Introduction

The past year has been one of the most tumultuous in modern history for America’s colleges and universities. In spring 2020, while many of the nation’s college students were on spring break, growing alarm over COVID-19 forced most campuses to pivot their operations entirely online. Faculty, many who had little to no experience teaching online, had to rapidly switch teaching modalities. Support staff had to re-envision how to help their students remotely as the demand for services increased. On-campus physical operations staff found themselves furloughed or laid off. Students on residential campuses were told to go home. Many had no real home or safe place to go, and others had to work essential jobs to support their households and had increased caregiving responsibilities. Faculty, staff, and students alike had technology and connectivity issues. The challenge of this sudden pivot cannot be understated, nor can it be divorced from the reality that in the background, a deadly pandemic raged, the economy took a nosedive, and the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor spurred nationwide racial justice protests.

In spring 2020, New America and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) Association partnered on a year-long research project to understand the effect of the confluence of these crises on America’s colleges and universities. We interviewed over 100 college leaders from across higher education sectors, membership organizations, and students to hear, in their own voices, about the difficulties faced by campus communities.

Over the course of this year, we wrote dozens of blog posts highlighting such issues as the increase of housing insecurity for students who were living on campus and the need for better broadband infrastructure and improving the transfer pipeline.¹ We conducted multiple nationally representative surveys of students—one that followed undergraduate experiences over time,² and another that looked at the pandemic’s effect on community college students.³ We tracked the budgetary effects of the crisis for state higher education systems.⁴ We called on Congress to help struggling students and institutions with relief funds by passing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, allowing for spending flexibility of those dollars, and including additional student-centered relief in subsequent stimulus packages.⁵

All of our efforts were focused on helping colleges, universities, and students with the crisis mode they were under and dealing with the disruptions campus communities were facing. Now, there are signs that it is time to shift to a conversation about what recovery could and should look like for higher education. The California State University (CSU) system has been a bellwether when it comes to campus reopenings during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was one of the first to announce in spring 2020 that its campuses would remain remote for the fall, and one of the first to announce that schools would continue to be remote in the spring of 2021. As vaccinations have been approved and distributed across the nation, CSU announced its campuses will reopen for in-person learning in the fall of 2021.⁶ It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the worst aspects of the public health crisis. But the decimation caused by the economic recession, and the inequality gap that COVID-19 has exacerbated, will remain for years to come. We will also have to deal with the trauma of a deeply challenging year.

As we consider the near- and longer-term future of colleges and universities and the students they serve, New America and SHEEO have reflected on what we have learned over the past year. We believe there is an important role for federal and state governments and for institutions to ensure a robust recovery of America’s higher education system, which will be imperative to the growth of the economy. Below, we detail several recommendations for federal, state, and institutional policymakers as we move from crisis to recovery.