How Will the Pandemic Change Higher Education

Notes from Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 2020 edition, as compiled by David Johnston, Director of CHERE

1.      Pandemic might permanently change higher ed – its culture, role in society and economy, and the business models that sustain it.  (CHE conclusion)

2.      Colleges will cut costs and scale back risky growth strategies, especially in light of declining number of high school grads.  (Robert Kelton, Seton Hall U.)

3.      We can, and must replicate the vibrancy of campus life – beyond bricks and mortar.  (Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern U.)

4.      The pandemic will hasten the decline of the college town as online learning takes center stage.  (Sheila Liming, Univ. of North Dakota)

5.      The “managers” won’t save us (tenured faculty, high paid administrators).  No one will.  “Sustainability vs. digital learning,”  innovation by adjunct faculty.  Market economics rule.  (Marc Bousquet, author of How the University Works: Higher Education and he Low-Wage Nation.)

6.      We must reimagine what “community” looks like after fundamental disruption.  Devising new ways to challenge students online.  American higher ed will still be needed to find solutions to big problems.  (G. Gabrielle Starr, President, Pomona College)

7.      Mega-universities will do well.  The rest may struggle, especially tuition-dependent, non-elite private colleges.  The former already know how to do good online teaching; so, for them a huge business opportunity.  (Kevin Carey, New America)

8.      Colleges must step back from “self-absorption.”  Rather than set up a false choice between online and in-person instruction, we should envision a distinctively hybrid future in which the faculty will have far more freedom to develop instructional designs using both virtual and live classes.  (Patricia McGuire, President, Trinity Washington Univ.)

9.      Big-time college sports will become more valuable (as a revenue source), but at the expense of less “profitable” sports.  (Nathan Kalman Lamb, Duke Univ.)

10.  This crisis has revealed the importance of good teaching and how difficult it is.  (CHE conclusion)

11.  Let’s reclaim our moral purpose as sources of knowledge, service, and even hope.

12.  In the wake of this crisis, HBCUs must resist the pressure to minimize the presence of students on campus, especially for Black students who benefit greatly from protected grounds that are safe from the societal structures that made HBCUs necessary in the first place.  (Pearl Dowe, Emory Univ.)

13.  The development of pass-fail for most courses is welcome and overdue because frankly grades are stupid.  Students learn best when intrinsically motivated.  Grades are distracting, extrinsic factors that reduce student motivation.  Ungrading is a spectrum, including practices like making rubrics together with students; increasing students’ self-evaluation and reflection.  (Phil Christman, U. of Michigan)

14.  Build something better: time to reconsider who the leaders and innovators in higher ed really are.  This crisis has revealed how good teaching is important and how difficult it is.  (Erin Bartram, formerly a visiting assistant professor of history at U. of Hartford).

15.  Online higher ed must recognize the value of “maintainers” (e.g., IT people) to keep systems going.  (Lee Vinsel, Virginia Tech)

16.  Liberal arts education will remain essential to the success of higher ed, cultivating intellectual dexterity through reading, writing, computation and analysis, to be done online and in the classroom. (Amy Hungerford, Columbia U.)

17.  “Ajunctification” (hiring more adjunct instructors) reveals the university is on board with the already eroded sense of” labor value” in America today (i.e., the continuing threats to full-time, tenured faculty).Leif Weatherbly, NYU)

18.  Online teaching and learning, though difficult, will make higher ed more accessible to more people, breaking down the traditional walls of academia – both the physical walls and the intellectual walls.  (Agnes Collard, U. of Chicago)

19.  Make the most of a natural experiment – might coronavirus-motivated experiments bolster student success in a changing student population?  (Nathan Grawe, Carleton College)

20.  The university must decide if it is to be an employer or a gig-economy platform (CHE conclusion).

21.  Faculty have been asked to do the impossible: to maintain the university’s status quo as the world breaks apart – i.e., “skill-up overnight, simulate face-to-face classroom instruction through a Zoom screen, be flexible and responsive to needs as they come up while still putting ‘productivity’ and ‘efficiency’ first; and divert all our efforts to seamlessly making the shift toe new feel as much like the old as possible.”  We must care for our students beyond pure academics.  (Malav Kanuga, Stockman Univ.)

22.  At its best, the academy feels like a refuge from the exigencies of the rest of the world. If we survive this pandemic, we must wean ourselves off the hierarchies and inequalities of our profession.  They hinder our ability of engage with the broader public, whose support and patronage we need to survive.  (Hua Hsu, Vassar College)

23.  Traditional liberal arts education will become a luxury few are willing to pay for.  Perhaps alongside training in trades, crafts, or professions, liberal arts education will grow at the local level amid new definitions of “community.”  (Patrick Deneen , Notre Dame Univ.)

24.  The pandemic has revealed to many schools the gaps in their support services for students’ basic needs and the need for “antipoverty” tools (e.g., cash transfers to students, emergency aid).  Case management, a social work approach, is needed. (Sara Goldrick-Rab, Temple Univ.)

25.  Colleges and universities must begin to treat maintenance staff better – pay and working conditions, especially during the pandemic, instead of treating such workers as “shadows.”  (Bojohn McClung, custodian and community organizer in Seattle).

26.  Academic book editors should have more contact, less forma relationships, with academic writers.  Pandemic and increased internet use have changed that.  Editors have to reach out for ideas.  Publishing is about ideas, connections and relationships, not gatekeeping.  (Matt McAdams, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press)

27.  When colleges shut down, intellectual life goes on.  After the pandemic, intellectual life will continue – people gathering to read, talk and think together, not because they need a credential for a middle-class life, but because they desire the results such activities promise.  (Chad Wellmon, U. of Virginia)