When Jessica Austin decided to become a teacher, she enrolled at the only option in town, Northland Pioneer College. The rural community college has four campuses, but all of them are hours away from where Austin lives in Kayenta, Arizona. Then the coronavirus hit. 

The pandemic is making college harder for students on the wrong side of the digital divide. In rural Arizona, when campuses closed, some students couldn’t log on from home, because they had no access to the internet. A local sheriff flew laptops and hotspots to community college students on the Navajo Nation.

In the era of the coronavirus, gap-year programs like High Mountain Institute’s outdoors-based trips are seeing soaring interest from students looking for alternatives to online learning.

Indeed, survey after survey has shown that 2020’s prospective college students may be rethinking their plans. And while it’s too early to tell how many students colleges will lose, skyrocketing interest in gap-year programs could signal what’s to come.