Page 51 - EducationWorld Feb 2021 Low

tial experiences represent essential and formative elements
of the undergraduate experiences. The consensus is that
vacation resorts seem unlikely to attract customers beyond
wealthy and unfocused students. College Board data also
show that US colleges charge an average of about $6,000
(Rs.4.38 lakh) per semester for room and board, about half
The U Experience’s advertised price.
GLOBAL
Get girlhood right!

OR MUCH OF HUMAN HISTORY AND IN many
places, girls were considered property. Or, at best,
Fsubordinate people, required to obey their fathers
until the day they had to start obeying their husbands. Few Uganda girl children: pandemic impact danger
people thought it worthwhile to educate them. Even fewer
imagined that a girl could grow up to govern Germany, run phase been recognised as the most important for brain de-
the IMF or invent a vaccine. velopment after infancy. Get it right and billions of girls will
In most of the world that vision of girlhood now seems have a better shot at fulfilling their potential. Get it wrong
not merely old-fashioned but unimaginably remote. In most and they will live poorer, shorter lives, less able to stand
OECD countries, parents now treat their daughters as well up for themselves, more vulnerable to coercion, and more
as they do their sons, and invest as much in their future. likely to pass these disadvantages on to the next generation.
In field after field girls have caught up with boys. Globally, So it’s important to get girlhood right.
young women now outnumber young men at university.
The speed of change has been blistering. Fifty years ago AUSTRALIA
only 49 percent of primary school-age girls in lower-middle- End of lectures era?
income countries were in school, compared with 71 per-
cent of boys; today the share of both is about 90 percent. In FACE-TO-FACE LECTURES ARE UNLIKELY to
1998, only half the world’s secondary school-age girls were return to several Australian campuses once Co-
enrolled; today 66 percent. Over the same period rates of vid-19 has been vanquished, raising questions
illiteracy fell from one in five young women aged 15-24 to about whether the pandemic will have a decisive impact
one in ten, bringing them roughly on a par with young men. globally on the long-running debate about the future of
When societies handle girlhood well, the knock-on ef- large-group teaching.
fects are astounding. A girl who finishes secondary school Perth’s Curtin University proposes to scrap all lectures
is less likely to become a child bride or a teenage mother. by the end of this year, starting with those involving 100
Education boosts earning power and widens choices, so she people or more. They will be replaced by ‘CurtinTalks’ —
is less likely to be poor or to suffer domestic abuse. She will short videos of 10-15 minutes, each based on a single topic
earn almost twice as much as a girl without schooling. A or concept, with students expected to watch two or three a
recent study by Citigroup and Plan International estimates week for each subject.
that, if a group of emerging economies ensured that 100 Neighbouring Murdoch University has similar ideas,
percent of their girls completed secondary school, it could with Kylie Readman, the pro vice-chancellor (education),
lead to a lasting boost to their GDP of 10 percent by 2030. giving teaching staff 18 months to “transition away” from
But the Covid-19 pandemic could hobble progress for lectures. “We are not going to be having large-scale face-to-
girls in poor countries, or even reverse it. During previous face lectures any more,” she told Times Higher Education
disasters, they have often suffered most. When Ebola forced (THE). Instead, information previously delivered through
West African schools to close in 2014, many girls dropped lectures will be curated, squeezed into “mini lectures” and
out, never went back and ended up pregnant or as child la- integrated with online activities. Whatever online lectures
bour. UNICEF warns that something similar could happen remain will be timetabled, recorded and broadcast in a
with Covid-19 — but on a larger scale. Studies suggest that in ‘synchronous’ mode that allows for interaction between
the next decade 13 million child marriages that would have students.
been averted may go ahead, and an extra 2 million girls may Universities elsewhere are thinking along similar lines,
suffer genital mutilation. after being forced to switch to online learning under social
Adolescence is a crucial juncture for girls. It’s when many distancing restrictions. Many have found that small-group
health problems emerge or are averted; and many social seminars have translated better to this model than lectures.
ones, too, from truancy to self-harm. Only recently has this Recently installed University of Leeds (UK) vice-chancel-

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