Higher Education Under Quarantine: What Insights Palestinian Institutes Can Share?

Abstract

The spread of the coronavirus disease known as COVID-19 is a public health emergency with economic and social ramifications in Palestine and across the world. While the impacts on business are well documented, education is also facing the largest disruption in recent memory. The COVID-19 is significantly disrupting all aspects of higher education, fundamentally changing how universities operate by sparking the boom of online learning. The impact of this disruption is necessarily transformative, requiring us to rethink how we learn has been an issue of growing importance for many years. The coronavirus and ensuing lockdown currently in effect means that rethinking education is no longer something for a fun offsite in a nice hotel at the end of the semester, but an existential challenge to every dean and president and headmaster and principal around the world. Right now Universities are shuttered. Exams are canceled. Layoffs of professors and teachers will inevitably follow. Brand-name schools will, in time, bounce back. Many other less prestigious places will never reopen their doors. At this moment of extreme peril, and in the spirit of turning crisis into opportunity, educators and administrators at every scholastic level – and those responsible for training employees in the wider workforce – must urgently reassess their existing practices and protocols. They need to reimagine how to operate in a world of remote presence, social distancing and considerable economic stress.