COVID-19’s Impact on Current and Future College Students

Coronavirus will have long-lasting impacts on our nation’s higher education system. Colleges and universities were already facing intense scrutiny over the value and quality they deliver to students, even before the pandemic moved learning online. Prospective students are making decision on where – or whether – to attend college based on this new paradigm, making it difficult for institutions to predict what the future holds for their enrollments and their bottom lines. That’s why Third Way partnered with New America to commission Global Strategy Group to survey college students to better understand the educational challenges and enrollment decisions they are making due to the coronavirus pandemic. This series of infographics and memos, published in collaboration with New America spotlights the findings from public opinion research conducted in the fall of 2020. Our initial survey was conducted in August of 2020 of 1,407 college students with oversamples of 223 caregivers, 253 Black students, and 311 Latinx students, as well as 211 high school seniors nationwide. One semester later we conducted our second nationally representative survey in December of 2020 of 1,008 college students with oversamples of 90 caregivers, 165 Black students, and 112 Latinx students, as well as 207 high school seniors nationwide.