Affiliation:
1. Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA
Abstract
Research reviewed here reinforces earlier findings about the importance to higher education students of having supportive faculty. A 2022 faculty survey at a public Midwestern university demonstrates faculty awareness of student struggles during the pandemic coupled with a changing, more flexible and caring pedagogy to address student needs. Qualitative interviews in 2023 with students in the “pandemic cohort” suggest a desire for classrooms and student-faculty relationships that are at odds with the bureaucratic model of impersonality, rules and regulations, specialization, and a hierarchy of authority. What may be emerging from the pandemic is a kind of antidote to neoliberalism with an other-regarding rather than individualistic focus and a desire for connection rather than competition. Recommendations, implied by these data, for building these classrooms and supportive relationships and a discussion of the downsides of the “new normal” are presented.