Accessibility and quality of higher education under the COVID-19 pandemic: governmental efforts with an eye to the future[Доступность И Качество Высшего Образования В Условиях Covid-19: Правительственные Усилия В Расчете На Будущее]

The article describes the main problems of higher education under the COVID-19 pandemic and argues that new problems have aggravated old reasons. These reasons are related to profound social, economic, cultural, and political inequalities. A special kind of inequality is digital inequality, which creates significant barriers to accessibility and quality of learning in a pandemic environment and, in the long term, will lead to an even greater differentiation of the population. The scientific challenge to solve the problem is to find new approaches to public policy in the field of higher education. The authors propose to take Van Dijk’s comprehensive approach as a methodological basis for the research and to use Van Dijk’s digital accessibility model to analyze governmental decisions of the European Union in the field of the future of higher education. The empirical basis of the study was formed by the latest practices of governmental decisions of foreign countries, documents, and statistical data. The example of the European Union shows how governments are trying to keep their educational systems competitive in the post-coronavirus period and revise strategies and plans for higher education development. The authors revealed that the new state strategies are not only related to the digital transformation of the educational environment, but also to the development of motivation, digital competencies of the workforce in conjunction with the development of a digital, green and innovative economy of the future. It is assumed that the new plans and strategies of the European Union in the field of higher education are competing strategies and are aimed at maintaining a high position in the world hierarchy of countries and ensuring competitiveness not only in the European but also in the global educational space.