Covid-19 outbreak: What impact of the lockdown on college students’ academic path and attitudes toward studying?

Many countries imposed the lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, with the consequent closure of schools and a great uncertainty concerning the health, economic, and academic situation. We aim to analyze the impact of the lockdown on college students’ academic path and attitudes toward studying, including studyholism (or obsession toward studying), study engagement, and dropout intention. We gathered 6075 Italian college students. We performed one-sample t-tests (with students gathered before the pandemic as the reference group), paired-samples t-tests, and a path analysis model. During the lockdown, students experienced higher levels of studyholism, lower intention to dropout, and no change in their study engagement levels. Also, they increased their time spent studying daily but decreased the days per week of studying. Finally, we found that intolerance for uncertainty is a good predictor of studyholism, which in turn is a positive predictor of the impairment in study quality and motivation. Universities should provide students with psychological interventions to reduce their studyholism and increase their tolerance for uncertainty, aiming to increase their resilience, also in case of another pandemic or a new wave of Covid-19. From a theoretical perspective, the definition of problematic overstudying as an internalizing disorder is further supported.