Thousands of California college students who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are struggling to afford food, broadband service, child care, and other living expenses. They are students like Josh Zupan, a fourth-year art and ecology major at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Before the coronavirus, Zupan had an on-campus facilities and maintenance job that paid about $300 every two weeks. Then, the health crisis forced him to take mandatory leave.

These students are counting on federal emergency aid to provide a possible solution to their financial troubles. Some will be disappointed.

Photo: Ori Toor

The disruption caused by the coronavirus has prompted cobbled-together responses ranging from the absurd to the ingenious at colleges and universities struggling to continue teaching even as their students have receded into diminutive images, in dire need of haircuts, on videoconference checkerboards.

But while all of this is widely being referred to as online higher education, that’s not really what most of it is, at least so far. As for predictions that it will trigger a permanent exodus from brick-and-mortar campuses to virtual classrooms, indications are that it probably won’t.