The Impacts of COVID-19 on College Students Globally: A Review of the Emerging Literature

This thesis considers various studies related to how COVID-19 has affected college students worldwide. This project provides an early examination of the literature in an effort to identify emerging themes, common global experiences, and areas still to be studied. First this project looks at how COVID-19 has exacerbated technological inequities, including the impacts of the digital divide on college students’ educations. This project shows how the lack of access to technology and the digital divide has deprived students of educational opportunities and has impacted their overall quality of education. Second, this project looks at the mental health impacts of the pandemic on college students. College students are already a very vulnerable population to begin with, and COVID-19 further exacerbated mental health issues among these students. Third, this project looks at findings about gender differences and the impacts of COVID-19 based on gender. This project also explores the positive impacts of the pandemic, and finally concludes with ideas for future research going forward, as well as solutions to the problems addressed in the project. This project reviews literature from a global perspective. Many of the studies in this project are taken from international university student populations, as it is important to compare how university students worldwide reacted to and were impacted by the pandemic. Taking this global view into perspective is necessary to formulate methods of action in the possible occurrence of a future health crisis of this scale.