Is Covid Improving Education?
Getting a college degree is a significant milestone in a person’s educational career, but, unfortunately, not everyone who starts college finishes with a degree. There are many reasons for failing to complete the requirements to obtain a degree, but the educational industry can be partly to blame. Covid is changing the way students approach college, which may result in better decisions by both colleges and students.
One issue with college education is the pressure to pick a degree early in the learning process. Choosing a degree is okay if you like it, but people become pigeonholed into degrees that they have lost all passion for by the time they graduate. Covid is changing how students pick schools and whether or not they attend them. These changes aren’t all bad and may help the education industry adapt to meet students’ needs.
Students Will Change Parameters in College Search
One of the biggest decisions in a person’s life is the school they will attend, and Covid has changed just about all of the parameters graduating high school seniors use to make that decision. College is more than the education in the classroom, and while that is an important aspect of college, it’s also a place where students can be on their own to follow their passions without parental oversights. This is a reality that isn’t possible for students living at home.
Students who are looking for a specific atmosphere have to check a school’s Covid policies. Many campuses aren’t letting students live in dorms or visit campus. This likely isn’t the college experience they were expecting, making them wonder whether to return to their school or seek cheaper options and wait for Covid restrictions to blow over. Students can save money by staying at home and learning gen-ed credits at community colleges that transfer to the school they wish to graduate from.
Now that most classes are online anyway, students are likely to look at schools that offer exclusive online courses. College students aren’t pleased with Zoom classes that are dominating their college careers, wearing students out.
Students Will Pick Different Schools (or No School at All)
The decision wasn’t easy before Covid changed the education landscape, but these new parameters will make picking a school even harder. The idea of attending a “Zoom University” isn’t appealing to students who wanted in-person classes where they could make connections with their peers and professors.
As students change their plans, they might consider other options than going straight to college. Prior to the pandemic, leaving high schools straight for college was almost expected, but Covid changed expectations. A common alternative to attending college is a gap year. Gap years involve getting an experience other than attending classes and partying. Many students join activist groups, volunteer, or gain experience in different industries. Gap years often change the path a student would have picked before they took a break from education.
Another option for students is to attend a coding bootcamp. Coding bootcamps are crash courses in coding that lead to the skills a person could use to gain entry-level employment in the tech industry. Bootcamps cost significantly less and take less time than attending a four-year university.
Removing Testing Standards
A negative trend in the education industry before the pandemic is the focus on testing. Students need to pass college entrance exams, state exams for graduation, and other standardized tests to receive scholarships. This focus on test prep takes away from building knowledge and from problem-solving skills that would benefit the development of young thinkers.
Luckily, students applying to colleges during the pandemic aren’t required to submit ACT or SAT scores to be accepted into universities. Some schools did away with this practice before the pandemic, but more schools came aboard when standardized tests weren’t offered in all parts of the country.
Removing standardized tests will allow students to learn life skills that don’t come with multiple choice answers. Standardized testing does help to identify education trends but shouldn’t be used as a benchmark to compare students to one another.
Online Degrees Will Be Scrutinized Less
The rise in online learning as a result of Covid has removed the stigmas surrounding online learning. Before the pandemic, online learning wasn’t as highly regarded as in-person learning because people didn’t think it was as rigorous. After people were forced to learn and work online, detractors of online education learned that online learning isn’t as easy as they once thought.
Overall, the changes to the education industry will take education to the next level and meet the needs of more students. The changes from Covid will be long lasting and help move education in the right direction.