ABSTRACT
The global pandemic has challenged everything the authors thought they knew about international higher education. In many ways, the post-World War II era defined and made possible the Golden Age of International Higher Education, especially after the Cold War, with robust systems of education across the world and scholars, students moving to new places. The future is becoming more digital, whether they like it or not, so the sector will have to adjust to new innovations. These new realities were already encroaching on the sector prior to the pandemic, and the virus just likely sped up the changes at an unprecedented rate. This post-COVID era will see more digital commuting, flexible scheduling, and less traveling for work. The ability for students and scholars moving across the world to study, learn, or research will be even more coveted, though our sector should pay careful attention to who is afforded these opportunities. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Krishna Bista, Ryan M. Allen, and Roy Y. Chan;individual chapters, the contributors.
ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter responds to the growing need for new insights and perspectives to improve global student mobility policy and practice in the era of COVID-19. Specifically, this chapter gives an overview of the book and draws an outline of the impacts for global mobility in the field of comparative and international higher education. We highlight international student trends and the need for developing programs, policies, and systems that align with national needs, institutional priorities, and student well-being for global learning. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Krishna Bista, Ryan M. Allen, and Roy Y. Chan;individual chapters, the contributors.
ABSTRACT
This volume uses case studies and students’ lived experiences to document the impacts of coronavirus (COVID-19) on international students and explore future challenges and opportunities for student mobility within higher education. Responding to the growing need for new insights and perspectives to improve higher education policy and practice in the era of COVID-19, this text analyses the changing roles and responsibilities of institutions and international education leaders post-2020. Initial chapters highlight key issues for students that have arisen as a result of the global health crisis such as learning, well-being, and the changed emotional, legal, and financial implications of study abroad. Subsequent chapters confront potential longer-term implications of students’ experiences during COVID-19, and provide critical reflection on internationalization and the opportunities that COVID-19 has presented for tertiary education systems around the world to learn from one another. This timely volume will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in online teaching and e-learning, curriculum design, and more specifically those involved with international and comparative education. Those involved with educational policy and practice, specifically related to pandemic education, will also benefit from this volume. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Krishna Bista, Ryan M. Allen, and Roy Y. Chan;individual chapters, the contributors.
ABSTRACT
Covid-19 forced higher education sectors across the world to digitize the entire university experience online. There are now calls for universities to continue chasing continued and further digitization, often from for-profit businesses and those in Silicon Valley who have been promising to disrupt the sector for decades. We argue that the pandemic has illustrated how crucial universities are to their local communities, and efforts should be made to emphasize their physical place and space. The destruction of American cities in favor of auto-centric suburbs provides a parallel for the possible future of higher education. The Cult of Efficiency mindset and accountability models that dominated neoliberal discourse offered the impetus for highway construction through city centers, often razing Black neighborhoods and ruining communities and culture along the way. The calls for the full digitization of universities echo this same possible destruction for the sector. This is not a Luddite warning to reject all digitization, instead, it is a rejection of the hyper-capitalization of higher education and the disruption promised by for-profit businesses, along with a reminder that the sector should be a local public good. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
This timely volume documents the immediate, global impacts of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on teaching and learning in higher education. Focusing on student and faculty experiences of online and distance education, the text provides reflections on novel initiatives, unexpected challenges, and lessons learned. Responding to the urgent need to better understand online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book investigates how the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) impacted students, faculty, and staffexperiences during the COVID-19 lockdown. Chapters initially look at the challenges faced by universities and educators in their attempts to overcome the practical difficulties involved in developing effective online programming and pedagogy. The text then builds on these insights to highlight student experiences and consider issues of social connection and inequality. Finally, the volume looks forward to asking what lessons COVID-19 can offer for the future development of online and distance learning in higher education. This engaging volume will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in online teaching and eLearning, curriculum design, and more, specifically those involved with the digitalization of higher education. The text will also support further discussion and reflection around pedagogical transformation, international teaching and learning, and educational policy more broadly. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Roy Y. Chan, Krishna Bista, Ryan M. Allen;individual chapters, the contributors.
ABSTRACT
Collaborations between American and Chinese universities have been critical to global knowledge production. Chinese students accounted for over a third of all international students in the United States prior to COVID-19, but the pandemic paused most global mobility in 2020. We argue that this international mobility to the United States will not fully recover if larger stressors are left unaddressed. First, relations between the United States and China have deteriorated in recent years, especially under the Trump administration, with growing suspicion against Chinese researchers and scholars. Second, viral acts of violence and anti-Asian incidents have painted the United States as unsafe for Chinese students. Finally, given the mismanaged response to the pandemic, it may take years before trust returns from abroad. While the Biden administration has promised to curb some of these issues, the perceptions of the United States may have been permanently altered, especially as China has improved its domestic higher education sector in recent years. © Journal of International Students.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The academic community has warned that predatory journals may attempt to capitalize on the confusion caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to further publish low quality academic work, eroding the credibility of scholarly publishing. Design/methodology/approach: This article first chronicles the risks of predatory publishing, especially related to misinformation surrounding health research. Next, the author offers an empirical investigation of how predatory publishing has engaged with COVID-19, with an emphasis on journals related to virology, immunology and epidemiology as identified through Cabells' Predatory Reports, through a content analysis of publishers' websites and a comparison to a sample from DOAJ. Findings: The empirical findings show that there were 162 titles related to these critical areas from journals listed on Cabells with a range of infractions, but most were defunct and only 39 had published on the pandemic. Compared to a DOAJ comparison group, the predatory journal websites were less likely to mention slowdowns to the peer review process related to the pandemic. Furthermore, another 284 predatory journals with COVID-19 engagement were uncovered from the initial exploration. These uncovered journals mostly centered on medical or biological science fields, while 42 titles came from other broader fields in social science, other STEM or humanities. Originality/value: This study does not prove that predatory publications have released misinformation pertaining to COVID-19, but rather it exemplifies the potential within a complex academic publishing space. As these outlets have proven to be vectors of misleading science, libraries and the broader educational community need to stay vigilant as information intermediaries of online research. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.