In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, grinding life to a halt and severely disrupting instruction across higher education. Colleges are still feeling the effects of the virus five years later.
We asked higher education experts to look back at the changes made and how the pandemic continues to shape the sector today.
Their written responses are below, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Chief content officer at Coursera
Marni Baker Stein
Permission granted by Caroline Bresler
The pandemic made online learning mainstream in ways that were unimaginable in 2019. A global generation of learners who would likely have not experienced the online classroom now understand its potential, pitfalls, and power. While online learning’s ubiquity didn’t last, its impact on student preferences and university strategy remains. For learners, Coursera research shows that a clear majority of students now want their universities to deliver short-form, job-relevant, for-credit content, delivered digitally. Universities have had to respond to remain attractive, with an increase in micro-credential adoption, and further plans to accelerate uptake among university leaders. Without the economic pressures created by the pandemic, and the exposure to online learning it accelerated, both demand and uptake would have been slower and less pronounced than we see today.
CEO at National Association for College Admission Counseling
Angel Pérez
Permission granted by Melanie Marquez Parra
We can’t talk about the impact of the pandemic in isolation — multiple converging factors have created a perfect storm for higher education. During the pandemic, we lost over a million students from the college pipeline — a loss the sector has yet to recover from. That blow, compounded by the ongoing FAFSA crisis, demographic shifts, and rising anti-higher education rhetoric, continues to destabilize institutions. Adding to the strain, executive orders and Dear Colleague letters coming out of Washington, D.C., are making it harder for colleges to move forward. Higher education is not just recovering — it’s fighting to remain relevant, accessible, and resilient.
Vice president for policy analysis and research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education
Patrick Lane
Permission granted by Patrick Lane
Five years after the pandemic started, data shows that there wasn’t a major impact on high school graduate numbers, though there may be about 1% fewer graduates in the future than previously projected. Whether these students choose to enroll in higher education at the same rates as they did in the past is a different question as the pandemic itself seems to have made some students less likely to pursue higher education. The bigger impact may come from learning loss and chronic absenteeism in K-12. Students who were in early grades when COVID started are facing uphill battles and probably will not be able to make up that ground by the time they finish high school. Postsecondary education (along with employers) will have to grapple with this challenge — on top of overall changing demographics – for years to come. But there are options, including doubling down on developmental ed redesign, enhanced advising, and simplifying postsecondary pathways (among others).
Executive director of Commonfund Institute
George Suttles
Permission granted by Chandler Stearns
The pandemic forced colleges and universities to rapidly adopt online platforms for teaching and learning. The shift to remote learning has led to the widespread use of fully remote and hybrid models, combining in-person and online education. Relatedly, the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities amongst student populations across the country. For example, students from low-income backgrounds faced greater challenges due to housing insecurity, lack of internet access, and limited access to technology. As we continue to learn lessons from the pandemic, it will be important to further leverage technology to enhance teaching and learning, while at the same time taking care of students across the socio-economic spectrum, recognizing that the student experience is just a part of their entire lived experience.
Head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Robert Kelchen
Permission granted by Robert Kelchen
A key lesson that higher education leaders remember from the early days of the pandemic is that cash is king. Colleges that had financial flexibility were able to avoid layoffs and budget cuts, while institutions that were unable to access funds had to make painful cuts that permanently scarred their communities. The financial state of American higher education is more uncertain right now than even in the darkest days of March 2020, and colleges are starting to implement cost-cutting measures in order to avoid having to make even more difficult decisions down the road.
Executive director of WCET
Van Davis
Permission granted by Melanie Sidwell
Even before the pivot to emergency remote instruction, the number of students enrolled in at least one distance education course was steadily rising. If you look at IPEDS data, that number has only accelerated since the pandemic. Many students, and some faculty, discovered that they liked the flexibility and opportunities that asynchronous distance education affords and have continued to enroll in that course modality. Institutions that offered very little distance education now find themselves responding to student demand and increasing their offerings. For many institutions, distance education is now a strategic part of their course offerings.
