Students are considering part-time enrollment and gap-year options as the pandemic continues to impact higher education. | File photo
While the year continues to present new challenges amid ever-changing conditions, students at the University have considered making changes to their schedules and workload to ease the burdens that have come their way in 2020.
The pandemic has changed students’ availability and other responsibilities such as family, work and health have taken priority over academic pursuits.
In response to students considering dropping out as a result of pandemic-related hardship, UH offered students admitted for Fall 2020 the option to defer enrollment by one to three semesters or one full academic year.
“Students choosing to defer their admission will not have to reapply and pay another application fee,” said Mardell Maxwell, executive director of the Office of Admissions.
“As of Oct. 1, more than 1,000 applicants chose to defer their admissions, which is less than three percent of the Fall 2020 applicant pool.”
The University also continues to offer students the ability to enroll full or part-time. Full-time students are required to enroll in a minimum of 12 hours, while students taking a lighter course load are considered part-time.
While information regarding how many students may have chosen to switch to part-time enrollment is currently unavailable, some students who chose to take the same load of courses as they usually do in an online format find that they are struggling.
Political science junior Sonya Andrews thinks that some of the difficulty lies in the fact that some courses work better in a face-to-face format than an online platform.
“Because some of these classes weren’t made to be ‘online courses,’ it’s a lot to keep up with,” Andrews said.
Andrews isn’t the only one struggling. Psychology junior Sharon Zachariah is taking a day-by-day approach to manage all of her responsibilities.
“I am taking it (one) day at a time some days because it can be a lot with assignments from so many classes. I am also doing graduate school applications right now so time management has become very important,” Zachariah said.
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