Lemonade from Lemons: Improving College Preparedness After the Pandemic

The pandemic has created short and long-term challenges for low-income first generation college-bound students. These challenges, however can be a springboard for opportunity. We have the ability to improve college preparedness if high schools, colleges and universities are willing to disrupt business as usual and work together. A crisis creates opportunities.

The challenges are distinct from the challenge middle- and upper-class students face. Many students who attend private high schools, for example, have been able to have abbreviated forms of in-class courses which has enabled them a richer experience than being quarantined at home.

Virtually all middle-income and upper-income students have access to the internet from home. Students also have typical forms of support with regard to applying to college such as tutoring, additional help with filling out forms and writing essays, and a peer and familial network.

To be sure, we all have suffered due to the pandemic. SATs have been cancelled in some states. After-school college prep classes have been cancelled or moved online. Visits to college campuses have gone virtual. Drive-through or virtual events have replaced the exciting rituals of senior year.

For low-income first generation college-bound students, however, the pandemic has created significant burdens. In many cities, the schools are online and most students have not set foot on campus since last March. Teachers lack the infrastructure and support services to develop online learning activities equivalent to private schools. More importantly, many students do not have connectivity in their homes. Others lack a quiet space to spend the day online. College preparation programs that dot the landscapes of low-income schools either have been cancelled or are online.

The result is that low-income first generation college-bound students are less likely to be prepared for college in the fall than their previous counterparts. Certainly no one is arguing that today’s students will be better prepared for college in the fall than anyone in the past.

To compound the problem, all educational organizations have experienced significant revenue shortfalls. The vast majority of public colleges and universities, dependent on state support, will surely receive a decrease in their base funding. That means auxiliary services such as pre-college summer offerings, learning centers, and tutoring support will most likely see a reduction in services for fall 2021. Class size will increase and instructional support will decrease. The very sorts of learning activities that help at-risk first semester students will be in higher demand but less available.

Historically, the relationship between high schools and college has been, at best, fractured and fragmentary. Students pass a state-wide high school completion exam, but then appear unready for freshmen-level writing and math courses. Instructors in advanced placement classes believe their students are doing college-level work, but freshmen instructors do not. The result is that the bridge from senior year in high school to freshmen year in college all too often collapses and students fail.

We know that students will be less prepared in the fall because of the pandemic. We know that traditional support services will be less available. How best to proceed?

Transitional efforts between high schools and colleges are fraught with challenges. High school and college faculties do not work with one another on a sustained basis. The potpourri of summer offerings is largely a scattershot amalgam of what’s easy rather than what works. A weekend sleepover at an institution does not constitute college preparation. We know that most students are placed on academic probation not because of academic failures, but because of nonacademic issues. These students lack what many call ‘college knowledge.’

And through years of experience, the instructors of senior year recognize that efforts to motivate students late into the spring semester are largely lost on students who are mentally out-the-door.

But the more we focus on the timeframe between the months before high school graduation and the start of college, the more likely we are to ensure that individuals will make it through college. Such an observation is always true, but particularly compelling for our current students. What we need is a synthetic relationship between senior year in high school and freshmen year in college. Specifically, for this coming year, let’s not create a break from high school to college. The vast majority of low-income first generation students attend a set number of high schools and attend local or regional public universities. Those schools and universities could begin working immediately on activities to keep students engaged from the start of spring semester until the first day of college. Such activities need to be an amalgam of basic instruction in writing and math, and also information about college knowledge — financial aid, time management, and the like.

To avoid summer melt from college — students drifting away over the summer — and to enhance preparedness, we need to ensure that our instructors in the traditional educational silos of high schools and colleges work with one another.

Funding creative strategies is always an issue. The larger problems, however, are the traditional barriers we have created between “12th” and “13th” grade. These barriers have more to do with organizational culture than funding. Foundations and the federal government have the ability to fund activities. The challenge is that the organizations, unions, school districts, and college systems have to break down the traditional barriers that have restricted working together.

A crisis disrupts the norm. We have seen the ways the pandemic has forced us to respond in individual and systemic ways that is an abrupt departure from business as usual. We also can use the crisis to create enhanced forms of collaboration that we have traditionally eschewed.

William G. Tierney is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California and author of Get Real: 49 Challenges Confronting Higher Education (SUNY).