An exploratory study on the impacts of COVID-19 on the indian higher education landscape: Contemporary issues and recommendations

ABSTRACT

Education is the backbone of any economy. Education extends the country’s scope for development and a global position. Indian education system thus evolved with the traditional mode of Guru Kula system and now has reached to a sphere of change and rapid interventions such as the digital learning system by which the world and the word education is seeing an aspirational future. Covid-19, a pandemic that marked its first outbreak at Wuhan in China that soon claimed the entire globe to be in its clutches. The Government of India jointly in cooperation with the state governments in its palm declared a lockdown of the nation to bring down the spread of the outbreak by putting a nationwide standstill in all respects. By the mid of March 2020 when this shutdown (to be referred as lockdown throughout the article) was called in, all educational institutions in the country, no matter the levels of study where initially put under its purview and most of the examinations such as the public (board) examinations, entrance examinations etc. were put to hold as to bring down the rampant impacts of this pandemic. This has bring about a novel and an ambitious mode of learning which by all means a distant dream to many i.e. online education was. This paper is an attempt to showcase the impacts of the pandemic and how it has brought about changes in the Indian education landscape with a close look at the recommendations that are aimed at bringing about revitalizing this modern way of education and as such bring down the levels of contemporary issues and challenges that the system faces as such in a general and a holistic perspective.