When Care Isn't Enough: Scaling Emergency Aid during the Pandemic

As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged communities, cities, and countries in 2020, colleges and universities faced a unique emergency. Millions of students were struggling to meet their basic needs, and institutional emergency aid funds were rapidly running out. For the first time in history, Congress responded by authorizing billions of dollars in emergency aid to try and quickly alleviate hardships. Legislators created a separate funding stream, distinct from standard financial aid programs that required extensive means-testing and other red tape. Their goal was to act decisively and to allow flexibility, responses consistent with the urgent demands of an emergency. Colleges and universities shared that desire, but their challenges were unprecedented, in both scope and scale. Effective emergency response requires agility, capacity, and speed. No institution had ever developed a plan for anything of the magnitude of the crisis confronting them. Addressing a few emergencies a week might have been possible with pre-pandemic approaches, but addressing hundreds a day was not. This report shows how colleges and universities met the challenge, drawing on a year of surveys and focus groups, fielded and conducted by The Hope Center and DVP-Praxis, that reflect the views of institutional leaders and students from coast to coast. The results offer valuable insights that should shape the future of emergency aid and student support. While the onset of the pandemic was unprecedented, its ongoing health concerns and the looming consequences of climate change ensure that knowing how to deliver emergency aid at scale will be essential to the well-being of future students. With these lessons in mind, everyone can be better prepared and ready to respond. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Farrar and Alline Ford Brown Foundation.]