Higher Education in a Post-COVID World Dr Gwilym Croucher and Professor William Locke The COVID pandemic is magnifying existing pressures for universities but is also providing new possibilities. How universities respond will determine their future. What the coming months and years will mean for higher education in Australia and around the world depends on the response of governments and providers to the unfolding disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. While the speed of developments during the pandemic makes prediction fraught, past experiences of similar economic, political and social ‘shocks’ to the provision of higher education in advanced economies provide some hints to where we might be heading. The pandemic is magnifying existing pressures for universities but is also providing new possibilities. We outline here some trends and their implications for Australian higher education and public policy. Diminishing student capacity and preference for travel to undertake international education For many students their preference for traveling to another country for study will diminish because leaving their home country for study becomes perceived as less safe. Growing nationalism may also promote studying domestically, exacerbated by the relationship between a home country and the one where students study. This will be framed by shifting geopolitical tensions that are almost entirely divorced from people-to-people or educational relationships. Moreover, many students will face stricter rules and regulations in gaining entry to a chosen host country for study and, possibly, poststudy residence and employment.
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For Australia, this means the international student market may recover somewhat but, at best, slowly, and the incentive for studying abroad will be much diminished because of the perceived risks. This will likely have most impact on laboratory and practice-based disciplines, some of which have high proportions of international students. The impact could also be particularly acute for business and commerce disciplines, which have the most international students and are usually in the higher margin range of offerings. Australia may be better positioned to attract students than the two other large destination countries, the UK and U.S, if there is continuing success in Australia mitigating the worst effects of the pandemic. China and one or two other Asian countries may take advantage to retain students who might have gone abroad to study, as well as attracting more international students from the region and beyond.
Much depends on how and when the government is in a position to lift travel restrictions. Yet, as international education has particular cultural dimensions and is not just another trade in services, sociopolitical factors may inhibit recovery of the market even if the government does open the borders. The reputational effects following the uneven initial response have yet to be fully known. So, too, is the impact of the sudden shift to online teaching and learning and how engaged international students continue to feel, especially when those students already in Australia start to return to campus. There are uncertain prospects for university-delivered transnational education, too, such as at international branch campuses. Despite Australia’s success over several decades, there may be little practical option to grow new largescale provision overseas in the immediate term. Existing markets may become increasingly challenging as more countries and multi-national companies look for new opportunities outside their own markets. For Australian international and transnational education, the future may be uneven. One factor affecting this is the growth of online study. Growing student acceptance of online study Many, if not most, large institutions in major higher education systems have made this shift to more online study with a likely growth in students’ acceptance of it, even if it does not remain their preference. Yet, the perception of online course delivery as inferior to face-to-face delivery will likely remain for many students, as will concerns that it is not equivalent or equally valuable to face-to-face no matter how well it is done.
