Exploring how friendships are formed at the University of Iceland

A large group of students are currently finding their feet at the University of Iceland, getting to know both the campus and new people. Some are making connections that will lead to lifelong friendships based on shared classes, group work assignments and student social events. But what impact do friendships formed in the first months at university have on academic achievement? Three academics at the University of Iceland are currently trying to find the answers to this and other questions. They have discovered, for example, that students during the pandemic, when traditional learning on the UI campus was not possible, made significantly fewer ties with their fellow students during their first two semesters than students who had started their studies three years before. Their research has also shown that students with more ties to their peers are less likely to drop out.

Magnús Þór Torfason, professor at the Faculty of Business Administration and now dean of the School of Social Sciences, Margrét Sigrún Sigurðardóttir, professor at the Faculty of Business Administration, and Anna Helga Jónsdóttir, professor of statistics at the Faculty of Physical Sciences, have been working on this study for almost a decade and publishing their findings in Icelandic and international journals over the past few years. 

“Management research has shown the importance of personal connections at work, so Magnús and I wondered whether relationships were equally important in higher education. We conducted a study looking at students in one course at the Faculty of Business Administration, which revealed that the higher the number of ties to peers a student had in the course, the higher the grade they were likely to achieve and the less likely they were to drop out,” explains Margrét. She and Magnús published an article about this research in the online journal Netla in 2017 (https://netla.hi.is/tengslanet-nemenda-og-brottfall-ur-haskolanami/).

Pandemic presented an unexpected opportunity

Margrét and Magnús then became interested in expanding this research to look at more programmes at UI. They approached Anna Helga to suggest a collaboration, and the three launched a study in the autumn of 2017, looking at all new students at the School of Social Sciences and the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences. 

Almost three years later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit with restrictions and closures across society, including at the University of Iceland. This presented a unique opportunity for the three academics to compare ties in the earlier cohort with this later cohort of students who started the same programme at home in front of their computer screens in the autumn of 2020.

The earlier study showed that social connections, especially friendships, impact success in higher education. “Other studies in other countries have also shown that university students made fewer ties and that their mental wellbeing suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. This could have had a serious impact on their university careers, because this group doesn’t have the same social resources and peer support as students who started at university either before or after the pandemic,” explains Magnús.  

They point out that students in Iceland during the pandemic were in a different position to students in some other countries. Closures in Iceland were not as extensive as in many other places and the UI campus was partially open for the academic year of 2020-2021, meaning that new students did have some opportunities to attend class in person.

Data about the number of ties made in the first months at university

Magnús, Margrét and Anna Helga collected data in September of 2017 and 2020, after the first week of the autumn semester, and in February of 2018 and 2021, when the students were in their second semester. The third and final set of data was collected in May during the participants’ sixth semester, i.e. at the point at which most students were coming to the end of their undergraduate degree. 

Half of students had not made any new ties by the second semester during the pandemic

The study revealed a striking difference in the number of ties made in 2017 and during the pandemic. People who started their programme during the pandemic made, on average, just 1.4 new connections between the first and second semesters, while students who started in 2017 made an average of 3.54. “In other words, over 60% of the ties that a first-year student could be expected to make at the start of the programme in a normal year just didn’t happen during the pandemic,” says Magnús. The results also show, however, that fewer pre-existing ties were lost during the pandemic than in 2017, i.e. students maintained more ties between the two surveys in 2020-2021 than they did in 2017-2018. 

The results also revealed that in the earlier cohort, only one in ten respondents had not made any new friends during the first two semesters, but three years later, that figure rose to just over 47%. “That means that almost half of the students who took part in the study made no new friends by the start of the second semester,” says Margrét.

Generally, women made more ties than men in both cohorts, although the gender gap narrowed during the pandemic. Older respondents made fewer ties. Students at the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences also made more ties on average than students at the School of Social Sciences, according to the survey results.

The team created models to predict the probability of students completing their study programmes for the group starting in 2017 and the group starting in 2020. For the 2017 cohort, the chances of completing their programme were almost 10% higher if a student reported 1-3 ties with fellow students at the beginning of the programme, compared to those who reported no ties, and around 22% higher if they reported four or more ties. For the 2020 cohort, the chances of completing their programme were around 16% higher if a student reported one or more ties, compared to those who reported no ties at the start of the programme (the difference between 1-3 ties and four was not statistically significant).

Valued the flexibility of distance learning, but were lonely

The survey in February 2021 asked respondents two open questions about their experiences of distance learning. The answers revealed that students valued the flexibility of attending classes where they chose, but they also complained of loneliness and regretted not being able to connect with instructors and fellow students.  

The team points out that research into social connections among university students is fundamental at a time when loneliness among young people has increased significantly, and instructors report that students are reluctant to attend classes and spend breaks isolated on their phones. “We have joined forces with academics at the University of Akureyri, Reykjavík University and Elon University in the USA and applied for a Rannís grant to enable an even larger study looking at all students starting at Icelandic universities in the autumn of 2026. By collecting data from students in different subjects and at different universities in distance and traditional learning, we can get a comprehensive picture of the role of social connections in higher education, which can hopefully be used to enhance the quality of higher education programmes,” concludes Margrét.