Disparities in Postsecondary Education Disruptions During COVID-19 Pandemic: findings for Practice and Policy Decision Making

The global COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly changed the face of education and created additional barriers to access and opportunity for learning at every stage. Studies (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSC), 2021, Sedmak, 2020) show that college students in the U.S. encountered numerous challenges during the transition from campus-based learning to emergency remote learning during quarantine shutdowns. Now three academic cycles into the COVID-19 pandemic, college campuses have largely returned to in-person learning. Students, however, continue to experience various degrees of stress, health concerns, lack of access to technology for remote or hybrid learning, and lack of appropriate housing or spaces to study amidst multiple surges of the Delta and Omicron variants (Day, et al., 2021, Goldberg, 2021, Smith et al., 2020). Additionally, households across the country were affected by job loss and lost wages, thus increasing familial or financial responsibilities for many college students (Bhagat and Kim, 2020). As a result, some students entering post-secondary education or continuing their academic path altered their plans or turned away from college altogether.