Coming home to college: Living arrangements and perceptions of adulthood for U.S. college students during COVID-19

Abstract

Place and time matter in people’s experiences with the transition to adulthood. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted both the location and timing of college attendance, as well as housing arrangements, learning experiences, and geographic mobility more broadly. Using online survey data from 339 college students ages 18–29 enrolled in U.S. universities and colleges in Fall 2020, we studied whether changes in living arrangements (especially in relation to a childhood home) affected students’ scores on five scaled variables measuring the likelihood to perceive a change in how “adult” their lives were when comparing Fall 2019 and Fall 2020. We performed a Welch one-way ANOVA to assess change in adulthood mean differences for four living situation groups that measure staying or leaving the childhood home. Despite being younger and less likely to have started college, students who left their childhood home in Fall 2020 showed the greatest perceived increase in adult experiences, especially when compared to students who had already left and returned home. Findings show that student experiences with adulthood transitions during COVID-19 are perceived in light of comparisons with others and with expected outcomes, and point to future research on student perception of the interplay between time and living spaces when studying paths toward adulthood.