Financial Problems Faced by Higher Education Due to the Shift of Online Education

Financial Problems Faced by Higher Education Due to the Shift of Online Education

The outbreak of the COVID-19 had lead high schools to shut down completely. To continue the education and learning process, institutions have shifted their traditional learning system to online learning. Classes and lecture halls went silent, and laboratories tend to sit idle and operate with minimal staff. Due to the pandemic crisis, institutions faced challenges like skyrocketing tuition costs and perceptions of elitism. The scariest part is that these changes might be permanent and introduce Online Education.

Universities can only have fewer international students, and they might require refashioning themselves to stay more relevant to national and local communities. High schools or universities are more likely to survive the fare best that is powerful and rich.

What Higher Educational Schools face?

They face both internal and external pressure to generate income, make effective use of digital technology, and educate a continuum of learners. Due to the growth of online learning, teaching and learning may disregard. They are forced to partner with a wide range of private companies to reach out to new learners and commercialize education provision. Online learning has become one of the essential teaching tools in academia, and it has grown exponentially.

Due to the major changes faced by universities, their financial outlook is looking quite dire. Since 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge may put online courses for free. Still, academicians teaching in the present semester are having a hard time moving their materials online. Institutions are learning so hard that delivering course materials through digital platforms might not be enough to teach students.

Financial Budget

Wealthy private universities like Maryland and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore may expect to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in the next fiscal year. The biggest problem will the drop in revenue from international students. Most Australian universities heavily rely on tuition fees paid by students from China. As a result, they may expect to lose Aus $3 billion to $5 billion. Such losses will concentrate at research-intensive universities like the University of Sydney. This is because income from international students often subsidizes results.

The financial shortfall faced by universities may lead universities around the world, especially the smaller ones to close permanently. On the other hand, in a post-pandemic world, it may drive funding agencies and universities to focus on infrastructure and research projects that may most relevant to national interests.

Even students are facing several problems during online learning. It is unfair that some people have to struggle so much to access information and knowledge during online learning. Unequal access to learning materials and online learning opportunities is widening the gap. Students in high schools and colleges continue to be cut off from online classes as their parents are already under a financial crisis.

Role of Students

More students are seeking assignment solver help from paraphrasing tools when they cannot get connected to the educators. The pandemic has taken a toll on their learning progress. Faculty members have learnt about these difficulties students face mostly from their classmates since they mostly remain hesitant to share about their situation. Institutions are doing everything to help the students, but they are already under a crisis.

It was quite clear that not a single campus was prepared financially or otherwise for an emergency of this magnitude. It is, after all, an unprecedented event for modern times. Institutions vulnerable to natural disasters keep an emergency plan so that they do not have to face any kind of crisis. Unfortunately, those plans did not cover unique challenges like the pandemic.

The transition to online education is also not easy. It involves expenses like the purchase of an expanded Zoom camera, licenses for labs and the requirement of faculty to well-trained on the new technology. However, if we try seeing from a financial perspective, expenses involved in the transition to online education were a lesser concern than refunds for dining plans, housing, and losses in state appropriations.

WRAPPING UP

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to higher education. The financial problem due to the shift to online education is real. The pandemic had been a stress test on the higher education community. Only time will tell how much time schools will require to overcome the long-term impacts resulting from the pandemic.

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