On a typical weekday, Cindy Buchanan drives more than an hour from her home, in eastern Tennessee, to attend cosmetology classes at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology at Harriman. There, the 47-year-old Buchanan cuts, dyes, and perms the hair of mannequins. Two days a week she gets to practice on clients.
These days, Buchanan’s commute is just a short walk to her computer. Her lessons have moved online due to concerns about the spread of Covid-19. They now center on spreadsheets, instead of hair, as she learns how to run a salon.
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
We’re still getting our hours, but, of course, we’re not getting our hands-on training like we need.
“We’re still getting our hours, but, of course, we’re not getting our hands-on training like we need,” Buchanan said.
Covid-19 has brought other disruptions into her life. Her husband is the family’s breadwinner, but he was furloughed from his factory job in March. His paychecks are now a fraction of what they were. With few employment alternatives in their small town, Buchanan is now searching for a job to help pay the family’s bills. Balancing school and work will be tough, especially when in-person classes resume, “but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” she said.
Buchanan is one of America’s six million nontraditional students. They face unique challenges as courses move online because, unlike some of their younger peers, they often juggle their coursework with full-time jobs, child care, and caring for older relatives.
Although it may be too early to fully gauge how the shift online and pressures stemming from Covid-19 will affect older students, there is cause for concern, said Hadass Sheffer, founder and president of the Graduate Network, a program that supports adult students.
“Some of them don’t have access” to the internet or laptops, she said. “Some of them have not yet learned how to learn online. Some people are in fragile mind-sets right now, and so learning probably is not a high priority.”
For adult students working in the medical field or in the military, expecting them to complete coursework alongside their heightened responsibilities due to Covid-19 may be too ambitious, said Matt Bergman, an assistant professor in the University of Louisville’s department of educational leadership, evaluation, and organizational development.
“Those frontline workers are dramatically impacted by this and by their ability to balance the competing responsibilities. In some cases, it’s unreasonable to even ask them to do so,” Bergman said. Some of his adult students are considering reducing their course loads or pausing their education until the fall.
The Student as Her Own Teacher
Valerie Saffie, 36, works full time as a medical-lab assistant at a hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn. Saffie started in January at Chattanooga State Community College, where she is pursuing an associate degree in applied science. She hopes to become a medical technologist.
Although initially wary of attending classes with younger students, Saffie opted for in-person courses because she is a visual and experiential learner. Now she feels as if she’s teaching herself as her coursework shifts online.
“There’s no reassurance when you teach yourself,” she said. “You are just hoping that you’re getting it right, that you’re understanding correctly.”
With a multitude of distractions at home, she typically studies on campus. Now she completes readings and homework in an empty hospital conference room after finishing her shift.
Communication with professors and peers has become more time-consuming. What might have been a short conversation after class is now an email exchange that can stretch across hours or even days. She has even considered withdrawing from a course in which she felt she wasn’t getting enough help.
Since moving online, Saffie has discovered digital library resources that have helped her complete her assignments, but the learning curve has been steep. “When you’re an older student, you don’t even know that half of these resources exist,” she said.
For some adult students, the shift online is nothing new. Shasta College, a two-year institution in Redding, Calif., offers courses for nontraditional students completely online or in a hybrid version, with an in-person class once a week.
Some adults have found that the online shift makes it easier to care for their children, who are also home from school, said Rebecka Renfer, a counselor with Shasta’s Accelerated College Education program.
Online learning is often popular with adult students because of the convenience and flexibility it offers, Bergman said.
Adult students may be more likely than traditional students to pause their education when they feel overwhelmed by other responsibilities because of the high value they place on good grades.
“If you talk to anybody that instructs adults, they are driven by getting that A and showing that they’re worthy of that,” Bergman said. “Oftentimes they’re carrying a lot of baggage when they return, because they weren’t successful the first time around.”
Child-Care Duties
With the threat of coronavirus keeping him at home, Lee Duong, a 32-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, now must care for his 15-month-old daughter during the time he’d usually be studying, making his coursework in mathematics, engineering, and physics nearly impossible.
“Right now, basically I only do classwork when my partner is home or like in the middle of the night,” after their daughter goes to sleep, he said. As his coursework gets progressively more difficult, Duong worries the limited study time might start affecting his grades.
Duong, who hopes to earn a master’s degree in nuclear engineering, quit his campus job as a help-desk specialist in information technology to stay home with their daughter. His mother-in-law typically cares for the girl but is self-isolating due to the risk of Covid-19. Duong’s spouse is a nurse and has been working longer shifts to help treat patients.
Malissa Ayala, director of nontraditional-student services at Purdue University, worries about people who lack a support system or live alone. Adult students already face a “high level of social isolation” and can struggle to build friendships with younger peers, she said. The social distancing required to contain Covid-19 could make things worse.
There’s still a lot of emotional disruption and focus disruption on a day-to-day basis.
Suzanne Sweetnam, a student enrolled in Badger Ready, the re-enrollment program at Madison, is feeling some effects of social isolation. She enrolled in classes hoping to build a community but is now stuck at home. Her mom has an underlying health condition that makes her more vulnerable to Covid-19, so Sweetnam had already been avoiding campus before classes moved online, on March 23.
“The idea that we’re supposed to be as productive as we usually are is a little intimidating because I think even for those of us who are able to meet the requirements, there’s still a lot of emotional disruption and focus disruption on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
To prevent isolation, advisers like Purdue’s Ayala are reaching out to students individually and following up with those in particularly challenging situations. Many colleges are giving students the option to take spring courses pass/fail, extending withdrawal deadlines, and simplifying requirements for some classes in order to ease the burden of online coursework.
Tennessee and other states are working with colleges to provide adult learners with resources and support services to help them cope, said Emily House, deputy executive director for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and the Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation.
“At the moment, I think that’s just a question that is top of mind for everybody,” she said. “How do we support these students so they can finish the semester, and move on through the summer and into the fall?”
