Page 70 - EducationWorld June 2020

International News

UNITED STATES dents unwilling or unable to return to their campuses in the
Financial turmoil season fall (autumn).

UNITED KINGDOM
Social sciences major role

THE VOICES OF EPIDEMIOLOGISTS AND pub-
lic health experts have inevitably dominated ini-
tial responses to the coronavirus crisis. This has
meant that other disciplines have been sidelined and risk
being shut out altogether from the thinking processes in-
forming decisions about how to move forward.
So what can those in the social sciences bring to the table,
both at the present time and when we “return to normal”
and seek to rebuild our societies? And what will Covid-19
mean for such disciplines in the longer term? Some broad
answers are provided by Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor
of the history of the church at Oxford University, who also
US students: fee refund lawsuits serves as vice president for public engagement at the British
Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities
US COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE STEPPING UP and the social sciences.
demands for partial tuition refunds for the spring “It’s the humanities and social sciences that are best
semester, with a growing number pursuing legal placed to steer society in refocusing its priorities once the
action against institutions they accuse of overstating virus- heroic work of medical science has provided us with a work-
related financial losses. The students have filed lawsuits able relationship with the current pandemic. We can’t go
against more than a dozen universities, in some cases citing on as we were… The social and political sciences will show
the institutions’ own data showing they had been charging us how human behaviour of the present day has led us into
existing online students far less for the same courses. folly,” he says.
Aided by a handful of law firms, the students are pur- Political science in particular, says Matthew Flinders,
suing elite private institutions as well as smaller public vice president of the Political Studies Association of the
schools, in some cases citing their own advertised rates for United Kingdom and professor of politics at the University
online versions of their in-person classes. of Sheffield, is “a discipline that goes to the heart of funda-
“Every business in America is having to tighten its belt,” mental questions about public risks and the role and reach
says Roy Willey, a lawyer with the Anastopoulo Law Firm in of the state — and so the demands placed on the discipline
South Carolina that has already sued at least 15 colleges and by potential research users, future students and society are
is considering taking action against dozens more. “And the likely to grow”. “The challenge, however, is that if Covid-19
only question is whether colleges and universities should has done anything, it has revealed the weakness of thinking
be any different.” in mono-disciplinary terms and also the limits of thinking
Universities are generally refraining from commenting about scholarship as still wedded to the lone-scholar model.
on their own legal cases, but higher education leaders have Massive opportunities will fall to those disciplines and in-
repeatedly emphasised the financial losses being suffered stitutions that recognise that shift and seize the agenda,”
across academia because of the need to suddenly shut down says Flinders.
their campuses and send students home to avoid spread-
ing Covid-19. Congress so far has approved $14 billion Public-private schools divide
(Rs.105,952 crore) in emergency aid for universities and
their students. But higher education lobbyists say the true UCIAN STIOPU WATCHES HIS SON CYCLE round
need is many times that. Central Park in Peterborough. Before the government
Several US colleges have already refunded shares of room Limposed a lockdown, he says, the boy would spend
and board charges for the spring semester, at a budgetary about nine hours a day at primary school, allowing him to
hit that their main lobby group, the American Council on go to work in a prison. And now? Stiopu’s son reports that
Education (ACE), has estimated at $8 billion (Rs.60,000 his teachers are setting a bit of work online. It is “easy” and
crore). he dashes it off in less than two hours.
Universities are warning that even deeper losses await in Stiopu might be showing off, but probably not much.
the months ahead, as the nation’s surging unemployment Two months after schools closed, it is becoming clear that
rates translate into deep governmental budget cuts and stu- most children of all ages are doing little schoolwork, and

70 EDUCATIONWORLD JUNE 2020