Research

What Students Would Give Up to Have In-Person College

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/23/21

What would students give up if they could head back to college in person? Seven in 10 would relinquish their AirPods for a month if it meant a month back on campus. Sixty-five percent would trade fast food and 56 percent would trade workouts for the whole semester for an equal amount of in-person time. More than half (51 percent) would forego their smartphones for a month in order to go back on campus for a month. And 54 percent would skip spring breaks for the rest of their college careers in order to remain on campus over the same period.

Those are the findings from a poll undertaken by Grand Canyon University, which itself has brought students back on campus. Working with Grand Canyon Education, which used to be part of the university and now delivers support services to higher education, the institution surveyed 600 students around the country who were specifically pursuing hybrid (43.5 percent) or remote learning (48.5 percent). (An additional 8 percent said they were doing all in-person learning.)

While a fifth of students (21 percent) said they were content with virtual college, more than half (54.5 percent) said they wanted to get back to campus either "badly" or "very badly." The remaining quarter were neutral on the topic.

What students missed the most — cited by 55 percent — was interaction through in-person courses, labs and study groups, as well as face-to-face time and interactive learning with their fellow learners and instructors. Nothing else came close.

Additional results of the poll were openly available in a GCU blog article.