Coronavirus: A Harsh Reality for Universities

It was one beautiful morning; students were rushing to their classes at the University. Teachers were also getting ready to give a lecture and have a fruitful session with the students. Universities were developing progressively in order to produce quality students. To everyone’s utter surprise, every institution, including the universities, encountered something unexpected, and that is a new pandemic called Coronavirus (also known as COVID-19). To curb the pandemic’s impact, universities had to stop their classes, and students were bound to stay confined at their home. Subsequently, tutors and students, especially Universities, are feeling the heat of this virus in terms of economic support, interruption in the regular curriculum, and many aspects. How much virus has impacted on the universities, you may ask. Well, looking at some insights will illustrate the situation clearly.

• Online Learning Adaptability Crisis

As the virus has to lead all the universities to stop their physical classes, they are now moving toward conducting online courses with a view of continuing students’ study. However, while reputed universities have adopted this online learning process, many other small or large universities are struggling to carry out online classes effectively owing to several factors. Lack of proper and adequate knowledge on the online curriculum obstructs tutors from outlining the course efficiently and ensures it is competent enough.

• Education Quality

Providing quality education is always a university’s top-notch priority and motive because they are responsible for ensuring students’ bright future. As most universities have started taking online classes, many students and guardians are questioning the educational qualities. It is true in some cases, as many universities around the world are not fully-equipped or trained to conduct online classes with maximum impact. Although online courses have versatile advantages, traditional classrooms would never exist if they had equal influence. Point right? Subsequently, students are not getting that much quality education that they need. Besides, if you consider the practical classes involving physical attendance to learn something with maximum effect, you will see they are unable to learn like that as they may not have essential equipment at their home. For instance, medical science, engineering, computer science students need practical classes, and physical attendance to understand the lessons properly. Eventually, Coronavirus is also degrading the education quality of the universities.

• Economic Devastation

Students are the primary source of a university unless it is a government-owned University. Owning the lockdown during this Coronavirus, classes got cancelled. Meanwhile, there was always hope that Coronavirus would go away like a miracle within one or two months, but it never happened. As a result, guardians and students are willing to pay the due payment of universities as most of them claim that they couldn’t sit for classes or exams. Under such circumstances, universities have no other options to accept students’ or guardians’ proposals to cancel or reduce the tuition fees for the betterment of them. On the other hand, universities running income was a halt, and many universities are now closing down because they are unable to pay their tutors and staff. Apart from private universities, public universities could not escape from such devastation.

Let’s take Kenya’s public universities to illustrate how Coronavirus has badly battered the universities. On June 11, 2020, University World News shared, “Kenya has slashed funding to its public universities by US$400 million in the coming financial year which begins on July 1 as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to bite the East African economy.” Like the Kenya government, other countries are also cutting down the funds to revive the overall economic wheel like before.

In a global sense, according to University World News, universities will have to make do with US$1.13 billion, down from the US$1.53 billion the government planned to spend on institutions earlier in the year.