COVID upended higher education. Changing to mostly online classes proved difficult for the faculty, but also for students.
In today’s Martin Center article, Tahra Jariri of the Center for Growth and Opportunity writes about the continuing trouble students are experiencing.
She writes about one Hunter College student: “The return home forced students to adjust to more than online classes. ‘It was really difficult to focus on school when I was back home and living with my family again,’ Rosen said. ‘It felt weird to lose all of the freedom that my college campus granted me.’ Rosen isn’t alone in that feeling.
Many students who participated in the JMIR study had similar troubles. ‘A vast majority of participants (173/195, 89%) indicated difficulty in concentrating on academic work due to various sources of distraction,’ such as being interrupted by their family members or being distracted by Netflix or their phone, the study noted.”
Some students complain that they are being assigned more work on the assumption that they have more time, but they don’t see things that way. They also think they ought to have been given a spring break from coursework.
Perhaps colleges haven’t done a good job of accommodating students, but it’s hard not to think that the students under discussion here are awfully fragile and needy. They have gotten used to having people change things for their comfort and enjoyment, rather than adapting themselves to the way the world is.