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Global education in the face of a pandemic: Lessons learned
An enduring digital divide must be addressed to ensure all have access to education both during and after the age of COVID-19.
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Distance learning: A student sits at a table in Café Museum in Vienna, Austria, on Feb. 1. The café has been kept open to students during the pandemic.- (AFP/AFP/Alex Halada )
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peaking to a virtual audience during the Milken Institute’s 2020 Global Conference, Carol Christ, the Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, stated unequivocally that dependence on travel was the one issue higher education had to resolve in the coming decade.
Indeed, for many of the 5.3 million higher education students studying internationally in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it numerous financial, mental, and political challenges. Worries of deglobalization have also complicated the situation. Testament to this, the recent 2020 Open Doors report produced by the Institute of International Education found that the pandemic caused a 16 percent decline in international students studying at United States institutions (both online and in-person) during the Fall 2020 semester.
Despite these difficulties, we know from first-hand experience including at New York University Abu Dhabi and in our work across the Indo-Pacific region that international education can be a crucial ingredient for success in our global age.
Fortunately, travelling and studying abroad are not the only ways to acquire the core skills associated with international education. Students, institutions, businesses, and policymakers can all play a role in advocating for global education and fostering the right environments for intercultural learning even when travel restrictions seemingly limit the opportunities to “go global.”
Students looking for horizon-broadening alternatives to Netflix and other local streaming services are in luck. Just as technology has helped transform shopping and healthcare through e-commerce and telemedicine respectively, so too have technological advances allowed learning and cultural institutions to expand their reach and impact.
Look both to home and abroad. Singapore’s Asian Civilizations Museum, for example, is one of many museums offering virtual tours of their collections, allowing viewers a chance to learn more about Asian cultures and histories. International education is also about acquiring the empathy, open-mindedness, and emotional intelligence necessary for dialogue across differences. A range of organizations can again offer guidance.
One example is the array of helpful digital resources provided by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington DC to help inform discussions on race. Similarly, the online offerings of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative build on its commitment to challenge racial and economic injustice.
Studying abroad has also often been a chance to immerse oneself in a new language. A second language can be a valuable tool for understanding another culture. Online learning options have emerged as virtual substitutes, albeit certainly not as compelling as ordering a bowl of noodles while trying out a local language in Southeast Asia.
Here, mobile apps also have made picking up a new language a little easier. Platforms such as Duolingo offer gamified language learning, and Busuu even gives learners feedback from native speakers.
But students are not the only ones responsible for maintaining a global mindset. Academic institutions and businesses, along with government, can play a key role in ensuring that students have access to the necessary support. An enduring digital divide must be addressed to ensure all have access to education both during and after the age of COVID-19.
Global universities like New York University in Abu Dhabi and George Mason University Korea have stepped up to coordinate community funds for students and staff who were affected by the pandemic.
COVID-19 has also left a mental health crisis in its wake, and many institutions have recognized the toll that pandemic uncertainty and social isolation has had on students. To spur philanthropic efforts and advance lessons learned, the Center for Strategic Philanthropy at the Milken Institute has been working with key philanthropists and stakeholders to understand how to further support students’ social and emotional well-being.
Beyond an important, understandable focus on quality higher education, business leaders and policymakers also have an important role to play in pushing for access to education. COVID-19 has made salient numerous longstanding inequalities in education access, and many countries had already begun bridging this digital divide.
Teachers and students in Indonesia, for example, may draw on internet subsidies from the government, as well as free internet packages from companies including Telkomsel to facilitate their education. Similar strategies can be used to fill hardware gaps. For example, Singapore’s Ministry of Education has loaned out laptops and tablets to students in need.
To be sure, as much as these recommendations can help us further the goals of a global education, there is no real substitute to travelling. The lived experience of cross-cultural understanding cannot be replaced by a Zoom or Skype call.
Yet, the challenge today is not to propose permanent alternatives to global education. Rather, in Asia and elsewhere, our shared goal is to identify and scale up sustainable and resilient ways for our nations’ youth to maintain a global outlook as international student mobility gradually recovers during the next 5 years. Such strategies will be especially useful as we move toward alternative financial and residential models for higher education.
Across every sector of society—public, private and not-for-profit—we all have a role to play in ensuring we do not lose any momentum in advancing education and shared community. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” Nelson Mandela famously said. “The power of education extends beyond the development of skills we need for economic success. It can contribute to nation-building and reconciliation.” In line with this, while the pandemic undoubtedly took a toll on international education, the Open Doors report also revealed that the 2019-2020 academic year still saw more than a million international students in the US for the fifth consecutive year.
International education is not just about getting on a plane. It is a mindset. And that is a lesson learned that endures in the face of COVID-19. Even in the near-term absence of plane flights and robust study abroad programs, we can indeed each go global from home.
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Curtis S. Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is the inaugural Asia fellow of the Milken Institute. Athena Thomas, a recent graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi, works on Policy & Programs at the Milken Institute Asia Center in Singapore.
