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Eric Hiller takes a look at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education and discusses the pros and cons of online learning. 

“With the advent of our unfriendly visitor from Wuhan, the COVID-19 virus, a lot of things have changed. Higher education has been particularly hard hit. I could not find a complete list of colleges and universities in the USA that were closed, but one can get a pretty good qualitative sense of the effect, for example:

• Unesco shows an excellent map of school closures. Many countries have shut down schools nationwide! ‘According to UNESCO monitoring, over 100 countries have implemented nationwide closures, impacting over half of the world’s student population.’ Only the USA, Canada, Brazil, Russia, and Indonesia seem to have localized closures, although some countries do have universities open. 
• Anecdotally, some of the most prestigious Ivy Leaguers, such as Harvard and Princeton have closed campuses, and other powerful state schools, such UC Berkeley, have campus technically open, but all instruction is online.
• Local lists of closed colleges and universities overflow.
• The dire state of higher ed and short-term effect of COVID-19

The short-term effect of the Chinese CoronaVirus on colleges could be devastating, i.e. this could be the coop de grace that forces schools on the bubble into the grave.” 

The article explores:

• The four basic tools used for learning
• Where the online model doesn’t work
• Why COVID-19 is a long-term higher ed forcing function

Read the full article/release, Eric Hiller Examines Covid 19 Effect on Higher Education, on The Express Wire.