Self-reported COVID-19 infection and implications for mental health and food insecurity among American college students.

While the COVID-19 pandemic affected mental health and increased food insecurity across the general population, less is known about the virus's impact on college students. A fall 2020 survey of more than 100,000 students at 202 colleges and universities in 42 states reveals sociodemographic variation in self-reported infections, as well as associations between self-reported infection and food insecurity and mental health. We find that 7% of students self-reported a COVID-19 infection, with sizable differences by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, parenting status, and student athlete status. Students who self-reported COVID-19 infections were more likely to experience food insecurity, anxiety, and depression. Implications for higher education institutions, policy makers, and students are discussed.

College readiness for all: the challenge for urban high schools.

Melissa Roderick, Jenny Nagaoka, and Vanessa Coca focus on the importance of improving college access and readiness for low-income and minority students in urban high schools. They stress the aspirations-attainment gap: although the college aspirations of all U.S. high school students, regardless of race, ethnicity, and family income, have increased dramatically over the past several decades, significant disparities remain in college readiness and enrollment. The authors emphasize the need for researchers and policy makers to be explicit about precisely which sets of knowledge and skills shape college access and performance and about how best to measure those skills. They identify four essential sets of skills: content knowledge and basic skills; core academic skills; non-cognitive, or behavioral, skills; and "college knowledge," the ability to effectively search for and apply to college. High schools, they say, must stress all four. The authors also examine different ways of assessing college readiness. The three most commonly recognized indicators used by colleges, they say, are coursework required for college admission, achievement test scores, and grade point averages. Student performance on all of these indicators of readiness reveals significant racial and ethnic disparities. To turn college aspirations into college attainment, high schools and teachers need clear indicators of college readiness and clear performance standards for those indicators. These standards, say the authors, must be set at the performance level necessary for high school students to have a high probability of gaining access to four-year colleges. The standards must allow schools and districts to assess where their students currently stand and to measure their progress. The standards must also give clear guidance about what students need to do to improve. College readiness indicators can be developed based on existing data and testing systems. But districts and states will require new data systems that provide information on the college outcomes of their graduates and link their performance during high school with their college outcomes.