Via Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
As the fall semester looms closer, college students are in an especially vulnerable position: unsure of how their college experience will be affected by things like mask mandates and online learning. After planning for college their whole educational lives, they’re now having to worry about losing their learning experience to COVID-19.
“Not knowing what they’re going to do with classes and dorms and everything has been kind of worrying,” says Bailey Higgins, 18, an incoming freshman at Webster University.
Higgins says that, to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, Webster has changed its dorm policy, getting rid of roommates completely. Now students will just share a suite (an attached common room and bathroom) rather than a room.
Annabelle Pursley, 18, an incoming freshman at Southwest Baptist University, says similar changes have been made at her school. Students at Southwest Baptist will not be allowed to bunk their beds and roommates have to stay on opposite sides of the room at all times.
Changes like this are pretty common among local universities and community colleges. Mizzou will be requiring masks for everybody on campus. Saint Louis University is considering modified face-to-face teaching, hybrid, and virtual learning—depending on the “status of the virus”—as well as an earlier start and end date to the fall term. Washington University is requiring employees to use on an online screening tool—which asks about symptoms, recent exposure to COVID-19, and requires employees to record their temperature—before coming to campus. Wash. U. also updated its safety app, WashU Safe, which became available for download on July 1. St. Charles Community College will be taking a hybrid approach to the fall 2020 semester, offering remote, online, and a small number of in-person classes.
Higgins says Webster will require students to fill out a questionnaire and pass a temperature check every day before their first class, the dining hall will only be open for to-go orders, and masks will be compulsory anytime on campus.
As for the actual schooling part, Pursley says that Southwest Baptist has already moved the end of the semester to Thanksgiving rather than Christmas and announced that finals will be held online.
The uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic has led a lot of students to change their plans when it comes to education. A survey done by Junior Achievement and the PMI Educational Foundation found that 49 percent of the high school class of 2020 has changed its collegiate plans. Of the 1,000 grads surveyed, 36 percent said they will now work rather than pursue college at this time, 32 percent will most likely postpone college and take some time off, and 16 percent changed their career path, as reported by CNBC.
However, neither Pursley nor Higgins knows anybody personally who has changed their college plans because of COVID-19. Both said that, because final college decisions are often made in January to March, most people they know were already committed somewhere and just decided to stick it out.
Pursley says by the time the pandemic hit, most of her senior class at Fort Zumwalt South didn’t think it would last all that long. “We kind of all just thought, OK, there’s probably going to be a couple of months, but after that, it’s all going to go back to normal,” Pursley says. “Well, nothing is back to normal. It’s still here and it affects everything.”
Another looming question for many students is the status of athletics. Since COVID-19 put an abrupt stop to many major sporting leagues, the question still remains whether or not games will be a possibility. Higgins is on the tennis team at Webster and says that she will be able to play in the fall, but with restrictions. According to Higgins, the team currently plans to hold regular practices but has the option of switching to socially distanced practices if need be. Temperature checks will be required at the beginning of each practice and masks will be required during breaks.
As for the question of online learning vs. than in-person classes, both Higgins and Pursley prefer in-person. A pre-COVID survey by the EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research found that, out of 40,000 U.S. college students, 70 percent prefer face-to-face instruction, according to EdSurge.
“I need to see people, and I feel like that’s my first taste of college and if I don’t get that in person, then it’s like it didn’t happen,” Pursley says. “I wouldn’t get that full experience and understanding, and I feel like I’d carry that for the rest of my life.”
Higgins has other reasons for preferring in-person classes. “I am the biggest procrastinator, and I would just put everything off until the last minute. I get so unmotivated to check my stuff,” she says. “It’d be hard. I would do it, but I would not prefer it.”
“I feel like the last authentic moments I had of high school, all of that was taken away because of this,” Pursley says. “I’m just hanging onto that first taste of college because that’s another big step, too. That would be taken away because of online classes.”
