This conversation seems to be popping up in every one of my networks. We can not expect to return to what was. We must strive to transform our future.
If your institution expects life to return to normal post-pandemic, disappointment lies ahead.
Even with vaccines and a presidential administration strongly committed to traditional higher education, there are no guarantees that higher education as we knew it will bounce back — and that’s OK.
We must design for greater flexibility. Now that nontraditional students represent the new student majority, we need to offer an educational experience that better meets their needs. That will certainly mean making more courses available online and offering courses at times that will make it easier for students to combine their studies with work and caregiving responsibilities. It will require us to double down on the kinds of student services that pay off: intensive, targeted advising; degree mapping and career planning; bridge programs, supplemental instruction, tutoring and grants targeting retention and completion. It also means offering more on-campus jobs.
Rather than viewing the pandemic wholly negatively, we’d do better to consider it a hard-earned learning experience that has opened our eyes, challenged us and driven us to make long-overdue reforms.
As Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin states, “We’d be remiss if we failed to learn the pandemic’s lessons.”
