Disadvantaged students at minority serving institutions became disproportionally affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

Abstract Learning has been a complex human skill. Humans have gone through a gradual learning experience spanning hundreds of years. Never in the history mankind have been tested with learning a tsunami of information in a very short period. Last couple of decades have stressed out not only the neurobiology of learning but tested the maximum limits of human capacities. If not all, some of the population group like students have burnt out. To add further stress to depleting limits of human capacities the current pandemic totally exhausted even their reserves. We at College of Pharmacy Chicago State University tested and other stressor being minority serving university and having a major population of disadvantage students. We did a survey of under graduate students and asked them this question to identify only one and most important challenge they faced in this time of pandemic induced remote learning. Not to our surprise we found that a statistically significant number of students declared that the cost of paying for technology to survive in this remote learning was the major factor that impacted their learning and lead to a major challenge for them. Most of the students suffered financial stress with loss of jobs, declining college loans, lack of motivation for a successful career. More specifically these disadvantage students could not keep up with the rising cost of wifi, laptop, cell phones and opting for additional online learning tools. To give an example, one student told us that she would go to near by Starbucks to get online assignments done in a timely manner. In the current lock down even the public libraries are closed and students struggle. Our study suggests that the universities set aside a special budget to financially help these disadvantage students.