The sudden interruption of face-to-face activities at Higher-Education institutes (HEIs) due to the pandemic, led to a vast postponement of operations, affecting their financial sustainability and the capability to stay functioning. The urgency of an undetermined shutting shaken the entire Education system.
Remote classes affected students’ daily patterns, financial responsibilities, costs, the continuity of learning and international mobility. The quality of the teaching diminished when substituting it by urgent follow-ups; there is general feeling rounding about to better abandoning the academic year and probably deserting the system.
As we gradually walk out of the crisis governments must consider HEIs as being central for the economic and social recovery to guarantee continuity, fairness and financial sustainability. Private HEIs are at a critical point given the current-difficult times; cash flows from funding or tuitions will wash out or might even end; so, they cannot guarantee virtual teaching continuity at most levels because eventually will have to stop activities.
The UNESCO and the International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, IESALC 2020 launched a document on Higher Education (HE) in the face of COVID-19 and the re-opening of classes.
Expectations on the future of Education
· Consider current medium and long-term effects of the pandemic on the different players in the area.
· The changing of the educational modal, lasting the rest of the escolar year, will cause a diminishing or even non-existent of fees.
· Redesigned-vision planning will complement conventional-strategic plan.
· In-person/on-campus teaching will not initiate until the spring 2021 semester.
· Out-of-date business approaches will stop functioning.
· Several HEIs worldwide will be forced to close up.
· Private, small and poorly capable colleges will need to merge with other institutions.
· The expanding loss of public funds, the growth lacking quality, the misproportion in access and accomplishment.
· The government’ requires revising official documents of HEIs in the region continually.
Talking about Latin America and the Caribbean, entering a distance study phase requires a high degree of quality connectivity. However, only one in two homes are connected. The contradiction is the number of mobile lines is exceptionally high; in many cases, is more than one per person. It is, without doubt, an opportunity that HEIs should take advantage of, and focus on their mobile phones as a solution. Some issues to consider:
- Entering a distance study phase requires a high degree of quality connectivity.
- Only one in two homes count on a connection in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Distance Education requires access to technologies and platforms, and from institutions real technological-pedagogical capacity to offer quality without leaving out any students and institutions.
- The unpredictable emergency caused a change in teaching, so they should, right away, plan a next-term in online Education with better pedagogical and resources support.
- Teachers in temporary service constitute a vulnerable sector since they are at more risk of unemployment, given the type of their jobs.
- Digital gap menaces the permanence of those who do not have skills or means to carry on with classes in a virtual model.
UNESCO recommendations
· Guarantee the right to HE of all individuals in a structure of equal opportunities and non-discrimination as a priority, through monitoring frameworks.
· Arrange for a well-defined supervisory setting to the re-opening of schoolrooms that builds safety measures.
· Encourage a national compromise for reassuring recuperation and innovation.
· Set suitable financing and incentives.
· HEIs should do long-term suspension and efforts to ensure training steadiness, making sure equality, operating well-organised governance, supervising and holding up processes.
· Reinforce learning among disadvantaged students focus on the educational-economical-socio-emotional needs of those students struggling to carry on their training in non-conventional modalities. Governments and HEIs must create collaborative procedures and proposals for economic and social recuperation. And commit to international cooperation.
· Line up your activities to the critical initiative of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by creating meaningful resilience when dealing with a future crisis.
· All the team members should be ready for the re-opening of their institutions in the middle of an economic recession with cutbacks in public financing in Education.
· Document current pedagogical practices and outcomes; grow-up digitisation, hybridisation, and omnichannel learning, and learn from mistakes
· Encourage inner reflection on the transformed teaching-learning pattern.
New opportunities to consider
· Change competition for collaboration to involve all members of the academy.
· Create a vision statement for your institution.
· Permanent recruitment actions will allow candidates greater flexibility in HEIs enrolment and selection.
· New business procedures and financing options will bring stability to the 'bottom line.’
· Set up a year-long academic programme bringing together the best of online and in-person learning.
· Establish a year-long recruitment programme for both domestic and international students.
· Design separate courses for home and online students.
· Create a structured gap year, reducing the number of on-campus courses and increasing the online courses.
· Allow your students to take courses one at a time designed for three or four weeks.
· And offering a modified tutorial model of instruction allowing students to take a typical online lecture session.
· Create new business approaches and financing options; resolve issues thinking from the end backwards. Base your choices on data.
· Create new academic, financial and recruitment models.
· Re-align both academic and financial priorities to re-entering a post-crisis world, not in isolation but collaboration.
Conclusions: how Higher-Education will look like after the pandemic and your vision of possible students are both related to your university’ background. McKinsey & Company suggests the creation of integrated-nerve-centres to support when institutions must react to foremost-speedy-disruptive calamities.
Are your ready to considering a merge with other institutions to stay alive, to cost-cutting, to preserve a high-level of Education in your institute, to rewriting the new ruling for recruitment and enrolment to retaining or gaining potential students?
