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For students pursuing higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic was incredibly disruptive, threatening their livelihood, mental health, and ability to remain enrolled in school.
In a new study in the Journal of American College Health, CUNY SPH Assistant Professor Meredith Manze and colleagues examined how the pandemic affected students’ engagement in higher education, and in particular their capacity to meet their essential needs including food, housing, and financial security.
The team interviewed 38 CUNY students from neighborhoods highly affected by the pandemic and found that financial and social support systems, such as governmental and school resources, were critical to addressing essential needs and allowing students to persist. For those whose essential needs were met, faculty members’ flexibility and students’ experience with online learning were central to their academic success.
The researchers recommend that institutions of higher education strengthen financial and social support systems to meet students’ essential needs and bolster online pedagogy and faculty’s flexibility to facilitate student retention and completion.
“This insight, that meeting the essential needs of students is central in allowing them to succeed academically, is not new,” says Manze. “The urgency of meeting students’ essential needs existed before the pandemic and, unless addressed, will continue well after.”
By addressing such needs and creating a culture of supportive faculty, institutions of higher education can improve the lives of students, and increase academic persistence, achievement, and degree completion, she says.
