At this point, many students at U.S. universities are packing up their childhood bedrooms, purchasing textbooks, and planning their travel back to college. Still, some lingering questions remain about how this fall semester will unfold. This spring, the coronavirus pandemic completely shocked the world and drew attention to many structural inequities in the U.S education system. The fall semester serves as the first real test of U.S. college preparedness for dealing with COVID-19. In this article, I address economic inequities on campus students will face that stem from the pandemic.
The first article in this series tackled some of the more general questions surrounding inequities that college students face. From access to safe housing to availability of mental health resources, these issues predominantly impact the day-to-day life of college students. In the following article, I addressed the inequities that disproportionately impact international and graduate students. This week, I chose to write about the topic of economic inequity because it impacts nearly all aspects of the college experience during the pandemic. Keep reading to learn about these economic inequities and some of the solutions that universities and the U.S. government can implement.
Costs of Living
As schools across the country seek to ‘de-densify’ their on-campus housing, students must choose whether to remain on campus or to find an apartment in their college town. Students forced to return home in the middle of the spring semester know that they might have to leave campus once again. This insecurity complicates the decision to choose between on and off-campus housing, as one college student who is undecided about returning to campus described.
“If they make us leave campus, like they did right after spring break, we have absolutely no control over the situation. We couldn’t stay in Nashville if we wanted to, which makes living off campus very appealing. There’s no sense of security or stability with on-campus housing — we just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Rising Junior at Vanderbilt University
Aside from the potential risk that students get stuck in a lease if classes transition online, apartments can be prohibitively expensive. This will likely lead to socioeconomic stratification, with students from higher socioeconomic classes moving off campus. In addition to this manifestation of the wealth divide on campus, students who remain in dormitories face heightened health risks.
Dormitories often provide communal kitchens for food prep, or encourage students to use cafeterias. These can create hotspots of social interaction with little opportunity for safe social distancing. Students who rely upon the affordability of campus housing often cannot afford to purchase the majority of their meals from off-campus restaurants. This forces students from lower income brackets to accept health risks from campus dining facilities. Their peers who live off campus often safely utilize private kitchens in their housing or can purchase meals from restaurants. During this pandemic, economic inequity translates to health risk for students on college campuses.
Tuition and Work
With many campuses announcing hybrid or entirely online classes, students worry the quality of their education might decline. A May survey of 2,800 high school seniors showed that 33 percent of seniors would prefer to defer admission if their college announced plans to move entirely online because of the pandemic. While some students expressed this was a result of the loss of the on-campus college experience, many reported that economic issues were their main concern. Over 36 percent of American families reported tapping into college funds to cover COVID-related hardships. This leaves many students financially unable to attend college without additional resources, such as loans and scholarships.
Federal work study programs help students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds afford college, but these programs are in jeopardy due to coronavirus. There are currently no guarantees that students will be able to work for universities and receive federal work study funds this fall. For some students, working on campus is the only feasible employment they can have during the semester. Between funding freezes across the country and a lack of strong federal guidance, students who rely on these funds lack job security for the fall.
Solutions and Next Steps
Socioeconomic diversity is an essential part of a thriving campus community. Reducing stratification between economic classes can lead to effective solutions to issues that impact people who come from all economic backgrounds. We should ensure our campuses remain socioeconomically diverse by advocating to reduce the economic inequities that students face this fall. Here are some of the resources and actions that can best reduce these economic inequities and ensure that all students can safely return to campus in the fall.
Participate in university town halls. Ask administrators how they plan to address economic inequities on campus and offer concrete policy proposals they can implement.
- Guarantee job security for students who receive Federal Work Study designation, Pell Grants, and financial aid.
- Provide hardship funds for students who need additional assistance to cover living costs, travel costs, and healthcare costs related to coronavirus. This must include testing and treatment.
Advocate for an expansion of federal coronavirus relief that adequately serves college students by contacting political representatives with policy proposals.
- Develop additional stimulus packages to mitigate the economic hardships of COVID-19.
- Provide stimulus funds to college students, including those who are listed as dependents on their parents’ taxes, DREAMers, international students, and all other students enrolled at U.S. universities.
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