Recovering Higher Education During and After the Pandemic

This chapter discusses the economic, academic, and socioemotional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on low-income students and the institutes of higher education that serve them. Income-based inequities among students have been amplified significantly by the economic recession and the shift to remote learning. This chapter examines the federal and state-level plans that aim to address these inequities by providing/redistributing aid to universities. Additionally, updated pedagogies that are attuned to the needs of remote/hybrid learning are proposed, since keeping student motivation (and graduation rates) high will be a priority for universities as they recover from this pandemic. Universities must therefore provide their students with the sufficient monetary, academic, and emotional support needed to ensure both their students' and their own success.

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Other Challenges

Two Cheers for Higher Education ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691182667.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 328-370

Author(s):

Steven Brint

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Low Income ◽

Education System ◽

Resource Constraints ◽

Low Income Students ◽

Higher Education System ◽

Underrepresented Groups ◽

The U.S

This chapter discusses other major challenges to the U.S. higher education system: rising costs, online competition, and controversies over permissible speech. These challenges can be interpreted as problems of growth in the context of resource constraints. Cost problems were largely attributable to universities' requirements for sufficient revenues to support larger staffs and new responsibilities within the context of state disinvestment. Online competition was a result of the search for market alternatives to traditional, high-cost residential campuses within the context of an expanding system that included many low-income students. And the conflicts over speech were, in most cases, the by-product of tensions between students from comparatively privileged backgrounds and those from underrepresented groups.

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A Dream Realized

Accessibility and Diversity in the 21st Century University - Advances in Higher Education and Professional Development ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-2783-2.ch003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 46-67

Author(s):

Nate Bryant

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Low Income ◽

Family Income ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Higher Education Institutions ◽

Vulnerable Population ◽

Low Income Students ◽

Total Family Income ◽

Institutional Structures ◽

Changing Demographics

This chapter presents the characteristics and challenges that low-income students face culturally, socially, and academically, and identifies services that have a positive impact on their retention. Low-income students are defined as students whose total family income is below $50,000 a year. While higher education institutions boast about the increase in low-income students enrolling in college, the data show that the retention of these students is not as praiseworthy. Colleges and universities have not been nimble in meeting students where they are academically. Rather, they expect students to navigate the institutional structures and cultures that pre-date the changing demographics of higher education. Recognizing the characteristics of low-income students in relation to education, and understanding the challenges they face, will be helpful to higher education institutions as they create programs to meet the needs of this most vulnerable population.

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