Academic Stress of University Students during COVID -19 Pandemic

Academic stress is defined as the responses of students’ body to academic-related demands that exceed adaptive capabilities of students. Some amount of academic stress is common among all kinds of students. The COVID -19 which was started in China has led to the lock down in India in March 2020. Since then, almost all the educational institutions in the country has shifted to online teaching. Although the adoption of distance Offline Learning is key to ensure the continuity of education, students are, on average, likely to experience a Offline Learning loss during the lockdown. The present study intends to measure the level of academic stress that the University degree students had in the pandemic situation. The study adopted a modified version of the ‘Perception of Academic Stress Scale’ (PASS) developed by Dalia Bedewy and Adel Gabriel. The Factor Analysis condensed the thirty six variables in to three factors namely Normal Academic Stress, Offline Learning Loss and Digital/Technical issues. The study revealed that Perceived Academic Stress level is high among male students compared with female students. The male students are highly stressed about getting a job in future. But the female students’ stress level is high with University exam related matters. The online classes causes some health issues like eye pain, back pain, head ache etc., to the female students. On an overall the students always prefer to have offline classes over online classes.