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The coronavirus crisis is also upending higher education and as well as the economies and the lives of millions of individuals all around the world. Most of the universities have been closed, with teaching cancelled or the classes of MBBS in Russia have been put online. Most of the conferences all around the world have been called off.
If direct relevance is to international higher education, the prospective students have been unable to take the examinations to get admission, and many of the international students have been unable to travel back to their campuses or some who wanted to return home. All the study abroad programs have been canceled by most of the universities.
The faculty members of the university have been asked not to travel to affected countries with Corona Virus– or to avoid foreign travel entirely.The immediate implications and inconveniences that are caused are likely to increase as the coronavirus spreads to many of the countries and has affected larger numbers of people.
What will be the medium- and longer-term implications taken by the universities of the coronavirus crisis? Basically, there is not much! There are some of the colleagues who see an unintended positive impact on their higher education, in particular, the universities are increasing online teaching and learning. The realities and trends are evident in international higher education that are likely to remain for a shorter period of time, and that higher education will quickly return to normal routines after the decline in the impact of the Corona Virus– but perhaps with even less financial stability than is now the case in many countries and institutions.
The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has caused devastating ripple effects all around the world, resulting in more than 2,500 fatalities and significant disruptions to all the industries worldwide.
To understand the impact of COVID-19 on the higher education sector and its student mobility flows, QS asked all the prospective international students whether the coronavirus had impacted on their plans to study abroad.
As per the recent study, it showed that an encouraging 61% of students said that the global health crisis had not affected their plans to study abroad, while 27% of the students said it had affected their plans. Out of those students whose plans had been canceled or impacted because of the coronavirus, 37% of students said that now they have planned to defer their entry to next year, which suggests that the impact on many of the international student recruitment may be short-lived for institutions. Additionally, 33% of the students said that they now intend to study in a different country and only a minority of 11% of students said they no longer want to study overseas. Understandably, there are many respondents who cited health concerns as one of the key reasons why they decided to change their study plans. One respondent states that he got accepted into an MBA program in Hong Kong, however, he declined the offer due to a few factors and one of them was being the proximity to the coronavirus outbreak. Another perspective of many of the student says that the virus has already impacted many of the students: “The coronavirus has affected so many people in either way i.e. directly or indirectly because so many of them were planning to go to Europe or China for their studies, but the outbreak of Coronavirus has scared people away.”
The perspectives are given, how can institutions ensure their student mobility flows are sustainable during this health crisis?
There is such a large proportion of students who are deciding to defer until the health crisis has completely been dissipated, all the universities will need to be more flexible than ever before.
They have to allow all the students to defer, whether that’s for a semester or a year, and also offer them greater leniency around strict application processes and deadlines will help to ease the burden on all the prospective students and provide them with more avenues to study at their institution. The universities should offer the students with online learning, virtual learning platforms, or other Education 4.0 practices that can help institutions to connect with students without any potential health risks.
One should explore what practices work best for their institution’s distance learning cohort and also consider what is offering them as tools to prospective international students.
It’s important for a person to remember that these global health crises that are occurring often breed uncertainty and fear, and also their institution doesn’t need to contribute to this hysteria.
The university has to be clear, communicative, and empathetic with prospective international students and make sure that all of the staff of the university are trained on what to say and how to deal with this crisis. Whether that’s lecturers or the admissions staff, each of the staff members needs to have a good understanding of the health risks, how to mitigate them, and also the university’s position.
For all of them who are from admissions staff, the university should start offering them practical advice and emotional support to prospective international students that will be even more crucial for them. While coronavirus may impact their institution, so they have to maintain strong student mobility flows is dependent upon how their institution proactively and strategically deals with this health crisis
Some receiving countries, like Australia and the United Kingdom, has taken to a lesser extent, and in the United Kingdom, there are some of the less prestigious colleges and universities that have now become dependent on tuition fees of international student and is also become an important part of their financial survival.
After all, the international education of all the people is an estimated an approximate amount of US$300 billion dollar industry globally. The coronavirus crisis shows that this dependence of most of the universities is deeply problematic: it is likely that most of the institutions are dependent on this income and that will face significant problems.The crisis of the coronavirus might signal that seeing international education mainly as an income generator of most of the universities is undesirable from many viewpoints, but one doesn’t have to fear it all. Indeed, the government of the country and academic institutions may double down on their recruitment efforts after the Corona Virus.
Many of the universities are now teaching their students with the help of distance education since all the campuses of the universities in many places have been closed due to coronavirus and also much success has been reported anecdotally. It is indeed impressive that many of the universities have been quickly shifting all, or a substantive part of their courses to the internet i.e. online classes.
The universities are offering the students with high-quality education and students are very satisfied with the new situation. Most of the faculty members worldwide are not trained to offer the distance courses to the students and do not have the sophisticated technology that is necessary for giving the high-quality teaching and learning and have not adapted their curricula to the web network.There are many aspects and modalities that should be taken into account: asynchronised or synchronised teaching that means how to manage group discussions effectively online and how to organize the assignments and exams of the students online.
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