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COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated an overhaul of the education system.

- RAJAN SAXENA

Today, the world is disrupted by two significant forces—technology and COVID 19—which challenges human imagination and capabilities to fight back. The severity of the ongoing pandemic together with governance failure is felt far and wide across regions, demographics, and socioeconomic sections of the population. While COVID has hit the entire global population and world economy, its impact is felt much more severely in developing nations and densely populated emerging nations like India. Given the heightened uncertainty post the second wave in India, it is not surprising that anxiety and hope today battle each other. It is now certain that institutions, policies, and processes need a reset, and education is no exception to this.

Faced with the suddenness and the gravity of COVID in March 2020, higher education institutions were forced to close their campuses and send students, faculty, and staff back home. There was uncertainty over the duration of the lockdown and what was to be done to prevent the academic term getting washed out. In such a scenario, transitioning to digital mode was the only alternative. For institutions digitalising their academic processes such as course design, delivery, student assessment, internships, and student engagement were challenges. Management education, nay higher education itself, needed (and still needs) reimagination, innovation, and integration of changes in industry, society, and technology in a post-COVID world.

Impact of Covid

Unemployment grows, income declines