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Vulnerability of Students in Times of the Corona Pandemic: Is Social Inequality in Higher Education Increasing?

Applicant Dr. Markus Lörz
Subject Area Empirical Social Research
Education Systems and Educational Institutions
Term from 2021 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 470278283
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

The social and economic situation of students has changed significantly because of the COVID-19 pandemic: Opportunities for interaction with fellow students and lecturers, as well as family support, were at times severely restricted. As a result, the financial situation of students and their parents deteriorated, sometimes drastically. In addition, during the first semesters of the COVID-19 pandemic, university teaching had to take place online, which meant that students had to cope with changed teaching, learning, and examination situations. For many students, these changes were accompanied by an increased sense of stress. In view of these changes in the study situation, the question arose as to how these changed conditions have affected social inequalities in higher education. The present DFG project took up this question and investigated the extent to which social inequalities have changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of study duration, intention to drop out, and mental health. In addition to inequalities by social origin, gender, and migration background, the analyses also consider potential responsibility for children and the health status of students. The analyses are based on a combination of different student surveys from the years 2016, 2020 and 2021. In addition, survey data from the years 2019 to 2023 on the scientific careers of graduates were analysed. The results of the project show that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, social inequalities in the intention to drop out of university increased significantly for different groups of students. In particular, students with children and students with disabilities faced a more difficult study situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the reasons for this varied according to the student characteristics considered: While differences according to social origin resulted from changed financial conditions, differences according to migration background show two opposing processes: International students more often intended to drop out of their studies during the COVID-19 pandemic due to limited financial possibilities, while domestic students were more likely to intend to drop out due to limited interaction possibilities. The greatest differences in the intention to drop out existed between students with and without disabilities. In particular, students with mental health problems were at an increased risk of dropping out during the COVID- 19 pandemic (Rußmann et al., 2023a). Further analyses show that there are different reasons for this phenomenon, which can only be partially explained with the available data. Examining the interplay of different student characteristics, an intersectional perspective reveals the full extent of the dropout risk for students with multiple risk characteristics: Students with children and disabilities were the most likely to intend to drop out at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding mental health, the results show that female students, in particular, have a higher risk of burnout. This can be explained mainly by the lower resilience of female students. There are also gender differences in mental health among doctoral students in favour of men. However, after a temporary improvement in 2020, mental health has deteriorated for both sexes over the course of the pandemic. The group of doctoral students with children reports the greatest decline in mental health. Overall, the various analyses show that social inequalities in the intention to drop out have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the causes vary depending on the inequality characteristic considered. To prevent an increase in social inequalities in times of crisis, support measures are needed that are tailored to the needs of different student groups. Financial support, for example, only addresses some of the social inequalities. It does not address the difficult teaching and support situation of some students. Regarding the question of how future (digital) study formats should be designed to prevent an increase in social inequalities in higher education, the project publications point to various practical approaches.

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