Keywords

Introduction

The COVID-19 global pandemic has substantially and forever changed our world and the higher education landscape. Processes, systems, practices, and norms have been sharply disrupted and changed in irrevocable ways. Universities and higher education institutions across world regions responded promptly and in different ways, but were equally unprepared to deal with the impact of the pandemic (Crawford et al., 2020; DAAD, 2020; Marinoni et al., 2020; Tesar, 2020).

Related to and embedded within higher education institutions (HEIs), Student Affairs and Services (SAS) is uniquely appointed, positioned, and capacitated to provide services and support for students’ academic and personal-social development (Ludeman & Schreiber, 2020). Across the globe, SAS has different roles, functions, and structures; however, the overarching purpose of SAS is to advance student and institutional success (Humphrey, 2020; Ludeman & Schreiber, 2020; Osfield et al., 2016).

In the early days of the pandemic, four Student Affairs scholar-practitioners from different parts of the world sought to understand how SAS was responding to the impact of COVID-19 on student and institutional needs. To this end, we developed an online survey and gathered data from 781 participants via referral sampling from across all world regions. The online questionnaire consisted of both qualitative and quantitative questions.

Overall, the data in our study showed SAS’ critical role in mediating various challenges within and beyond the higher education institution that impact student success. There emerged four domains that impact student success in the context of the pandemic. They include (1) the student’s personal situation; (2) the sociocultural context and familial milieu into which the student is embedded; (3) the institutional and academic domain; and (4) the public-macro domain, which includes larger structural and political-economic issues.

Based on the findings, we developed a heuristic model that aids in understanding SAS’ engagement with students’ ability to learn and develop in higher education. The data show that these domains have varying significance in different world regions and in different national systems of higher education, depending on political, economic, and sociocultural contexts. Additionally, while SAS and HEIs do a great deal to support students in their learning, factors in the public domain and factors in the sociocultural milieu are mitigated by SAS to be conducive to learning and student success.

This study demonstrates that COVID-19 has changed not only the scope of SAS but also its role in advocating for living and learning contexts that are more conducive to student success. This is an expanding role and function of SAS and appears to emerge as a critical factor for SAS to become more impactful in supporting students and institutions. The chapter concludes with recommendations to further develop this heuristic model to contribute to the development of a global SAS profession that plays a significant role in advancing equitable conditions to support success for all students.

Related Literature

The collective knowledge, scholarship, and practices of global SAS are substantive and continue to grow as evidenced by the massive tome by Ludeman and Schreiber et al. (2020), and Liddell’s (2019) and Smith’s (2019) tracing of substantive scholarship, and the various global events that shape the “low consensus field of SAS” (Torres et al., 2019, p. 645).

Ecological Models of Student Affairs and Services

The domains that influence and shape a student’s overall higher education experience include a wider ecological sphere which contains factors that impact, advance, or impair student success. Tinto’s (1987) integration model foregrounds HEI factors that impact student success. Terenzini and Reason (2005) expand this to include pre-college factors such as socio-demographic, academic preparation, and personal dispositions of students. Weidman (1984, 1989) extends the lens further to include societal factors that impact student success. Broader concepts such as public policy and sociocultural factors play a critical role in students’ ability to persist and be successful, as documented in a range of studies (Fish & Syed, 2018).

No longer is the student conceptualized as a decontextualized learner but is embedded in a wider sociocultural context (McKenna & Boughey, 2020). Hence, models of SAS are also beginning to offer more contextualized, comprehensive, and systemic services and functions.

The understanding of student success as dependent on factors in and beyond the immediate context of students has been discussed by Tinto (1987, 2014), Astin (1984), Pascarella and Terenzini (1991), Weidman (1984, 1989), Kuh et al. (2005), and others. These models also inform student engagement theories of Kuh et al. (2005, 2010), which are expanded by others, including Altbach et al. (2010), Case (2007), Luescher (2017, 2018), and Trowler and Schreiber (2020) who write about relevance of the broader living and learning context that impacts student success. These contextual models focus on at least three concepts that influence a meaningful educational and developmental experience for students, albeit with different emphasis: (1) personal-cognitive resources of the students; (2) institutional-teaching-learning inputs; and (3) familial-social influences and social norms, into which the student learning and development experiences are immersed. Our research is based on this ecological and contextualized understanding of the student experience of higher education.

While the student is theoretically conceptualized within this contextual understanding, this is not sufficiently taken up by SAS practice. There is a paucity of models that speak to SAS’ impact on this student context and how this context might be understood from a global perspective, or how to mediate this context’s impact on student learning broadly. This chapter is an attempt to fill this gap.

Methodology

The starting point of this study was to explore how SAS were supporting students and their institutions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The pandemic conditions ensured that the vast majority of universities were forced to close their campuses for face-to-face learning and move toward online and remote forms of learning (Chetty & Luescher, in press). For this purpose, we developed an online questionnaire to survey the opinions, thoughts, and self-reported behavior of SAS practitioners across the globe. Using both open and closed questions, we sought to explore and understand the “how” and “why” of SAS provision in the context of the pandemic, rather than to test hypotheses.

The nonprobability sample method called snowballing or chain referral sampling (Creswell, 2013) was adopted to reach a nonrandom convenience sample which, nonetheless, could accurately reflect the experiences of SAS practitioners from around the world. Because of limitations of not using a priori selection, the findings of the survey are not meant to be statistically generalized, yet they are suitable for analytical generalization, that is, for creating theory and hypotheses through chronicling reactions, actions of responses to explore similarities, and contextual variances. COVID-19 was a unique time in history where snowball sampling was fitting for hard-to-reach populations (Creswell, 2013).

The survey was disseminated first to all registered members of the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS), and to 20 national and local SAS associations and organizations across the globe which sent it on to their respective members. We also shared the questionnaire with our respective networks through email and social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and encouraged all respondents to do the same. This approach allowed for sufficient numbers of participants (Goodman, 2011; Salganik & Heckathorn, 2004). The snowball sampling approach provided for timely responses from SAS in countries and regions that would normally be hard to reach (compare, for instance, Baltar & Brunet, 2012; Salganik & Heckathorn, 2004).

Table 16.1 highlights participation in the study from SAS practitioners in seven world regions based on their IP address. The regions that were categorized, based on IASAS and UNESCO’s (2018) guidelines, are Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, North America, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Table 16.1 Number of respondents by world region
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Instrument Design and Data Collection

The survey was designed using Qualtrics and consisted of 53 questions. Response types included several open-ended questions, along with questions that had options to rank, grade, and choose from multiple-choice answers. After the information and consent port, the survey commenced with nine questions on SAS involvement in decisions, four questions on SAS responses to COVID-19, and three questions on the financial impact of the pandemic on the institution and students. There were eight questions about remote work and three questions on how the pandemic will shape future operations. There were seven questions to understand how students were impacted by the crisis, and specific questions were posed about international students (nine questions) and students living in on-campus accommodation (eight questions). The survey ended with demographic questions. The survey remained open for participation during the entire month of May 2020.

Analysis

After cleaning the responses for duplicates, 781 remained. Forty-six percent of the sample fully completed the questionnaire and the remaining 54% partially completed the survey. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) offered the tools for the statistical analysis of the quantitative data through visual graphs, tables, and bar charts that assisted in data observation, exploration, and interpretation, rather than testing hypotheses (Courtney, 2013). These descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations of the quantitative responses were helpful in data analysis.

For the open-ended qualitative questions, the frequency of word counts was extracted using NVivo (Woolf & Silver, 2018). NVivo assisted in coding of the open-ended text responses, patternmaking, and thematic development.

Limitations and Ethics

During the onset of the pandemic, snowball sampling was considered the best approach to reach SAS practitioners around the world. We acknowledge the limitation of this methodology in that the sample is not fully randomized, as cautioned by Bonevski et al. (2014). Thus, as in most exploratory empirical studies, the findings and generalizations should not be compared without further examination. Given that the sample is not fully randomized, we did not statistically compare regional differences. The Institutional Review Board for the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, which is the home institution of one of the research team members, approved the study on April 30, 2020.

Key Findings

Compelled by instruction aimed at curbing the deleterious effect of COVID-19 on learning, universities quickly devised many ways to deliver learning and support in online modalities. While in many cases the migration to online was swift, students were sent home to study online in contexts that were often burdened with intractable public infrastructure and mobile network insufficiencies, considerable social-cultural inequities, and community and family environments that were not conducive to learning and development.

Our findings reveal that different students, depending on context, were impacted by COVID-19 in different ways. Our study also revealed that SAS mediated the financial impact of COVID-19 and provided substantive support for online learning, got readily involved in institutional decision-making, adjusted its service provisions, developed innovative responses, and anticipated staff restructuring in order to better respond to COVID-19-induced changes.

Impact of COVID-19 on Different Student Groups

COVID-19 affected different student populations differently. In our wider global sample, SAS respondents reported that international students were the most impacted by COVID-19, followed by students with lower socioeconomic status, students with disabilities or health challenges, students with inadequate access to online learning (be it due to network problems, no access to data, or lack of an adequate device), and students with other challenges including those who experienced loss of a job or students living in difficult home situations. European and North American respondents, along with those from the Middle East, Oceania, and Latin America and the Caribbean, responded similarly, and participants from Africa and Asia had some similar pattern; however, there was variance across all the regions.

As Fig. 16.1 shows, African respondents listed students with lower socioeconomic status and rural students, students with limited or no access to online learning, and students living and learning with a disability or health challenge as the most frequent groups impacted by the pandemic. Participants from Europe responded that international students were by far the student group most impacted by COVID-19, followed by students who had lost their jobs, and then vulnerable students who were living with a disability or health challenge. In Asia, our participants indicated that they considered the student group most impacted as those of lower socioeconomic status and international students, followed by students with limited or no access to online learning and those with disabilities or a health challenge. Overall, international students were considered the most impacted student group in Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, North America, and the LAC, while in Africa, Asia, and South America, this place was taken by students of low socioeconomic status and rural students.

Fig. 16.1
A stacked bar graph for varied impact of COVID 19 on different student groups. Oceania has the highest percentage of international students at 57%. Low S E S is 50%, the highest, for South America.

Varied impact of COVID-19 on different student groups by world region

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The categories are obviously not mutually exclusive, yet the overall findings of this part of the research illustrate at least two points: first, the vulnerability of students varied depending on region and context; and second, contextual factors emerged as paramount. These contextual factors emerged as significant insofar as they either facilitated or impaired student ability and capacity to learn and engage with the academic demands of their studies. These contextual factors range from students’ immediate context, such as their financial struggles and family and home situations, to community and sociocultural factors and also factors in the wider living and learning context, including access to broadband networks, rurality, and related infrastructural issues.

COVID-19 Impact on Lower Socioeconomic Students and Online Learning

SAS quickly realized that students from lower socioeconomic environments were challenged more and differently, and the survey shows that SAS therefore focused on mitigating these impacts first. SAS assisted with funding for basic needs, for transport, Wi-Fi access, and the provision of mobile devices for online learning as well as data. SAS enabled the refund of student housing fees, university tuition fees, and other fees, in certain contexts.

Students living and learning in rural areas or areas with fragile Wi-Fi networks were offered funds and zero-cost access to learning platforms; loan agreements for laptops and other devices were supported and enabled; and SAS negotiated increased Internet bandwidth in certain areas.

There were regional differences in how students were supported financially. Respondents from Africa and South America assisted students through laptops and other device rentals, and by providing them with data (full or partial help > 70%). Conversely, colleagues in the Middle East (70%), Oceania (58%), Europe (58%), and North America (46%) with high international student populations reported helping students with transportation money to return home and, less frequently so, with accommodation issues. Similarly, refunding students for services not rendered (e.g., accommodation, meals) was also more frequently noted by respondents from North America, the Middle East, and Oceania (full or partial help >70%), with those from Africa, Asia, and South America generally offering less refunds but more resources to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In all seven regions, SAS provided substantial support to migrate and adjust to online learning environments, supporting students to access information and to engage and study online. SAS also opened up spaces on campus to enable “safe spaces” for learning for some student groups and supported assessment processes for students.

SAS Involvement in Institutional Decision-Making

Overall, SAS across all seven regions was involved in the institutional decision-making by the second month of the institution being impacted by COVID-19, with 82% of respondents reporting this. This was followed by being involved by the third month or later. The results of our research suggest that SAS played a key role early on in institutional decision-making around pandemic response and its impact on students.

Our research also explored how and when SAS got involved in responding to pandemic-related decisions at HEIs. Overall, the majority of respondents (86%) indicate that SAS was “centrally involved” in institutional decision-making around the pandemic. Participants were asked about the guiding principles when making decisions for their student communities, and listed the following guiding principles as shaping their decisions around COVID-19 issues: community safety (53% of respondents), teaching and learning (49%), student accommodation (35%), and ethics and care (32%) were the top considerations for institutional decision-making in all world regions, in this order.

A regional variation was that for North America, Europe, and Oceania, community safety, teaching and learning, and ethics and care were the top three guidelines for SAS decision-making, followed by decisions around how to support international students, and then how to manage and support students living in on-campus accommodation. The regions of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and LAC, in contrast, considered on-campus accommodation living and learning more frequently than guidelines around how to support international students.

Changed SAS Service Provision

SAS services were, like most services and provisions for students, migrated to online, and some of the services were designated “essential services.” These designated essential services included, in ranked order, counseling and mental health services, health care, housing/student accommodation, and academic advising in all seven regions of our sample. The main essential SAS support offered to students across all seven regions was mental health and counseling services. These services were offered online synchronous with some in-person services for emergency services, health care, and residential needs.

Innovative Responses by SAS

Our research questionnaire asked participants to highlight innovative and novel responses to COVID-19-related issues that reflected different ways of working and practicing. The rapid migration to and transition into e-modalities of previously only in-person programs were listed as innovative. Respondents also mentioned “staying in contact” and “reaching out” via a number of social media and communication platforms including email, telephone, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and Zoom for interactive life communication as a more deliberate way of supporting students. Other new practices included organizing travel arrangements for students, communicating frequently using multiple video and communication platforms with students, and engaging various groups, including staff, students, specific student populations, and student organizations, in peer support using online video communication platforms. Included was the deliberate and wide dissemination of health-related information, using university facilities for quarantine, training health care workers in COVID-19-related needs, keeping campus clinics open for vulnerable student groups, and offering medical students as health care volunteers. Finally, there were management-related innovations such as reorganizing workstreams to suit an online work environment, developing and implementing remote work policies for staff, and establishing coordinated task teams including a central “COVID-19 response room” that shared up-to-date information and provided a triaging function.

Changing Focus for SAS

Participants were asked in open-text responses to predict possible changes to SAS, and our themed coding indicates that expected changes include more online provision of services and support for students, with staffing and structural implications. New ways of enabling online and video engagement would need to be designed, and cocurricular programs that relied on in-person experience would need to be reconceptualized. This can be seen, for example, in the following quote: “The basis of our work has been challenged and the how-to for our day-to-day work has drastically changed.” This change in the way of providing programs and services will require creativity and inventiveness.

Seventy-five percent of our sample population felt it would take their institution at least two years to recover from the pandemic, which caused concern and fear as noted in open-ended responses on possible resource reductions. The stress of remote and online work, not having appropriate equipment and devices, and being inadequately skilled were areas noted as concerns. The themed coding revealed that re- and upskilling to learn new technologies was in the forefront of colleagues’ minds in the early stages of the pandemic.

Our findings show how quickly SAS adapted to remote services, support, and development for students, while staff and practitioners, too, were going through their own work changes and personal challenges, working remotely without the proper equipment, learning new technologies, and changing roles and responsibilities.

It is clear from our findings that SAS was integral to managing COVID-19 at the institutional level and to mitigating its perilous impact on student learning and success.

Discussion

SAS has been instrumental in responding to and mitigating the impact of COVID-19 in the learning and development context by adjusting its role and function and offering a number of services, such as supporting the change to virtual learning, providing digital access, and supporting development of online learning competencies. These services were facilitated by maintaining safe spaces on campuses conducive to learning and development, reaching out to rural students, financially supporting lower socioeconomic students, offering personal, academic, and social counseling and health care, and responding swiftly and innovatively to the various needs of students and institutions.

An interpretation of the overall data suggests a compelling relationship between SAS and systemic-contextual factors that impact student success (Schreiber et al., 2020). The data presented above show that SAS mediated the factors that impact student learning and development located: (i) in the personal domain of students, (ii) their sociocultural family milieu and community context into which they are embedded, (iii) the university at which they are enrolled, and (iv) the macro public structures that support basic services and functions.

We have conceptualized the way in which SAS practitioners mediated the deleterious effects of the pandemic on student learning in four “systems” or “domains.” These are (i) personal: internal intra-personal factors (such as motivation, intelligence, persistence, optimism, and “grit”); (ii) sociocultural: the family milieu and social-cultural community including social norms, beliefs, and cultural practices; (iii) public: macro systems, including basic service infrastructure such as electricity, water, shelter, health, safety, and Internet access; and (iv) academic-faculty: living and learning experience, institutional culture and practices, teaching and learning frameworks, epistemological access, (in some countries, for instance, the USA and South Africa, SAS is closely related to and integrated into this domain within the institutional context).

We identified the four domains, illustrated in Fig. 16.2, as the personal, social-cultural, public, and academic-faculty domains that are mediated by SAS to support student persistence and success in a global context that includes international students. As has been shown above, SAS is centrally involved in mediating these four domains for students and mitigating any subverting influences these domains may have on students’ ability to persist and succeed in a meaningful learning and development experience. The four domains are simultaneously contextual, meaning that the domains shape the situation and environment, and they also provide systemic, meaning that they dynamically and reciprocally impact each other; in other words, they are not discreet but mutually connected and influential. What emerges from the data in our study is that SAS is critically involved, with varying degrees and emphasis, depending on institution, context, and sociocultural environment of the students, in mediating the living and learning context for students.

Fig. 16.2
A diagram for S A S systematic contextual model for mediating factors. The factors are, personal domain, socio-cultural domain, public domain, and academic faculty domain.

SAS’ systemic-contextual model for mediating factors that impact student success

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The personal domain includes the personal characteristics, abilities, capabilities, motivations, preparedness, and resources that students bring toward their success. Examples from our study include SAS support in the form of personal counseling and support for mental and physical health, which were the two most frequently mentioned SAS units that were declared essential during the pandemic. The literature also lists SAS’ provision of support in the personal domain and includes, for instance, engagement (Kuh et al., 2005; Strydom et al., 2017) and support to develop motivation and grit (Wilson-Strydom, 2017), which have been widely researched and linked to student success.

The sociocultural domain refers to the social and cultural practices and attitudes, at community and family level, which include religious traditions, gender roles and expectations, and norms ranging from the explicit to the implicit. These social and cultural values powerfully impact student success and can either support and accelerate, or present barriers. Examples from our study that illustrate the sociocultural domain include SAS support for students who are living and learning with family violence, gender roles that discourage studying, compensated for sociocultural practices that were less conducive for studying (for instance, by providing safe accommodation where communities and households had toxic influences on students), and support in the form of providing safe spaces on campus that promote safe living and learning for students who struggled with sexual orientation and disability. Thus, continuing to provide accommodation to students with difficult home situations, students from remote areas, and international students, among others, was the third most frequently named SAS service designated as essential.

The public domain includes the macro infrastructure, economic and political influences and factors, resources and provisions that are typically provided at public/municipal/city levels, including electricity, water, transport, health care, public order and safety, sanitation, and essential social services. Examples from our study include the SAS enablement of access to Internet-based learning, proving devices, providing support for safe and affordable transport, and providing safe spaces on campus for access to reliable electricity (see above). These public service provisions are powerful influences on the student’s chance of success (Fish & Syed, 2018; UNDP, 2020).

The academic-faculty domain is focused on the institutional learning and teaching strategies, resources and institutional culture and practices, the size and shape of the learning environment, and the academic engagement practices prevalent. The relational interplay of the various epistemological fields in higher education around teaching and learning plays an important role in promoting academic success. Examples from our study include SAS’ support for academic access, developing online competencies, supporting online assessments, shaping online tutorials and mentoring programs, and more broadly supporting the learning experience. Here, SAS is very powerfully influencing student success particularly in countries and regions where SAS is integrally integrated into the academic life of the institution, as is the case in most US institutions.

These four domains are navigated and mediated by SAS in a variety of ways to support students and their academic success. The domains work synergistically, both negatively and positively, and the data reveal that SAS, with the onset of COVID-19, is critically relevant in organizing responses that mitigate the impact in these four domains to shape a more supportive context for student success.

By using data from the survey, the relevance of SAS’ role and function vis-à-vis the personal, sociocultural, public, and academic-faculty domains’ impact on students’ learning and development are demonstrated, but further research will need to be conducted to test the applicability and relevance of the model in different contexts. Overall, it suggests that SAS mediates the students’ experience, nestled and sandwiched in these domains. SAS facilitates access, dilutes barriers, compensates for omissions, and augments the living and learning experience for students, thus advancing student success. The overarching social justice agenda of SAS (Schreiber, 2014), that is, to level the playing field, enables fairer conditions, supports more equitable access to educational experiences, and arguably manifests and finds expression in the SAS’ mediation of these four domains.

Variations in students’ learning contexts beyond the university have never been more significant for higher education than during COVID-19 times, and this includes the macro public infrastructure, societal norms and practices, community-based structures and familial milieu, and all that makes an environment more—or less—conducive to a meaningful learning experience and success. This study shows how SAS has become more involved in mitigating factors in this wider context and thus a more central player in the provision of higher education. This wider lens and broader focus of SAS reflects the changes in SAS structure, practice, and planning since the pandemic.

Conclusion and Implications

The findings of this global study demonstrate how SAS responded to and supported students during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The local living and learning context into which students were embedded mattered in how this was accomplished. Our findings demonstrate how SAS’ role has expanded to act upon the familial, social, and public conditions of students. Similarly, SAS worked closely with its academic partners to manage the crisis and help students with access to academic support and financial assistance.

It was clear that SAS was an important player in decisions impacting students and managing the ever-evolving health emergency. When asked about future practices, themes from our data included challenges about budget cuts, restructuring, re- and upskilling to meet the changing needs of students with relevant competencies, in line with professional requirements for the SAS domain (Bardill Moscaritolo & Roberts, 2016; Schreiber & Lewis, 2020; Seifert et al., 2016; Yakaboski & Perozzi, 2018; Zang & Howard-Hamilton, 2019). SAS’ essential services were mental health and counseling, health services, and academic advising. Staff moved into new roles that were unfamiliar, and SAS staff demonstrated the ability to learn new, particularly digital, skills to meet students’ changed needs.

The familial and social domain is critical for student success, and this was clear during the pandemic. Students found it hard to study in crowded households, with weak and fragile internet networks, and in unsupportive family and community environments. The campus served as a “safe space,” and it was important that SAS created these spaces for vulnerable students. SAS will need to partner with academic divisions more closely to make decisions considering the sociocultural, personal, and public complexities impacting student success.

On the basis of the findings of a survey conducted in 2020 with SAS practitioners from across the globe, we identified four domains of student learning and success that came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic and were mitigated by SAS support students. The survey shows that SAS’ responses to the conditions imposed by the pandemic were unique, varied, and tailored to compensate for the hindrances, explicit and invisible, systemic and situational, that students experienced in their quest for a meaningful learning and developmental higher education experience. What emerges powerfully from this research is that it is precisely this context, including and beyond the higher education institutions, the sociocultural milieu, and the public domain into which the learning experience is embedded, that is particularly implicated in playing a significant role in student success. Universities are embedded into wider social and cultural communities and rely on family, community, and public systems to enable a context conducive to student success. It appears that the scope of SAS work has broadened considerably. This is the “new frontier” for SAS that is emerging as a critical area.

SAS’ influence on the cluster of factors (or domains) that impact student learning is critical to sustained student success. SAS should focus on equipping students to become social justice agents so that students themselves can powerfully impact the personal, institutional, social, cultural, and public influences that shape their success. Higher education offers a powerful learning and development experience for students, and for this to be more meaningful, the four domains must synergistically align to support student success. SAS plays a critical role in mitigating and harmonizing these domains. It requires the support of the context into which higher education is embedded, the support of the public, the community, and the family, for higher education to deliver on its promise to be a developmental tool and offer meaningful learning and development experiences for our students.