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Beyond The Degree
Who We Left Behind
If we want a better answer to “Is college worth it?” — we need to start asking better questions — about access, equity, and what recovery really means.
COVID didn’t hit everyone the same. Like many educators, I remember the spring of 2020 in flashes. One day, I was prepping slides. The next, I was teaching my Systems Analysis class over Zoom while also managing my kids’ online courses from the next room. It was surreal. It was exhausting. But somehow, we adjusted. We coined the phrase “The New Normal.”
What I couldn’t adjust to was the silence.
It wasn’t just the quiet halls or the flickering Zoom feeds. It was the students who vanished.
Some disappeared without a word. Others tried to keep up by using borrowed phones in crowded houses, relying on fast-food parking lot Wi-Fi. One emailed me at 2 a.m. to say she had dropped out — not because of her grades, but because she’d picked up a third shift after her mom lost her job. Rent came first. School could wait.
After two decades of teaching undergrads, I’ve seen students struggle. But this wasn’t about late assignments or lack of motivation. This was about survival.
