with planes grounded and flights banned, is there a future for tertiary education?

With planes grounded and flights banned, is there a future for tertiary education? Of course there is!

Is there a way to keep attracting students from all around the world to come to Europe to study and train?  Absolutely! But without traveling!

With the current reality of millions of unemployed people in EU and US, now it's the time to be more proactive and design/re-design modules, programmes and courses to train young people and retrain unemployed people.


Now, it's the time for Universities to prioritize the societal needs and provide education and training for all; it's a huge challenge but we can rise to it together and we can support, provide and Lead by example. 
In Ireland, today 600k people claim unemployment benefit, in Greece the unemployment rate is going to rise at levels >30%, a lot of people will have to change jobs; a lot of food companies might have to move to totally online commerce.

In this changing world, Universities may have to Lead in a different way! 

Let's have a look of this update on payments awarded for COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment and Enhanced Illness Benefit in Ireland.



 

Sector Breakdown

The highest sector with people in receipt of PUPs is Accommodation and Food Service activities (126,000), followed by Wholesale and Retail Trade (88,400) and Construction (77,400).

 

The worst hit sectors so far, in Ireland, are: 
Accomodation, Food Service, Wholesale and Retail Trade and Construction.

A high percentage of these people may have to change jobs or may have to retrain to something similar or completely different to what they were doing.

For example, many food companies providing to restaurants, they lost 70% of their turnover overnight, when restaurants closed. They had to move online. Not an easy switch. Did they have any support to do this? Would it be better if these people could have access to courses on this topic? On how to use the internet and online labeling tools to promote food, to promote their products worldwide ?
 
To conclude, the Universities can help these people and these sectors. The Universities can play a Leading role in providing skills in a novel way. The specifics (tools, platforms, resources) can be discussed and found (if not already available). 

Past experience has shown that online courses on food sciences (food safety, HACCP, ISO9001, ISO22000, food exports etc) are useful for a high number of people who can not come on campus. 

In the post-covid-19 era, online classes may have to evolve to be the main educational tool, for at least the next Academic year... or for many years to come.

Ioannis