Faced with the COVID‑19 pandemic, the president of France announced on Saturday 14 March 2020 that all educational institutions would be closed. This closure vastly changed the conditions of student life, and new forms of teaching and evaluation had to be put into place. University services, such as student restaurants, libraries, etc, were also shut down, upending students’ daily routines and social life. Most businesses and corporate sites also closed, disrupting work-study programmes, jeopardizing student jobs and freezing plans for internships. Border closings quashed students’ hopes for international study and exchange. The lockdown measures were in place up to 11 May 2020. It was further decreed that the universities would not open before September, and even then distance learning probably would be maintained. All these measures have had a profound impact on the higher education paths and perspectives of students.

How have the pandemic crisis and the lockdown period affected students’ academic progress, their living conditions and financial resources? How have they lived through this period? To answer these questions the Observatoire national de la vie étudiante (OVE) followed up on its 2020 Living Conditions survey, and recontacted 6,130 students enrolled in 2019-2020 at university or in preparatory courses for grandes écoles (CPGE), engineering schools, business schools, art and architecture schools or Grands établissements in the spring of 2020.