencing spikes in cases and hospitalizations. Fourth, concerns are growing about the safety of college campuses and their communities with numerous high-profile examples of failures to contain the spread of the virus. And fifth is the unspoken sense of this entire academic year being a write-off, a lost year for universities and their students, so they may as well continue in this mode for the remainder of the year.

The Spring 2021 semester will start later than usual at many schools, with start-dates in early February rather than January. Spring breaks will be cancelled. Students will once again be encouraged to remain on-campus rather than traveling out-of-state or even going home to families during the academic semester. Athletics competitions will once again be tightly controlled in terms of scheduling, practices, team travel, and spectator attendance. Those student services and related campus operations that can be made available online will be. This includes academic advising, career services, counseling, tutoring, and more. Building on the successful experience gained throughout the fall semester, many student co-curricular activities also will continue to be held virtually. Students will continue to sign-up for everything from recreational facilities to the library, and from student health services to meal selection and pick-up times. Office hours will continue to be held online. On-campus classes and labs will continue to be operating at “de-densified” levels (fewer students) and restrictions will continue be imposed on campus gatherings.

The instructional technologies are in-place, the barriers and PPE dispensers/supplies are in place, and the signage is in-place. More importantly perhaps, the expectations are established, the behavioral changes have taken place, and campus cultures around personal and collective safety (the new normal) have been shifted. And with all of this, there is a sense that “it has been working.” Colleges and universities have largely been able to deliver on their mission, support faculty instruction and provide for student learning, maintain health and safety of those on their campuses (many, but not all, schools are testing students for the virus regularly), and respond appropriately to positive tests, local outbreaks, or campus-wide public health emergencies. While there have been notable and widely reported exceptions, large campuses and their communities experiencing significant numbers of people testing positive for the virus, there have been far more schools with good stories to tell. It has also become clear that high incidence of infections is strongly correlated to (e.g.) large gatherings for athletic events, lack of statewide directives or even consistent guidance around (or belief in) the use of facial masks and proper social distancing, cultural and political leanings, and geography/climate. Ironically, like so much about the politicization of this pandemic, it does not appear there is universal “learning from best practices” taking place. This suggests it likely that those universities and regions that are having difficulties containing the virus for extended periods of time will continue to be challenged in the months ahead.

With all of the coverage and hype, media attention and pundit offerings about colleges’ abilities to ensure the health and safety of their on-campus populations, the financial challenges facing higher educational institutions, enrollment changes (and concerns that short-term shifts may become longer-term realities), and ability for working-class families to be able to afford sending their children to college, little attention has been paid to another crisis, the “lost year.”

What is increasingly appearing to be a full academic year of major concessions to the pandemic in terms of response, adaptation, and responsible prioritization of population health, also means a full academic cycle of reduced content, lowered expectations, less robust assessments, and students less well prepared to advance. This may or may not universally be the case. More than likely, there will be variations by geography and location, school type and size, access to broadband internet, and specific plans and protocols for both in-person learning and quarantining students. These concerns apply to all levels of education, K-12 as well as college. It seems very likely there will be discrepancy in level of student preparedness to advance in their education along the same racial and socio-economic lines we are seeing for Covid-19 mortality rates. Black and brown people will be disproportionately disadvantaged. Whether and how this propagates as some students, some communities, and some populations progress through their education remains to be seen. But it seems inevitable that all students will be negatively impacted, and some students will be negatively impacted more than others. Whether and how K-12 and higher educational institutions respond to this phenomenon also remains to be seen, and will depend in large part on the resources they are able to dedicate to remedial, leveling, and college preparatory classes. Such capacities are not universally available. This further suggests the educational achievement and attainment gaps may widen for some parts of the population as a result of the pandemic’s lost year.

It’s worth pointing out that while lost curricular content and rigor can be reinstated, and temporarily lowered expectations can be raised, it may not be financially possible for many of the students that “stopped out” of college to return next year, or at all. This, too, will have profound implications for workforce development, opportunities for advancement, and lifting individuals and families out of poverty. This will put additional pressures on colleges and universities to further increase financial aid (e.g., scholarships and loans). Given the effective discount rates (net tuition, after all financial aid, as a fraction of total published tuition) at many colleges and universities (public and private), this will be exceedingly difficult to do while ensuring adequate tuition revenue to meet expenses, at least at current levels. This will put further downward pressure on institutions’ boards and leadership to reduce academic offerings, instructional and non-instructional staffing, and/or student support services.

A bleak picture for higher ed? Not necessarily. Challenges breed opportunities for innovation and change. You just have to be open to seeing them and be willing/able to commit to pursuing them. In times of crisis, colleges and universities frequently rise to the occasion in service to their communities. It has proven more difficult for these same institutions to rise to the occasion in service to their own needs for institutional (organizational or operational) change.

There are clear and powerful opportunities for universities to both advance their mission and extend their impact in the wake of the pandemic. This is especially true for our nation’s public and Land Grant universities. Beyond their important (and mission-driven) roles around workforce development, research and discovery, economic development, and extension activities, universities can play a significant role in restoring college-readiness for students in their communities and across their states. This can be done through direct partnerships with local schools; providing additional staffing (e.g., advanced undergraduate or graduate students) to assist with remedial, leveling, or preparatory classes (such as pre-college or AP classes that may otherwise have had to be cut); opening lower-level college classes (in-person or online) to local high school students at no cost; or even adding online offerings specifically aimed at high school students. The latter can even become part of the curricula for college programs in education, curriculum development and instructional technology, and so forth. It also can provide opportunities for graduate students in the disciplines (e.g., STEM, social sciences, humanities, health sciences) to gain valuable experience and perhaps even be motivated to explore careers in teaching. Adding the restoration of college-readiness to the mission set for public colleges and universities would be both timely (critical need) and appropriate (mission-aligned public outreach and service).

There are also great opportunities for colleges and universities to expand how they teach, who they reach, and how degrees are attained. The pandemic forced a sudden pivot to remote learning last spring. This fall semester allowed for the development and implementation of hybrid and mixed-mode classes that accommodate both in-person and remote students. Even against long-standing resistance by some faculty and institutions, a relatively swift and arguably effective transition to hybrid teaching and learning has been achieved. Students and faculty have accepted it, are gaining familiarity with it, and have even come to recognize the advantages it offers. Hybrid teaching and learning is no longer something “coming” but something “here.”

What other opportunities lie ahead for those colleges and universities willing to explore as we move through and beyond the pandemic? What other barriers to acceptance can be shattered? What other modalities can be successfully incorporated to extend reach, provide flexibility, lower costs, accelerate student progress toward degree completion, or accommodate schedules of working students or those with families? The most obvious opportunities would seem to be around broad acceptance and incorporation of experiential learning, service learning, internships and co-ops, and research experiences into the mainstream curricula and degree requirements. But there may also be tremendous opportunities for innovation around modularization of degrees, such as stackable certificates, that allow students to take breaks for work or family, as they progress toward their degree. And there may be opportunities for colleges and universities to create shared offerings and articulation agreements that allow students to pursue their degree (easily and without excessive transfer paperwork) by completing requirements at different schools. This could be especially powerful for students living and working in communities having multiple colleges and universities, as most mid-size and larger cities do.

The Spring 2021 semester will be different from this fall, just as this fall was different from last spring. Spring 2019 was defined by the sudden pivot to remote learning for the final months of the semester. Fall 2020 was the first full semester during which most colleges and universities offered either fully remote or a mixture of in-person and remote instruction, from start to finish. Spring 2021 will be the second such semester. This means colleges have the opportunity to reflect on progress and ongoing challenges, assess both teaching effectiveness and student learning (something that was largely put on-hold last fall for good reasons), make needed changes (whether in pedagogy or technology), and shore up support services for both students and faculty. It also means they will have the opportunity to consider which of the changes and adaptations should be made permanent. It seems quite clear that colleges and universities will never return to entirely (and only) in-person learning. Nor should they. The barriers to acceptance have been broken and the opportunities for students are simply too evident and too great. No doubt there will be other changes that become permanent as well such as how students access various services on campus, communicate with faculty, are advised, engage with classmates on projects, and use both the library and their own spaces to support their learning.

As the fall semester winds down, colleges and universities are preparing for a spring semester that will look largely the same to students and faculty. The promise of a vaccine and new therapeutics give hope that there will be a return to more normal operations by next fall. However it will not be a return to pre-pandemic conditions, operations, or expectations. It will be a new-normal, one that has both forced and enabled new thinking about teaching and learning, one that has made us keenly aware of our vulnerability to a global pandemic, and one that will continue to challenge and shape our thinking around individual and institutional resilience, access and equity, and the social compact colleges and universities have with their students and communities.



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