WEBINAR PANEL — Does Covid-19 Mean the End of International Education as We Know It?
- Brendan Cantwell, Michigan State University
- Vivienne Stern, UUKi
- Ly Tran, Deakin University
- CHAIR: Simon Marginson, CGHE Director & University of Oxford
Until Covid-19 hit more than six million students crossed borders each year across the world for tertiary and higher education programmes of one year or more, and there was a large traffic in shorter visits by students, researchers and academic staff. The pandemic stopped international mobility in its tracks, leaving thousands of current students stranded, overturning the new cohort arriving in countries that began their academic year in March, and imposing what seems likely to be an online only start in many countries which begin the next academic year in September/October. While East Asian nations such as South Korea, Singapore, China and Vietnam have managed the pandemic relatively well, all victories over the virus are provisional, while in major destination countries including the US, UK and Russia there are continuing health risks. In student source countries in South Asia and Africa populations are severely affected both healthwise and economically by Covid-19. The picture is uneven in Europe, but it will be some time before Erasmus returns to normal. Even in countries where Covid-19 appears to be under control, each planeload or trainload of students from countries still affected will pose challenges for international education.
Across the world institutions have done remarkable things in developing online programmes at need – though while these can provide a formative intellectual experience, they do not offer the intense immersion in knowledge, the cohort experience, the broader vocational and life-skill learning, and the cross-cultural encounter including immersion in the host country language and environment, that face to face international higher education ought to provide. Family capacity to invest in international education has also been severely disrupted by the pandemic. When a broadly accessed vaccine rolls out and the world returns to a more stable condition, will international education spring back as it was? Or will the role of online education increase and travelling reduce permanently, as many are predicting? Will the balance of numbers in the different student source countries change and will the map of provider countries alter? What will be the fallout in those countries and institutions that are especially dependent on international students in financial terms? With ‘buyers’ scarcer than before, what kind of experience will higher education institutions provide? Will the shared experience of the pandemic ultimately bring people closer together in and through international education, or will it lead to a world where mobility, understanding and cooperation are reduced?
The webinar brings together a panel of three leading experts on international higher education, from UK/Europe, the Americas and Australia/East Asia, where the pandemic been equally disruptive but the effects in international education are playing out differently – and a participant audience from across the world.
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Brendan Cantwell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Coordinator of the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education unit at Michigan State University. He is also Joint Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Higher Education. Brendan is interested in the social, political, and economic conditions of higher education in the United States and globally.
Vivienne Stern is the Director of Universities UK International (UUKi) which represents UK universities around the world and works to enable them to flourish internationally. Vivienne has over 20 years’ experience of working in higher education policy and politics at national and international level. Prior to her role in UUKi, Vivienne was Head of Political Affairs at Universities UK, and led the sector’s response to several major pieces of legislation relating to universities. Before that she worked for the Chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, and as policy specialist working on topics including quality, student experience, innovation and university-business links. She is a member of several Boards and advisory committees, including the Education Sector Advisory group of the Department for Education /Department for International Trade; the Board of UKRI’s Fund for International Collaboration; the British Council’s Education Advisory Group. She is a graduate in English Literature from the University of Cambridge.
Ly Thi Tran (PhD) is a Professor in the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Her research focuses on internationalisation of education, international students, international graduate employability, learning abroad, and Vietnamese higher education. Her books and papers have won a range of awards, including the International Education Association of Australia Excellence Award for Best Practice/Innovation in International Education for the book on new pedagogies in teaching international students published by ACER Press.
Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/OFSRE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and Lead Researcher with Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the contributions of higher education and higher education as a public and common good, and higher education and social inequality. At Oxford he leads the MSc (Education) subject on ‘Global higher education’. His recent books include Higher Education in Federal Countries, edited with Martin Carnoy, Isak Froumin and Oleg Leshukov (Sage, 2018) and High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018).
