Page 155 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

remotely part of the time. The pandemic has made possible
something that seemed unimaginable on such a scale just a few

months ago.

Could something similar, and equally disruptive, happen with
higher education? Might it be possible to imagine a world in which
far fewer students will receive their education on a campus? In
May or June of 2020, in the midst of lockdowns, students were

forced to study and graduate remotely, many wondering at the
end of the term if they will physically return to their campus in
September. At the same time, universities started to slash their

budgets, pondering what this unprecedented situation might entail
for their business model. Should they go online or should they
not? In the pre-pandemic era, most universities offered some
courses online but always refrained from fully embracing online
education. The most renowned universities refused to offer virtual

degrees, fearful that this might dilute their exclusive offering, make
some of their faculty redundant and even threaten the very
existence of the physical campus. In the post-pandemic era, this

will change. Most universities – particularly the expensive ones in
the Anglo-Saxon world – will have to alter their business model or
go bankrupt because COVID-19 has made it obsolete. If online
teaching were to continue in September (and possibly beyond),
many students would not tolerate paying the same high tuition for

virtual education, demanding a reduction in fees or deferring their
enrolment. In addition, many potential students would question the
pertinence of disbursing prohibitive costs for higher education in a

world marred by high levels of unemployment. A potential solution
could lie in a hybrid model. Universities would then massively
expand online education while maintaining an on-campus
presence for a different population of students. In a few instances,
this has already been done with success, notably at Georgia Tech

for an online master’s degree in Computer Science. [140] By going
down this hybrid route, universities would expand access while
reducing costs. The question, though, is whether this hybrid model

is scalable and reproducible for universities that do not have the
resources to invest in technology and in an exclusive library of
top-notch content. But the hybrid character of online education

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