2020: Global economic leaders shoulder to shoulder and forge ahead
Sina Finance and Economics, together with the world's top think tank, Newspaper Syndicate, bring you global economic leaders to focus on 2020!
Article/Kenneth Rogoff, columnist of Sina Financial Opinion Leader (former chief economist of IMF, professor of economics and public policy of Harvard University)
Why can't all students get the best lecturers and textbooks
Will the new coronavirus eventually lead to a long overdue technical subversion in the field of higher education?
The blockade and anti epidemic measures issued suddenly forced all colleges and universities around the world to switch to distance learning almost overnight. Although both teachers and students are hard to adapt to this rapid change, this may be beneficial to us.
Like many enterprises, universities are also struggling with how to reopen and have adopted a series of strategies accordingly. For example, the University of Cambridge announced that it will only teach online until at least the summer of 2021. Other universities, including Stanford University, will combine on-site teaching and online courses to extend the academic year, so as to ensure that the number of students on campus is kept at a low level at any time.
The new coronavirus does have a huge economic impact on higher education. The dormitory area is empty, the gymnasium is empty, and students are unwilling to pay full tuition fees. For many colleges and universities, the decrease in income caused by the decrease of foreign students (especially Chinese students) may be very painful. Many smaller schools with insufficient funds may be forced to close.
Even the top universities are facing challenges. The University of Michigan predicts that the losses caused by the epidemic may be as high as $1 billion by the end of 2020, while Harvard University predicts that the income will decrease by $750 million next year.
But can this new coronavirus impact finally bring better education to more people at a lower cost? The answer will depend in part on whether universities will put relevant technologies aside as the epidemic fades away or seek the best way to use them. Given the importance of interaction between professors, graduate students and undergraduates in and out of the classroom, this is not an easy challenge to solve.
When I was a graduate student (40 years ago), I was convinced that video learning (also the most popular technology at that time) would reshape college teaching. I think why can't students all over the world get the best lecturers and textbooks, especially considering that teaching for 200 or more students in the school can only provide extremely limited personal interaction space.
To be sure, classroom teaching will still play an important role. The professor will still organize teaching materials and answer questions. And I didn't imagine that video courses could replace small classes at that time (although the recorded materials could certainly be applied to that situation). But although it is really exciting to listen to a wonderful course in person, a reliable video course is certainly better than a mediocre face-to-face teaching.
But when we fast forward 40 years, progress is still limited. One reason may come from the governance system of the university: professors run these institutions, and few of them are willing to take a path to reduce their demand for services. Professors will no doubt worry that video teaching will make it more difficult for their graduate students to find jobs, and these dynamic and fresh ideas of graduate students are the main driving force for research.
For a long time, demographic changes have been exerting downward pressure on college enrollment. Even though the demand for teachers in some fields (such as computer science) is still strong, the decline in the number of students in many other fields will certainly lead people to intensify their resistance to new technologies that save labor.
However, the biggest obstacle may be the extremely high cost of producing high-quality video courses that can make students feel like face-to-face teaching. Even making a lesson only for mass consumption is a risky and time-consuming proposal. And because the recorded courses are easy to be pirated, it may be difficult to charge enough tuition fees to pay for the production costs. Many educational start-ups (many of which are located in and around Boston where I live) are trying to solve these problems, but so far they have not had a significant impact on the whole system.
Therefore, the question can probably be translated into whether the US government should bear the cost of creating pre recorded or online basic university lecture materials in certain fields - and can also be extended to adult education courses. In particular, introductory online course materials for non political subjects such as mathematics, computer science, physics and accounting should be the main candidate subjects for federal funding.
Many other disciplines, including my own field of economics, also have great online potential. Some professors are heartened by the fact that Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate of the United States, now claims to support the tuition free policy of universities. But instead of expanding the existing American university system, isn't federal funding for online learning (especially since it can help adults of all ages) a more equitable and effective progress?
Higher education endows students with a series of important life skills and insights, which can help them live a richer and fuller life and give them the opportunity to become better citizens. But we do not know whether all different aspects of higher education, including skills acquisition and social and intellectual development, need to be tied together in the current way. Students need to get together, but not necessarily all the time.
Almost everyone agrees that expanding opportunities for higher education is one of the best means to reduce inequality, which can help society become more equitable and improve productivity. Since technology and globalization (which may be deglobalisation today) in today's world require people to have stronger adaptability and may even need retraining to meet the changing needs of the labor market, it is also necessary to expand opportunities for higher education.
The new coronavirus crisis is likely to cause further rapid and profound changes in our economic foundation. But if the epidemic also promotes the transition to higher quality universal higher education, then we need not fear these changes.
(The author introduces: former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University)
