Giving Compass' Take:

• Ted Mitchell explains how first-gen and minority college students experience disproportionate disruptions to their learning during COVID-19.

• How does this threaten to reverse the recent upward trend in enrollment for first-gen and minority college students? How does it reflect and reinforce systemic racism in higher education? What will it take to upend racist structures during COVID?

• Learn about how colleges can support first-gen students. 

The biggest danger that higher education faces as a sector is the loss of gains that we have made over the past 20 years in access to a college education — with all of the accompanying benefits to individuals and our entire society — for first-generation and minority students.

Last year, my organization released a report showing that while communities of color have made tremendous educational headway over the last several decades, substantial and pervasive inequities remain. Now is not the time to lose focus.

If you look at data from the National Center for Education Statistics, you can see steady gains made between 2000 and 2018. For instance, the percentage of Black people between the ages of 18 and 24 who enrolled in college increased to 37 percent from 31 percent, and to 36 percent from 22 percent for Latino people in that same age group.

The pandemic threatens to undo all of these even modest gains, and certainly imperils progress among students of color and low-income students.

A Strada Public Viewpoint survey released in June found that Black and Latino students are more likely than white students to have changed or canceled their education plans because of the pandemic. Half of Latino students and 42 percent of Black students reported having changed or canceled their plans, compared to 26 percent of white students.

A National Bureau of Economic Research study by researchers from Arizona State University found that first-generation college students are 50 percent more likely to have delayed graduation due to Covid-19 than students who have college-educated parents.

The impact could be devastating both for individuals and for our society as a whole. Higher education is America’s most effective engine of economic and social mobility, and it plays a historically important role in creating a thriving democracy.

Read the full article about how COVID-19 impacts first-gen and minority college students by Ted Mitchell at The Hechinger Report.