Abstract
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a swift and dramatic shift in how higher education teaching, learning, and other operations occurred. In the months that followed, higher education stakeholders endured major transitions and unexpected challenges. Higher education leaders, policymakers, students, faculty, and staff were influenced by the pandemic in a variety of ways. There is much to be learned from the experiences of higher education stakeholders during the early months of the pandemic. This article introduces the two-part special issue on Higher Education Stakeholders’ Early Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis, situating the research presented in the special issue within the broader context of high-stakes decision-making during a period of global uncertainty, stress, and conflict. The first part of the special issue presents research on the responses of institutional leaders and policymakers to the COVID-19 crisis. The second part of the special issue examines student and “classroom” experiences during the early months of the pandemic. Studies such as these on the responses of higher education stakeholders to the COVID-19 crisis enhance important understanding about how institutional leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders made sense of and took steps to address the challenges presented by the pandemic.
Education functions as an important precursor to social stability and poverty reduction. Thus, when a crisis occurs, these institutions are often on the front lines, offering stability, safety, and continuity to students, staff, and communities. Yet, educational stakeholders worldwide must also manage institutional closures, loss of student learning and staff livelihood, and in some extreme cases, the destruction and theft of educational resources that follow from crises (Johnson, 2017). As a result, policy guidance, toolkits, and strategies for managing crises proliferate; yet, despite this not inconsiderable knowledge base, education remains susceptible to the vagaries of crisis. Often not prepared to respond to or effectively implement emergency strategies, higher education institutions can be particularly vulnerable (Babbar & Gupta, 2021). These institutions are also notoriously resistant to change (Sabzalieva, 2022), adjacent to policymakers motivated by partisan beliefs (Johnson et al., 2021), and often entrench and intensify social inequities (Blankenberger & Williams, 2020). Conversely, crises also represent opportunities for transformation, as institutions innovate to create new learning modalities for students, provide for the care and well-being of stakeholders, and enact change that addresses the underlying causes of the crisis.
In the late winter and early spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a swift and dramatic shift in how higher education teaching, learning, and other operations occurred. First discovered in China in December 2019, the novel coronavirus spread around the world at an alarming pace (Marinoni et al., 2020). Governments, businesses, higher education institutions, and other organizations were forced to act quickly to address the public health crisis by issuing social distancing policies and allowances for remote work. Universities located in Asia (where the virus originated) and Europe (where it spread early on) transitioned to fully online classes in February 2020 (e.g., Dill et al., 2020; Politecnico di Milano School of Management, 2020). Other colleges and universities around the globe quickly followed suit. In the United States, the University of Washington and Stanford University—institutions on the West Coast where the virus had arrived early—announced a temporary transition to online instruction on Friday, March 6 (Dill et al., 2020). By early the following week, numerous other higher education institutions across the country moved all instructional programs online (Basken, 2020; Svrluga & Anderson, 2020). On March 10, institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that campus residence halls would close for most students and that on-campus events would be curtailed or canceled (Bacow, 2020; MIT News Office, 2020; Ruckstuhl & Jarmanning, 2020). All of this occurred before the World Health Organization officially identified COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11 (Marinoni et al., 2020).
Following that declaration, even more colleges transitioned to remote instruction, canceled campus-based events, closed residence halls, and took other precautions to address the public health crisis (Natow, 2021). In the months that followed, higher education stakeholders endured major transitions and unexpected challenges. These included increased institutional expenses from instituting public health and campus sanitation measures, purchasing and using technology for the online transition, and incurring legal fees to defend and sometimes settle tuition-refund lawsuits (Moody, 2022; Whitford, 2021). Many colleges also faced decreased revenues from refunding students’ room-and-board payments, canceling revenue-generating campus events and summer activities, and on many campuses, losing much-needed tuition revenue (Adame, 2020; Friga, 2021; Whitford, 2020). Employees at numerous institutions were furloughed or dismissed from their jobs, while others found their responsibilities dramatically increased or changed (Bauman, 2020; Natow, 2021; Schmidt-Crawford et al., 2021). Students also faced significant challenges in having to transition to online courses and adapt to new public health requirements. When forced to move out of their residence halls, some students had no other place to call home (Kamentz, 2020). When formerly in-person classes were moved online, some students had difficulty accessing the technology necessary to complete their courses (Jaggars et al., 2021), while others lost access to research sites and faculty mentorship critical to the completion of their advanced degrees (Johnson & Kerrigan, 2022).
As they navigated the onset of the radical shifts in operations necessitated by COVID, higher education leaders were faced with determining how to fulfill their educational missions while maintaining the health and safety of themselves and others. Many higher education stakeholders were simultaneously dealing with economic and health consequences of the pandemic. For some, this meant caring for ill loved ones or recovering from illness themselves. For others, this meant losing a job, reduced compensation, or having to “do more with less” due to resource constraints. Higher education students, faculty, and staff with school-aged children had to complete their own schooling or work responsibilities while managing the education of their own children from home. Communities of color suffered disproportionately from the pandemic, and the economic hardships that resulted also impacted underserved communities greatly (Harper, 2020). As the Fall 2020 semester approached, institutional leaders were faced with having to decide, in a highly uncertain environment, how to proceed with instruction and other campus activities for the next academic year. In short, COVID-19 presented an enormous and largely unprecedented crisis for higher education—a crisis that was still ongoing when higher education leaders were tasked with making important decisions about the Fall 2020 semester and beyond.
There is much to be learned from the experiences of higher education stakeholders during the early months of the COVID-19 crisis. For example, how were higher education students affected by the consequences of the pandemic? How was the work of faculty and staff disrupted, and how did they respond to those disruptions? What influenced college leaders’ decision-making during this crucial time? How did policymakers and other government officials respond to higher education’s needs during the pandemic? What were the public and institutional policy changes that occurred? And how were those actions received by higher education students and staff? Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity present social challenges that stakeholders must anticipate and for which leaders must strategize. As just one instance of crisis, COVID-19 put into relief the necessity of developing university policies and procedures that both respond to sudden, disruptive changes in the environment and provide for stakeholder well-being.
When faced with the likelihood of increased incidences of crises such as environmental disasters and social instability, higher education institutions can offer stability to students, faculty, and staff. Stakeholders should seek to identify those actions, activities, or resources in higher education institutions that support or challenge stability. But as Roche (1996) has explained, stability does not mean remaining in place: A developmental approach to recovery is about using this period to bring about change, or consolidate gains made during the crisis. It is not about returning to the “normality” or status quo which led to the crisis in the first place. (p. 20)
Rhetoric around crisis has often branded the changes made as the “new normal”; however, this narrative may serve to disrupt critique and obfuscate inequities. As Wysong and Perrucci (2017) have written, “When today’s highly unequal status quo is uncritically labeled as the new normal. . .it conveys the message that the many inequalities embedded in it are routine, natural, and inevitable” (p. 11). For example, while online education has been framed as “the new normal,” evidence suggests that it has exacerbated pre-existing class, geographic, and digital inequalities (Katz et al., 2021). Much of the response to COVID-19 has depended on stratified access to resources and the ability to employ those same resources effectively.
Resources equate to power in times of crisis, so it is particularly important that higher education faculty, staff, and administrators evaluate their positions and reflect upon the dynamics they create and reinforce in and beyond the classroom, as well as through policy creation and application. Higher education leaders should also advocate on behalf of their students, employees, and communities for public policies that will provide the resources and training necessary to address the next crisis, as higher education’s experience with COVID-19 demonstrated how important policy advocacy can be (Natow, 2021).
Purpose of the Special Issue
The purpose of this special issue is to present analyses of higher education stakeholders’ early responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and how stakeholders adapted their practices to adjust to the challenges posed by the public health crisis. Articles in this issue examine how higher education students, faculty, leaders, and policymakers were affected by and responded to the emergence of COVID-19 and the educational disruptions caused by the virus. Taken together, studies presented in this volume demonstrate how responses to the pandemic differed by stakeholder, institutional type, and geographic location.
This special issue is presented in two parts. The first part contains research on the responses of institutional leaders and policymakers to the COVID-19 crisis. The second part of this special issue examines student and “classroom” experiences during the early months of the pandemic. In Part 1, Institutional and Policy Responses, the articles present research pertaining to stakeholders within and beyond campuses, including those in student affairs, campus leadership, state-level decision-makers, and political leaders. Cho and Brassfield, Bettencourt et al., and Gansemer-Topf considered staff stakeholders in student affairs roles. Natow, Rubin et al., Snideman et al., and Castro Samayoa et al. investigated decision-makers and their decisions at the campus and state levels. Topics ranged from campus wellness and worker norms to decision-making and messaging. The challenges of reopening amid the ongoing pandemic were investigated by researchers in Part 1, along with the challenges intertwined with the societal racially based crisis. Experiences (Cho and Brassfield; Bettencourt et al.), crisis communication (Natow; Castro Samayoa et al.), and decision-making processes (Gansemer-Topf; Rubin et al.; Snideman et al.) were all aspects of the pandemic experience on which authors focused.
In Part 2 of the double special issue, Student and “Classroom” Experiences, the research articles explored the experiences of a variety of student and faculty stakeholders. Brown et al. as well as Calderone and Fosnacht considered undergraduate stakeholders in general, while Grim et al., Lalwani et al., and Hachey et al. considered specific undergraduate student subpopulations. Schell expanded the view, exploring faculty responses. Researchers in Part 2 shed light on the experiences of undergraduate students, including various student groups such as first-generation students, international students, and community college students during the pandemic. Challenges presented to faculty by the transition to remote teaching were also explored, particularly for those who taught courses that had a substantial hands-on component (Schell). Topics investigated in these studies included connections in a time of social distancing (Brown et al.) and accessing campus services (Lalwani et al.), along with general campus life from both academic and social perspectives (Grim et al.). Health issues were considered generally (Hachey et al.), along with alienation (Lalwani et al.), responsibility (Brown et al.), and trust attitudes (Calderone and Fosnacht). Adaptability demands were felt by both students (Grim et al.) and faculty (Schell).
Research like these studies on the responses of higher education stakeholders to the COVID-19 crisis enhances important understanding about how institutional leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders made sense of and took steps to address the challenges presented by the pandemic. This special issue contributes to the emerging social science literature on the influence of COVID-19 on society and the scholarship of pandemic-era-adjusted educational practice. These studies also provide valuable insights to help higher education leaders and policymakers prepare for possible future crises, as lessons learned during the global pandemic are likely to be valuable in other high-pressure and high-stakes decision-making situations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
