Higher Education Dropout as a Form of Inequality of Opportunity: A Review of Pre- and Post-Pandemic Tendencies

University students may experience anxiety, hopelessness, and uncertainty about the future due to the negative effects of the COVID-19 global crisis, employment problems, and inadequate development policies. This may cause them to interrupt or even drop out of school. Sometimes students may also leave school voluntarily. Therefore, dropout in higher education is an important problem that requires a holistic and multidimensional assessment with its causes, consequences, and effects from micro to macro levels. However, global statistics and studies on this issue are quite limited. This problem can be characterized as an inequality of opportunity when it is associated with the inability to use the right to continue formal education for various reasons and thus not being able to access educational opportunities fairly. In this study, the COVID-19 pandemic is considered as a breaking point in terms of dropout in higher education, and multiple indicators of dropout before and after COVID-19 are discussed in light of the inequality of opportunity literature. It is concluded that digital inequality is the most important factor that increases the risk of dropout in higher education after the pandemic compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is important in the sense that it is the first attempt to discuss dropout in higher education by evaluating the indicators before and after the pandemic from a holistic perspective. These indicators can be evaluated in the context of students, families, institutions, education policies, and employment and can form the evidence base for initiatives to prevent school dropout.