COVID-19 Education Response Webinar: Implications for the global higher education campus; synthesis report

The COVID-19 crisis has created a planetary disruption to higher education. Yet at the same time, the pandemic is providing acute lessons that we can turn into opportunities for building more inclusive, more collaborative and more resilient higher education systems to address the global development agenda. There is no doubt that the crisis has challenged the creativity and innovation capacities of higher education institutions and education systems worldwide. Universities that have managed to navigate the ‘convoluted river’ created by the crisis will emerge with new learning dynamics, new capacities and a new vision for the tertiary education landscape. The consequences for higher education of the COVID-19 crisis will be far-reaching, complex and may only really emerge once a degree of normality returns. This discussion therefore focussed on some of the immediate likely effects of the crisis on the internationalization of higher learning. We certainly are moving into the unknown, but disruption often leads to the previously unimaginable. We don’t have all – or even any – of the answers right now. However, by starting to think about the right questions, the clues to inspired solutions will begin to spring. This context provided a guiding framework for the virtual roundtable discussion.