Covid-19 and Higher Education

The last week or so have been challenging for the Higher Education Sector in Malaysia. Indeed, it has been challenging for most sectors in Malaysia; and across the world, but this short series of articles will focus on Higher Education in Malaysia, with the occasional global reference where relevant.

On the 18 Mar 2020, the Malaysian government announced something it called the “Restricted Movement Order” (RMO). In effect this was a lock down, although we do not use this term. Nothing unusual in this, well not in the current global context, as many other countries had previously done this (e.g. Italy) or followed Malaysia shortly after (e.g. the UK).

The RMO came into force on 18 Mar 2020, and was due to end on 31 Mar. It quickly became apparent that it would need to be extended and it was no surprise to anybody when the government announced (in my view sensibly), on 25 Mar 2020, that the RMO would be extended until the 14 Apr 2020. The name also changed from “Restricted Movement Order” to “Movement Control Order” (MCO), which is now the recognised term for Malaysian’s version of its lock down.

This series of reflective article will not focus on the lock down, but the effect it has had on the Higher Education sector, as well as those that work within it. It will also look at the challenges and opportunities that Covid-19 has presented.

The one thing that Covid-19 will do is to change the Higher Education sector forever. It was inevitable that the Higher Education would be disrupted, in the same way that the retail sector was disrupted by Amazon, the hotel sector was disrupted by Airbnb and Uber disrupted the taxi sector. The difference is that these sectors were disrupted by technological advances, but the Higher Education will (has) be disrupted by Covid-19.

Once the world emerges from the other side of Covid-19, I cannot see that Higher Education will return to where it was before. Too much will have changed and to go back to what was normal before Covid-19 will be impossible. Indeed, it will not be sensible.

As an example, the transition to more online learning was an inevitability, yet Higher Education was sluggish in making this transition. A few years ago, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were being cast as the great change in online delivery and there were predictions that bricks and mortar universities were staring into the abyss.

That has not really happened as how to monetise MOOCs, how best to deliver online, how to assess students and how to retain students were among the reasons why MOOCs failed to be the sector disruptor. It is a perhaps a little strange that Covid-19 had made us address all these issues, and in a matter of weeks, if not days.

Now that the sector has been forced to face up to these issues, I do not see the sector backtracking once we start to recover from the significant consequences of Covid-19.

In this series of article, I’ll discuss some of the issues that have had to be addressed, as well as how our working lives have changed.

At the University of Nottingham Malaysia, we are already looking at to see if any of the enforced changes that we have had to implement can be used after our working life returns to something which we used to think of as normality. However, I think what we thought of as normal, can no longer be normal post Covid-19. In my view, the Higher Education Sector, across the world, has changed forever and it may not seem like it now, but that will be a good thing.