The COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed school systems worldwide for more than two years, negatively affecting the most vulnerable students. The pandemic has temporarily delayed students’ aspirations to study abroad due to restrictions on international air travel and the suspension of classroom instruction.
Many countries have stopped the schools’ operations to ensure the students’ safety and well-being, which has caused severe disruptions in learning and other student activities. Teachers and school administrators were prompted to create emergency remote learning solutions to the crisis.
Even though massive efforts have been made to support distance learning during a pandemic, the closures of higher education institutions have led to actual losses in learning. Although serving as an immediate response to continuing the education of the students, distance learning has left disadvantages to the education sector. One of which is the lack of social interaction among teachers and students.
These losses brought about by the pandemic have even more long-term outcomes such as lack of hands-on involvement in learning, less participation in extracurricular activities necessary for a student’s holistic development, and even possible job losses in the future. The losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are predicted to have a long-term detrimental influence on many students’ future well-being if no action is taken.
Post-COVID 19 situation
Despite COVID-19’s disruptive influence, the availability of digital technology that supports online learning is a lifetime experience potential for global higher education reform. Everyone is connected through the Internet, and online learning has become a trend.
After several months of online interactions, a paradigm shift in university education has occurred. Even after the COVID-19 outbreak, online schooling has grown in popularity and is expected to continue.
Moving past COVID-19
Apart from the health crisis, it has also left looming economic and social issues that have thrown the foreign education industry into a new and complicated situation. The world will be different following the pandemic, and higher education institutions and systems will also be different.
New expectations will be made on higher education institutions in terms of community linkages, teaching, international strategy and mobility, and so on, in the post-crisis context of international education.
We have yet to see how higher education institutions will function in a radically different environment.
