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"Campus May" by IMCBerea College is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Education Dive
Rural colleges take steps to weather coronavirus, but will it be enough?
Observers say some institutions in remote areas could be hit hard by
the transition to online instruction and the economic fallout from the
crisis.
Natalie Schwartz
March 24, 2020
A few weeks after the coronavirus was detected on American soil, one
small liberal arts college in rural Appalachia made the call to cancel
in-person instruction and ask students to leave campus.
But rather than continue classes online, as many other colleges were
doing, officials at Berea College, in Kentucky, said they would find
other ways for students to wind down the semester. In the announcement,
Berea President Lyle Roelofs said the decision was in part to
acknowledge that students wouldn't all have internet access when they
returned home.
One Berea instructor took to Twitter to push back on criticism that the
college should have transitioned to online instruction. "Those people
don't seem to understand that not everyone has the same amenities as
them," wrote Silas House, assistant professor of Appalachian studies.
"A lot of students don't have WiFi access."
Although most institutions enroll some students who have limited or no
access to technology and the internet away from campus, rural colleges
may grapple with the issue more often due to their remote locations.
It's just one of the ongoing challenges these schools face.
Though not homogenous, many rural colleges are known for having
tight-knit communities and hands-on programs — two factors that can
make it hard or even impossible to transition online. For some schools,
this process is complicated further by tight budgets or high shares of
low-income students, said Beth Rushing, president of the Appalachian
College Association, in an interview with Education Dive.
"They are not rich schools," she said of her association's 35 member
colleges, many of which are in rural regions. "And they're serving
students who aren't rich."
Trouble with the shift online
The U.S. had more than 50,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease
the virus causes, as of Tuesday afternoon, according to data tracked by
Johns Hopkins University. As it spreads, more colleges are expected to
shut down their campuses and finish out the academic year remotely.
For the dozens of liberal arts institutions scattered across the
Appalachian region, Rushing said, some students' lack of access to
high-speed internet and computers is a barrier to moving classes
online.
This issue is widespread in higher education. For example, a survey of
nearly 750 U.S. college students found about one-fifth had difficulty
consistently accessing technology because of issues such as broken
hardware, data limits and connectivity problems.
In another survey, only about 80% of the 10,000 community college
students polled said they had reliable access to the internet or a
computer.
Those issues can be exacerbated at rural institutions, especially as
studies show that students tend to attend college close to home.
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