Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on life and learning experiences of indigenous and non-Indigenous university and college students in Ontario, Canada: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: The years people spend attending university or college are often filled with transition and life change. Younger students often move into their adult identity by working through challenges and encountering new social experiences. These transitions and stresses have been impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to dramatic change in the post-secondary experience, particularly in the pandemic’s early months when colleges and universities were closed to in person teaching. The goal of this study was to identify how COVID-19 has specifically impacted the postsecondary student population in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. METHODS: The Cost of COVID is a mixed methods study exploring the social and emotional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on families, youth, and urban Indigenous People. The present analysis was completed using a subset of qualitative data including Spryng.io micronarrative stories from students in college and university, as well as in-depth interviews from service providers providing services to students. A double-coded phenomenological approach was used to collect and analyze data to explore and identify themes expressed by postsecondary students and service providers who worked with postsecondary students. RESULTS: Twenty-six micronarratives and seven in-depth interviews were identified that were specifically relevant to the post-secondary student experience. From this data, five prominent themes arose. Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of technology was important to the post secondary experience. The pandemic has substantial educational impact on students, in what they chose to learn, how it was taught, and experiences to which they were exposed. Health and wellbeing, physical, psychological and emotional, were impacted. Significant impacts were felt on family, community, and connectedness aspects. Finally, the pandemic had important financial impacts on students which affected their learning and their experience of the pandemic. Impacts did differ for Indigenous students, with many of the traditional cultural supports and benefits of spaces of higher education no longer being available. CONCLUSION: Our study highlights important impacts of the pandemic on students of higher education that may have significant individual and societal implications going forward. Both postsecondary institutions and society at large need to attend to these impacts, in order to preserve the wellbeing of graduates, the Canadian labor market, and to ensure that the pandemic does not further exacerbate existing inequalities in post-secondary education in Canada.