Issue #105 Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education from an Equity Perspective

Even before COVID-19, futurologists maintained that a number of disruptions to higher education were combining to create cataclysmic scenarios for universities. These claims inform an increasingly dominant policy and management discourse about the need for rapid and radical transformations in academic conventions, business models, and working practices. However, what is needed are evidence-based and iterative approaches to imagining the future, drawing on universities’ own experiments with new forms of higher education. There is nothing like a good crisis to excite ideas about different futures and new beginnings. 8 N U M B E R 1 0 5 _W iN t E R 2 0 2 1 THE POST-COVID-19 WORLD | iNtERNAtiONAL HiGHER EDUCAtiON A Flawed Methodology These self-appointed experts on higher education largely draw on interviews and surveys of university heads, senior policy makers, and key stakeholders such as business leaders and graduate employers. They rarely seek the views of staff or students working and studying in HEIs, let alone consult the existing academic research on developments and trends within higher education systems throughout the world. Nevertheless, this futurology circulates among influential networks and begins to inform current strategy making within institutions and policy making at state, national, and global levels. So, it should not simply be dismissed as speculative marketing, but evaluated as a discourse with influence and material impact on behavior and decision-making. Cataclysmic futurology caricatures existing models of public higher education. Universities are said to be traditional, “twentieth-century” institutions that are academic-orientated rather than studentor customer-focused. They are also characterized as too similar to each other and dominated by an ageing academic workforce that is reluctant to change. The futurologists almost exclusively cite previous management consultancy reports, policy documents, and newspaper articles. They recycle myths and folklore that have become all too familiar as a result, but frankly, do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Academic Work by Evidence One area in which evidence is mostly lacking concerns the actual work that people do inside universities. Futurologists ignore much of the existing research evidence about academic work. For example, they assume the academic profession is still largely homogenous and the vast majority of academics are in permanent positions, undertaking both teaching and research. The evidence suggests otherwise. There is burgeoning research literature on the diversification of the academic “profession,” the wide range of entrants (including from other professions), the different career paths that they take, and the erosion of the linear academic career. Further, part-time, fixed-term, contingent, teaching-only, and nontenure track faculty have grown significantly in the United Kingdom, Australia, and United States in recent years. An Evidence-Based Approach to Looking Ahead In contrast to these accounts, we should start with an accurate analysis of the present, based on the best current research evidence and analysis of trends in the recent, mid-, and long-term past. This must include rigorous analysis of existing examples of effective and successful practice that could offer embryonic illustrations of developments for the future. The European Union-sponsored “Universities of the Future” program and the University of Lincoln’s 21st Century Lab are two examples. More evidence-based and iterative approaches to imagining the future can ensure that we evaluate the full range of factors influencing current trends, including sociocultural, political, and environmental (and even quasilegal) factors, as well as economic and technological factors. We can then avoid reductionist approaches that privilege particular activities and deterministic assumptions that prioritize specific outcomes. Is the Pandemic the Ultimate Disrupter? So, is the pandemic the ultimate disrupter? It is certainly providing plenty of grist for the futurologists’ mill. We are told that “these are unprecedented times” and, indeed, it is rare for the higher education sector as a whole to contract, and for so many individual universities to be downsizing. However, there have been disruptions before—wars, including civil wars, nationalist movements, invasions, mass migrations, all of which have seriously impacted on universities in various parts of the world. There have been retrenchments in the past: Following the financial crisis of 2008–2009, there was contraction in many national HE systems, with staff moving to shorter working weeks and taking pay cuts, and voluntary and compulsory redundancy schemes, in exchange for the job security of the majority who remained. We are also told that “there will be no return to the old normal,” but most universities are currently concerned with shortto medium-term survival and not altering their business models and modus operandi too much, for fear of collapse. A crisis is not a good time to start making a new strategy, even though the old strategy is probably in 9 N U M B E R 10 5 _W iN t E R 2 0 2 1 iNtERNAtiONAL HiGHER EDUCAtiON | INTERNATIONAL ISSUES tatters. When universities had the money to innovate, they felt that they did not need to; but now when they do need to renew their activities, they do not have the funds to invest in managing the necessary change. None of this is good for management consultants, of course, who will suffer as a result of the contraction in universities’ finances. So, maybe it is time for universities to take charge of their own futures.  Developing System-Wide Approaches to Teaching Excellence