Pandemic response policies’ democratizing effects on online learning

Significance

In the face of rising university tuition costs and a longstanding skills gap in the US workforce, a growing number of people access higher and continuing education programs via online platforms. There are serious concerns that online learning disadvantages members of underserved communities, thereby exacerbating social inequalities. However, it is hard to evaluate these concerns at scale partly due to selection effects. Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as nonessential business closures, suddenly changed how people spent their time, which allowed us to estimate effects on demand for online learning and how it varies along socioeconomic dimensions. Unlike most prior studies that find education technology to maintain or amplify inequities, we present causal evidence for its potential democratizing effects.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed peoples’ lives in unexpected ways, especially how they allocate their time between work and other activities. Demand for online learning has surged during a period of mass layoffs and transition to remote work and schooling. Can this uptake in online learning help close longstanding skills gaps in the US workforce in a sustainable and equitable manner? We answer this question by analyzing individual engagement data of DataCamp users between October 2019 and September 2020 ( n = 277,425). Exploiting the staggered adoption of actions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 across states, we identify the causal effect at the neighborhood level. The adoption of nonessential business closures led to a 38% increase in new users and a 6% increase in engagement among existing users. We find that these increases are proportional across higher- and lower-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with a high or low share of Black residents. This demonstrates the potential for online platforms to democratize access to knowledge and skills that are in high demand, which supports job security and facilitates social mobility.