COVID-19: Online Education is a Privilege; That Needs to Change
Image Source: ACER for Education
“All course instruction (undergraduate and graduate) for the 2020-21 academic year will be delivered online.”
This was the notification that I, and the rest of my Harvard classmates, received at 11:04 AM on July 6.
It was a day like no other. Hundreds of GroupMe messages were flooding in asking about visas and leaves of absences. Petitions were spread around demanding additional financial assistance. Even the normally quiet parent groups chats were bombarded with inquiries about cross-registering at other universities.
But amidst this chaos, I found myself not even thinking about my own plans for the upcoming school year. Despite the fact that I wouldn’t be able to return to campus, see all my friends, and pull all-nighters at Lamont Library, I knew that I, and a good number of my peers, were in a good position. Yes, I understood the frustration that my classmates were going through— I, too, had hoped that we would be able to go back to campus. Despite professors’ and administrators’ best efforts, an online education is by no means a sufficient substitute for the full college experience. And even though I could not directly empathize with those who had no place to stay or could not even enter the country, I still felt for their pain. Everything about this was far from ideal.
Around the world, COVID-19 has caused schools to close. According to UNESCO, over 1.1 billion students have been out of the classroom, more than half of the world’s child population. As a result, online education and “e-learning” have significantly risen in popularity as an alternative solution to in-person teaching.
There’s a problem, however— one that is not brought up enough when discussing the value of an online education: not all students have equal access to the Internet. As of July 2020, only 4.57 billion people were active internet users, which is barely over 50% of the world’s population. To put that number into perspective, in the last five years, there were on average 27,000 new people each hour who went on the Internet for their very first time. Although it is great that so many people are gaining access to the Internet at a rapid rate, the fact that this many people did not have access to it in the first place is appalling, especially considering the fact that the Internet is quickly becoming a necessity for education.
This brings up a complex issue. Most people would argue that education is a right and not a privilege, and I completely agree. Education has been shown to reduce poverty, improve communication, and stimulate the economy, among countless other benefits, so it goes without saying that every child deserves schooling. However, with so many students currently lacking the necessary technology to learn virtually in the midst of COVID, having internet access to learn online is a privilege in that it provides a significant advantage over those who lack Internet. And education should not be a privilege. Even though education should be a human right, the rise of e-learning due to the pandemic has widened the opportunity gap that was already very present.
To be clear, an educational opportunity gap is very present in all countries, even in developed nations such as the United States, but the consequences are more apparent in developing countries. This is because, even before the rise of COVID-19, most education systems in developing nations were severely underfunded, and the increased technological dependency does not help their case. The Education Commission’s 2016 “Learning Generation” report approximated that “...if current trends continue, by 2030… less than 10 percent of young people in low-income countries will be on track to gain basic secondary level skills.” This is an abysmal statistic. Even without COVID-19, education financing needs to increase, but the presence of coronavirus has created an unfortunate situation where these budget increases are absolutely essential now more than ever.
The solution? It’s complicated. Some might suggest increased government spending on education and technology, but the fact is, in poorer countries, the amount of money allocated to education depends largely on households themselves rather than the government. For example, in Gambia, upwards of 70 percent of the nation's total education expenditures is contributed directly by households, as opposed to just under 5 percent in Denmark. When increasing family or government contributions to schools is not possible, it might be wiser to forget about the Internet as a potential solution and look at radio and television as more approachable options for e-learning. Rushing to quickly scale up expensive technology might ultimately hurt countries’ economies, and since most nations already have an established television and radio framework, expanding on that may be the more effective approach.
By detailing the lamentable circumstances across the globe, I do not wish to ignore nor diminish all the problems and inequities that are still present within the United States, and even within Harvard College itself. For those of us who are in a good enough position, however, we must take a step back and be more cognizant of what is occurring in other countries so that we can gain a more well-rounded perspective of the current situation.
Sources:
https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse
https://www.globalpartnership.org/results/education-data-highlights
https://ourworldindata.org/internet