What Higher Education Has Endured for the Past Year

By the Numbers

Jacquelyn Elias

March 11, 2021

The pandemic has imposed a considerable price on higher education — on the finances of institutions and on the well-being of faculty, staff, and students, among other things. Here are some of Covid-19’s most notable effects so far.

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$120 billion

Estimated new expenses incurred and revenue lost by higher education during the pandemic, according to lobbyists seeking aid from the federal government.

Source: Letter to Congress from the American Council on Education, December 2020

$77 billion

Money provided to higher education in three rounds of coronavirus stimulus relief.

Source: Text of legislation

$24 billion

Estimated new expenses, including Covid-19 testing, classroom modifications, and technology for virtual instruction, incurred by 107 colleges that are among those top-ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

Source: Paul N. Friga/HelioCampus, data collected from news released from March to December 2020

$225 million

What the NCAA distributed to its Division I member institutions last June. The figure was about $375 million less than it had budgeted, mainly because the NCAA's biggest revenue producer — the men's basketball tournaments held during "March Madness" — was canceled because of the coronavirus.

Source: NCAA

22%

College fund raisers who expected to meet their goals for the 2020 fiscal year, a prediction made just after the pandemic began.

65%

Fund raisers who expected to meet their goals for the 2021 fiscal year when asked nine months later.

Source: Washburn & McGoldrick, April 2020 and January 2021

22%

The decrease in high-school graduates going straight to college in the fall of 2020, compared with those who did so in 2019, driven mostly by a drop in low-income and urban high-school students.

Source: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, December 2020

About 560,000

560K

The drop in the number of undergraduates enrolled in the fall of 2020, a 3.6-percent decrease from a year earlier.

Source: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, December 2020

650,000

650K

Estimated number of jobs shed by colleges and universities from the pandemic’s start to the end of 2020 — more than 13 percent of the higher-education work force.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2021

594%

The increase, since 2018-19, in the number of colleges that made standardized tests optional for admission in the fall of 2020.

Source: National Center for Fair & Open Testing

About 40,000

40K

International students who chose to defer their fall-2020 enrollment to a future term.

Source: Institute of International Education

55%

Faculty members who have seriously considered changing careers or retiring early since the pandemic began.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education/Fidelity Investments survey, conducted in October 2020

90 minutes

Time for research that has been lost each day of the pandemic by female faculty members with children.

Source: Working Paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Tatyana Deryugina, Olga Shurchkov, and Jenna E. Stearns, January 2021

76%

College students who said their mental health had worsened since the pandemic began.

Source: Active Minds, September 2020

More than 85

>85

The number of higher-ed administrators, professors, students, and staff members who have died of Covid-19 through March 1, according to news coverage and institutions' statements. Faculty members accounted for the largest number of those deaths, with 39.

56%

The increase in coronavirus cases over a six-week period during the fall-2020 term at colleges of 20,000 students or more that opened for in-person instruction.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 2021

40%

Students who lost a job, an internship, or an offer of either one due to Covid-19.

Source: Paper in the Journal of Public Economics by Esteban M. Aucejo, Jacob French, Maria Paola Ugalde Araya, and Basit Zafar, November 2020