home environments, difficulty finding an adequate or quiet place to do coursework or study -- were less pronounced for students who lived on or near campus.
About 85 percent of students who live in ACC residences said they could be successful academically during the pandemic, a finding that is only one percentage point lower than students' 2019 responses to the same survey question, Wills said. Before the pandemic, about 86 percent of students believed they could be successful in academics while living in an ACC residence.
“Anecdotally I can tell you that the students that are in that college environment, responding to the guidelines and rules, can be successful,” Wills said. “I think there is value to the proximate experience of college education.”
Other recent surveys that include students living at their family homes have shown that they are "not doing as well," he said. For example, a recent nationally representative survey by Strada Education Network [3] found that "keeping up academically" was a challenge for 58 percent of students who lived either at home or on or near campus, and 56 percent said "having a space that is good for studying" has been challenging. ACC also received anecdotal comments from students that they were "dissatisfied with pursuing their academics from their parent's home" during the spring, when most campuses shut down and officials asked students to move out, Wills said.
Socializing with others has been one part of the college experience missed by students who are not on campus or have limited interaction with other students, according to a separate survey [4] that ACC published in October with the Hi, How Are You Project, an organization that advocates for destigmatizing mental health issues. Eighty-four percent of students over all said that their social life was the No. 1 aspect of the college experience that they missed during the pandemic, according to the October survey report.
But students who lived on or near campus residences were able to have some semblance of that college experience this fall, even with public health restrictions in place, Wills said. Seventy-one percent of first-year students and
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