Understanding the Academic and Social Integration Process of Students Entering Higher Education: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. New Students as a Vulnerable Sub-Population: Insights from the Integration and Emerging Adulthood Literature
1.2. New Students and the COVID-19 Pandemic
2. Methodology
2.1. Sampling Strategy and Participants
2.2. Data Collection and Analyses
3. Results
3.1. Gap between Academic and Social Integration
3.1.1. Integration Gap within Student-to-Student Connections
“My social life before COVID and now is completely different. It’s a completely different way of connecting with people and I really miss that. Also, for example, those group works remain very formal. Normally you get a coffee after a group work. Or if the weather is good, you go to a café together. And then you also have that informal aspect. And now it is just talking about what you have to do and you end the conversation”.(Niki, student from a bridging program, female, 21 years old)
“When I look at a screen, even though I try really hard, sometimes my mind does wander. And when you’re sitting there [on campus], there is more social pressure to be fully present. So, I do have the impression that I participate much more actively than at home”.(Jorik, first-year student, male, age unknown)
3.1.2. Integration Gap within Student-to-Professor Connections
“I think I learn the most from someone telling me something and then taking it in, in physical proximity. And then possibly get into a discussion about it. In lecture theatres for first year courses that is sometimes difficult, because you sit there with a lot of people. But I do think that, this mix of online and offline in a way somewhat limits the motivation. The contact with the professor, to be able to ask questions, via chat is so impersonal. And in real life now it’s with face masks, that’s not very inviting either. But I do miss that. I think it does affect the results a little bit”.(Walter, first-year student, male, age unknown)
“Sometimes you get lost in lectures and the professor just keep talking, talking. And after about 45 minutes: “any questions?” Then by the time it’s like counting five seconds “no, no, no okay, I continue to the next slide”. They’re waiting for you not to ask a question. They don’t even give you the room to talk or anything. That was quite difficult also”.(Martha, international student, female, 31 years old)
3.1.3. Integration Gap within the Broader University Environment/Student Life
“After the exams there were often a few of us standing around talking to four people or so, which was actually allowed, but then it was immediately like, "You have to go home”. I can understand that they want to be very careful and follow the rules, especially because for the rest they put so much effort into trying to do it all so well. But it is a little bit weird to have to leave immediately and not be allowed to talk”.(Jorik, first year student, male, age unknown)
“The exams were organized live and it is one of the first moments where you see wow there are so many of us. And you do feel somewhat united. I liked that, that it wasn’t held online. It gave me a lot of courage in a way”.(Walter, first-year student, male, age unknown)
3.2. Integration as an Increasing Individual Responsibility
3.2.1. Academic Integration as an Individual Responsibility
“I found it very difficult, for example, to go and look for the material myself everywhere. The professors put everything on the university’s online platform and they expect you to find it all and to know when to process it. But if you’ve never had that class before, you don’t know that at all”.(Niki, student in bridging program, female, 21 years old)
3.2.2. Social Integration as an Individual Responsibility
“I had a very active social life, but now I hardly see anyone anymore. So, I’m really falling into a dark space, so to speak. I really only know one fellow student. In the beginning I knew more, but because you see each other so little, those contacts diminish, you can’t maintain that. So yes, really a pity”.(Signe, first-year student, female, 19 years old)
“We are clearly not a priority I suppose. Most of the time it has been code red [i.e., closure of campus and courses are online], but that is so contradictory to what you do in high/middle school or elementary school. There they can eat all together in the refectory, that is only now being discussed, but apparently that has been happening for a year. But we are not allowed to sit with, let’s say, thirty people in a large auditorium with a rotation system. I sometimes find that a bit contradictory”.(Charlotte, student in bridging program, female, 21 years old)
3.3. Clash between COVID-19 Measures and Emerging Adulthood Expectations/Needs
3.3.1. Anticipation of Increasing Social Connection versus Social Isolation/Stability
“I had hoped, if it wasn’t for corona, that I would, for example, often with many people or with some, cook together or go out to dinner or go on picnics. With us at the student housing you have to be very safe. There are also 105 students or so, so you don’t just get to know someone else right away and that’s actually also with those rules of… […]. But I would have liked to meet with more people, invited more people also at student housing”.(Anne, first-year student, female, age unknown)
“That social life between my fellow students was actually completely lacking for me, it wasn’t there. You see people talking to each other and groups of two or three and then I thought, wow, I don’t have this, this really sucks. And then I thought, I have to do something, I’m going to approach some people. It was I think about five people and it didn’t work for all five of them. You do send something, but then you get nothing back. You keep trying and eventually, it’s just dead, it doesn’t work. And then I actually just kind of gave up on that. So now it’s really just exactly the same as before college. And I don’t see that changing”.(John, first-year student, male, 19 years old)
3.3.2. Need for Exploration versus Lingering Monotony
“Sometimes it’s really just too confronting how similar the days are. Whereas, in high school, I was a student council member on the core team, I was president, vice president of the last 100 days, I was on the school council. All days were different, until corona and now it’s just constantly the same and you just don’t feel like you’re alive”.(Naomi, first-year student, female, 18 years old)
“Everything becomes a bit monotonous and after a while you don’t feel like doing it any more. If something changes like you can meet again with ten people and you can go with a bigger group, that’s when things start to happen again. We’re all going to go away or we’re going to visit some museum or doesn’t matter what. Then there is just a bit more of a desire to do all that again. Whereas if it’s such a long time that you can only meet up with very few people, then after a while it sort of fades out”.(Jorik, first-year student, male, age unknown)
“I really did have a hard time. Especially after the exams in January, because you’re all the time rushing to those exams and studying and there was nothing to break that up. There was nothing, not a moment of yes, we survived. […] the break between studying and working hard, that’s just gone. I do go and meet up with my friends outside, take a walk, I go running, but that’s not the same as spending an evening chatting in a bar with your friends, not having to think about anything. For me personally, there is no break in my head”.(Niki, student in bridging program, female student, 21 years old)
“Especially the lack of perspective. Because I myself have been alone at home for a year and I also miss my friends a lot. And I never get to meet up with them either. So I get that people stop following the rules when you never know when you’re able to meet your friends again. But I also understand that there are rules and I also follow them one hundred percent. But I get that people don’t want to follow them anymore”.(Ella, first-year student, female, 18 years old)
3.3.3. Disrupted Freedom/Worry Balance
“There is also a risk within my family, so I don’t want to be the one who brings the virus home, or who makes someone sick in my family […]. But I feel now that it does start to weigh on me. Not so much the aspect of wanting to go out and go to bars, but just the aspect of if I want to meet up, I can meet up”.(Sara, student in bridging program, female, 23 years old)
“I always believed that networking is one of the most important tools we can use nowadays to do a lot of things. It was one of my motivations to study in Belgium to be able to network with people from diverse backgrounds. Because I believe that networking with people from diverse backgrounds is going to pave a way into my career that I’m looking for”.(Dennis, international student, male, 30 years old)
“The time of when you should be very carefree… That’s not now. When I do meet up with someone, you’re immediately concerned, is it actually allowed, or I have to be home by twelve o’clock. And it’s much more like that than purely studying, which I do miss now”.(Estrelle, first-year student, female, 19 years old)
“I do agree with going to a café after class or working in groups and then going to a coffee bar or something. You can certainly make friends there, but I think if the university says, for example, “okay, we’ll organize a walk” or something, I think it’s a bit forced in making friends. That would discourage me from participating”.(Manon, student in bridging program, female, 23 years old)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
5.1. Conclusion
5.2. Strengths and Limitations
5.3. Policy Implications and Recommendations
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
- Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2000. Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist 55: 469. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2015. Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Arnett, Jeffrey J., Rita Žukauskienė, and Kazumi Sugimura. 2014. The new life stage of emerging adulthood at ages 18–29 years: Implications for mental health. The Lancet Psychiatry 1: 569–76. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Auerbach, Randy P., Jordi Alonso, William G. Axinn, Pim Cuijpers, David D. Ebert, Jennifer G. Green, Irving Hwang, R. C. Kessler, H. Liu, P. Mortier, and et al. 2016. Mental disorders among college students in the World Health Organization world mental health surveys. Psychological Medicine 46: 2955–70. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
- Blumer, Herbert. 1954. What is wrong with social theory? American Sociological Review 19: 3–10. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Bronkema, Ryan H., and Nicholas A. Bowman. 2019. Close campus friendships and college student success. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice 21: 270–85. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Buote, Vanessa M., S. Mark Pancer, Michael W. Pratt, Gerald Adams, Shelly Birnie-Lefcovitch, Janet Polivy, and Maxine Gallander Wintre. 2007. The importance of friends: Friendship and adjustment among 1st-year university students. Journal of Adolescent Research 22: 665–89. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Caputo, Jennifer. 2020. Parental coresidence, young adult role, economic, and health changes, and psychological well-being. Society and Mental Health 10: 199–217. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Charmaz, Kathy. 2012. The power and potential of grounded theory. Medical Sociology Online 6: 2–15. [Google Scholar]
- Conley, Colleen S., Jenna B. Shapiro, Brynn M. Huguenel, and Alexandra C. Kirsch. 2020. Navigating the college years: Developmental trajectories and gender differences in psychological functioning, cognitive-affective strategies, and social well-being. Emerging Adulthood 8: 103–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Côté, James E. 2014. The dangerous myth of emerging adulthood: An evidence-based critique of a flawed developmental theory. Applied Developmental Science 18: 177–88. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Daly, Michael, Angelina R. Sutin, and Eric Robinson. 2020. Longitudinal changes in mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Psychological Medicine 52: 1–10. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Elmer, Timon, Kieran Mepham, and Christoph Stadtfeld. 2020. Students under lockdown: Comparisons of students’ social networks and mental health before and during the COVID-19 crisis in Switzerland. PLoS ONE 15: e0236337. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Farris, Samantha G., Mindy M. Kibbey, Erick J. Fedorenko, and Angelo M. DiBello. 2021. A qualitative study of COVID-19 distress in university students. Emerging Adulthood 9: 462–78. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Federal Public Health Services. 2021. Coronavirus COVID-19. Available online: https://www.info-coronavirus.be/en/ (accessed on 8 July 2022).
- Fergy, Sue, Di Marks-Maran, Ann Ooms, Jean Shapcott, and Linda Burke. 2011. Promoting social and academic integration into higher education by first-year student nurses: The APPL project. Journal of Further and Higher Education 35: 107–30. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Frost, David M., and Allen J. LeBlanc. 2014. Nonevent stress contributes to mental health disparities based on sexual orientation: Evidence from a personal projects analysis. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 84: 557. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
- Fry, Richard, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D’Vera Cohn. 2020. A Majority of Young Adults in the US Live with Their Parents for the First Time since the Great Depression. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. [Google Scholar]
- Germani, Alessandro, Livia Buratta, Elisa Delvecchio, Giulia Gizzi, and Claudia Mazzeschi. 2020. Anxiety severity, perceived risk of COVID-19 and individual functioning in emerging adults facing the pandemic. Frontiers in Psycholog 11: 567505. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Hartley, Michael T. 2010. Increasing resilience: Strategies for reducing dropout rates for college students with psychiatric disabilities. American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation 13: 295–315. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Hekmat, Aida, Reza Divanbeigi, and Seyede Almas Fahim Yegane. 2021. Effects of COVID-19 on Student’s mental health: A systematic review. Pakistan Journal of Medical and Health Sciences 15: 1543–50. [Google Scholar]
- Hoyt, Lindsay Till, Alison K. Cohen, Brandon Dull, Elena Maker Castro, and Neshat Yazdani. 2021. Constant stress has become the new normal”: Stress and anxiety inequalities among US college students in the time of COVID-19. Journal of Adolescent Health 68: 270–76. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Kawachi, Ichiro, and Lisa F. Berkman. 2001. Social ties and mental health. Journal of Urban Health 78: 458–67. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
- Kessler, Ronald C., Cindy L. Foster, William B. Saunders, and Paul E. Stang. 1995. Social consequences of psychiatric disorders, I: Educational attainment. American Journal of Psychiatry 152: 1026–32. [Google Scholar]
- Lesener, Tino, Leonard Santiago Pleiss, Burkhard Gusy, and Christine Wolter. 2020. The study demands-resources framework: An empirical introduction. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17: 5183. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Museus, Samuel D. 2014. The culturally engaging campus environments (CECE) model: A new theory of success among racially diverse college student populations. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research 29: 189–227. [Google Scholar]
- O’Keeffe, Patrick. 2013. A sense of belonging: Improving student retention. College Student Journal 47: 605–13. [Google Scholar]
- OECD. 2017. PISA 2015 Results (Volume III): Students’ Well-Being. Paris: OECD Publishing. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Preetz, Richard, Andreas Filser, Ana Brömmelhaus, Tim Baalmann, and Michael Feldhaus. 2021. Longitudinal Changes in Life Satisfaction and Mental Health in Emerging Adulthood During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Risk and Protective Factors. Emerging Adulthood 9: 602–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Resch, Katharina, Ghaleb Alnahdi, and Susanne Schwab. 2022. Exploring the effects of the COVID-19 emergency remote education on students’ social and academic integration in higher education in Austria. Higher Education Research and Development, 1–15. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Schwartz, Seth J. 2016. Turning point for a turning point: Advancing emerging adulthood theory and research. Emerging Adulthood 4: 307–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
- Sharp, Jessica, and Stephen Theiler. 2018. A review of psychological distress among university students: Pervasiveness, implications and potential points of intervention. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling 40: 193–212. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Son, Changwon, Sudeep Hegde, Alec Smith, Xiaomei Wang, and Farzan Sasangohar. 2020. Effects of COVID-19 on college students’ mental health in the United States: Interview survey study. Journal of Medical Internet Research 22: e21279. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Swail, Watson S. 2004. The Art of Student Retention: A Handbook for Practitioners and Administrators. Austin: Educational Policy Institute. [Google Scholar]
- Tholen, Robert, Edwin Wouters, Koen Ponnet, Sara de Bruyn, and Guido Van Hal. 2022. Academic Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Among Flemish First-Year Students: The Mediating Role of Sense of Belonging. Journal of College Student Development 63: 200–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Timmermans, Stefan, and Iddo Tavory. 2012. Theory construction in qualitative research: From grounded theory to abductive analysis. Sociological Theory 30: 167–86. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Tinto, Vincent. 1975. Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research. Review of Educational Research 45: 89–125. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Van de Velde, Sarah, Veerle Buffel, Piet Bracke, Guido Van Hal, Nikolett M. Somogyi, Barbara Willems, Edwin Wouters, and C19 ISWS consortium#. 2021a. The COVID-19 international student well-being study. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 49: 114–22. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Van de Velde, Sarah, Veerle Buffel, Claudia van der Heijde, Sami Çoksan, Piet Bracke, Thomas Abel, Heide Busse, Hajo Zeeb, Fatemeh Rabiee-khan, Theoni Stathopoulou, and et al. 2021b. Depressive symptoms in higher education students during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. An examination of the association with various social risk factors across multiple high-and middle-income countries. SSM-Population Health 16: 100936. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- van der Zanden, Petrie JAC, Eddie Denessen, Antonius HN Cillessen, and Paulien C. Meijer. 2018. Domains and predictors of first-year student success: A systematic review. Educational Research Review 23: 57–77. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Van Eekert, Nina, and Kilian Van Looy. 2021. Never Waste a Good Crisis: naar een blijvend verbeterd mentaal welbevinden bij studenten: een analyse van het mentaal welbevinden bij studenten aan UAntwerpen gedurende de coronapandemie. Available online: https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/6794/7399b073-0dd0-46c9-833d-7fc41ab87722.pdf (accessed on 8 November 2021).
- Veldhuis, Cindy B., Elizabeth D. Nesoff, Anna Laura W. McKowen, Dylan R. Rice, Hana Ghoneima, Angie R. Wootton, Elizabeth Lerner Papautsky, Danielle Arigo, Shoshona Goldberg, and Jocelyn C. Anderson. 2021. Addressing the critical need for long-term mental health data during the COVID-19 pandemic: Changes in mental health from April to September 2020. Preventive Medicine 146: 106465. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Wei, Changwu, Yan Ma, Jian-Hong Ye, and Liying Nong. 2022. First-Year College Students’ Mental Health in the Post-COVID-19 Era in Guangxi, China: A Study Demands-Resources Model Perspective. Frontiers in Public Health 10: 1–10. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Wilcox, Paula, Sandra Winn, and Marylynn Fyvie-Gauld. 2005. ‘It was nothing to do with the university, it was just the people’: The role of social support in the first-year experience of higher education. Studies in Higher Education 30: 707–22. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
- Willems, Jonas, Liesje Coertjens, and Vincent Donche. 2021. Entering higher professional education: Unveiling first-year students’ key academic experiences and their occurrence over time. Frontiers in Psychology 296: 1–15. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Wood, David, Tara Crapnell, Lynette Lau, Ashley Bennett, Debra Lotstein, Maria Ferris, and Alice Kuo. 2018. Emerging adulthood as a critical stage in the life course. Handbook of Life Course Health Development, 123–43. [Google Scholar]
- Wyatt, Tammy Jordan, Sara B. Oswalt, and Yesenia Ochoa. 2017. Mental Health and Academic Performance of First-Year College Students. International Journal of Higher Education 6: 178–87. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
De Bruyn, S.; Van Eekert, N. Understanding the Academic and Social Integration Process of Students Entering Higher Education: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 67. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020067
De Bruyn S, Van Eekert N. Understanding the Academic and Social Integration Process of Students Entering Higher Education: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Social Sciences. 2023; 12(2):67. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020067
Chicago/Turabian StyleDe Bruyn, Sara, and Nina Van Eekert. 2023. "Understanding the Academic and Social Integration Process of Students Entering Higher Education: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic" Social Sciences 12, no. 2: 67. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020067