3. Effects of COVID-19 on higher education

revealed that many teachers in less developed contexts were not able to facilitate meaningful teaching and learning without assistance. Even so, responses to the delivery of education were still mandated by education departments globally. Although television and radio were also used as more common tools to facilitate learning, the poor logistical facilitation and lack of financial resources impacted the overall efficacy of these modalities. Despite financial support provided by various states to soften the blow of the economic effects, existing inequalities have increased. The pandemic has set back many LIC and LMIC states financially and crippled economies. An overview of economic policy responses suggests that developed nations are financially able to increase the capacity of hospitals and react more efficiently to the social effects of the pandemic. Wealthier nations are also able to provide aid to poorer nations, but the value of the aid is not sufficient to mitigate the disastrous effects of the pandemic, as that would require large scale financial resources to improve public systems such as health, education and other social services. What remains to be seen is whether the aid directed to schools and other education institutions will remain in a post-pandemic era. Overall, it also remains to be seen whether teaching and learning as we traditionally understand it will be transformed in the journey back to normalcy once the pandemic is over.

COVID-19 will leave no sector unaffected and although many discussions, interventions and allocation of resources have been focused on learners at primary and secondary school level, the pandemic has also adversely impacted the higher education community. To mitigate the effects of the virus, most higher education institutions globally have ceased face-toface learning as well as other university activities, including sporting and cultural events. These closures have had a number of adverse effects. These include the economic effect on students as well as institutions, the impact on the quality of education delivery, and effects on equity, particularly for foreign students, as discussed below. Firstly, the closure of universities has resulted in financial challenges for most higher education institutions, including the more affluent universities. Rogoff (2020) asserts that “the University of Michigan anticipates a pandemic-induced loss of up to $1 billion by the end of 2020, while Harvard University is projecting a $750 million revenue shortfall for

next year” (Para 4). The problem is also worse for private universities who “operate along a business model and are heavily dependent on students’ fees to cover staff salaries and operational costs” (Mohamedbhai, 2020, p. 26).

Not only has university revenue been affected, students have also been affected. Some countries have responded to this challenge by instituting relief packages such as the Higher Education Relief Package launched by the Australian government. These packages allowed for a reduction in fees for online courses and for exemptions from paying loan fees, and guaranteed funding for domestic students. Similarly, in April, Canada launched the Canadian Emergency Student Benefit that provided financial support to post-secondary students who are unable to find employment over the summer due to COVID-19. Student grants in Canada will also be doubled (Trudeau, 2020) and additional funding will also be made available for students affected by the pandemic (Canada Ministry of Education, 2020). Secondly, inequities have increased. This has been more pronounced in the Global South. Whilst universities were pressured to close to limit the spread of the virus, continuing learning via ICTs during the lockdown period was easier for some than for others. Mohamedbhai (2020, Para 4) contends that

The process has laid bare the digital divide within the African continent: between those countries that have better ICT infrastructure than others; between higher education institutions within the same country, with some being far better equipped and experienced than others; and between students within the same institution – the rich who live in urban areas and the poor in rural areas who can barely afford to access the internet, when and if it is available.

Third, whilst much progress has been made to improve the quality of education provision globally as promoted by SDG 4, in some instances the quality of education has decreased substantially. As Mohamedbhai (2020, Para 9) astutely notes:

It is a fallacy to believe that online learning can be effective by merely posting a lecturer’s notes online or having a video recording of the lecture. Yet, this is what is generally happening at present. Experience has shown that quality online learning requires that the teaching material is prepared by a professional instructional designer, that the lecturer is pedagogically trained for delivering the programme and the students are equally exposed to the pedagogy

of online learning. The unprepared online delivery will have an impact on the quality of the programmes. This is unfortunate at a time when significant achievements have been made in improving the quality of teaching and learning in African higher education institutions.

Fourth, the school to university pipeline will be affected. School closures and cancelling of exit level examinations may impact the university intake processes. Fifth, the pandemic has impacted foreign students. About 6% of students across OECD countries are foreign and this number increases to 22% for doctoral students (Schleicher, 2020). In the USA alone, Chinese students make up 33.7% of the foreign student population, while Indian students comprise 18.4% (World University Rankings, 2020). Many of these foreign students, particularly Chinese students, are unable to return to the country where they are registered to study. Figure 11 below demonstrates the number of foreign students per OECD country.

Figure 11. Incoming student mobility in tertiary education, by level of study, 2018 (Schleicher, 2020) The pandemic has affected their continuity of learning, their safety and legal status as well as their perceptions of the value of completing a degree abroad (Schleicher, 2020). Also, in countries such as the Netherlands, “many of the off-campus and foreign students who usually rely on part-time jobs to cover university tuition lost their income due to the closure of non-essential economic activities” (UNESCO, 2020f). In a survey conducted with 11 000 international students in the early part of 2020, 46% noted that the pandemic had impacted on their study plans, 47% noted they would defer their studies to 2021 and 8% noted that they no longer wished to study abroad (QS Survey, 2020).

Sixth, students in vocational programmes have been hard hit by the crisis compared to general university programmes. Vocational programmes “suffer a double disadvantage as social distancing requirements and the closure of enterprises have made practical and work-based learning that are so crucial for the success of vocational education difficult or impossible” (Schleicher, 2020, p. 23). In some instances, the practical learning component of these vocational programmes can account for more than half of the total learning and assessment. Programmes such as engineering, agriculture, construction and crafts will struggle the most with distance learning. Lastly, students with disabilities were not always able to continue their learning during lockdown because of “support and teaching tools that are not always available in distance learning” (UNESCO, 2020f). This means that students with disabilities are not able to progress as much as their able-bodied counterparts and may be disadvantaged in terms of how long it may take them to complete their qualification and apply for employment. Over and above these effects on HEI’s globally, the increased use of technology in teaching and learning has also led to some long term implications as EdTech firmly embeds itself into these institutions. A study conducted by William and Hogan (2021), commissioned by Education International, noted several of these long terms effects. The report noted that

• The pandemic and other emergency situations “produce catalytic opportunities for market-oriented privatisation policies and commercial reforms in education” (p, 1) • The health crises has led to reimagining HEI’s as a “digitally innovative and data-intensive sector” (p, 2) • EdTech has become highly influential in the HEI space shaping institutional behaviour and working affecting social and technical infrastructure. • EdTech has increased the number of public-private partnerships. • EdTech has increased the deployment of data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and • The increase of EdTech in HEI’s has challenged academic labour, freedom and autonomy. As with schooling, higher education institutions have also been adversely affected by the pandemic. Many students from the Global South and