Higher Education in Quest of Humane Development: Envisaging the Future in the Post-COVID Era

The universities have been undergoing transformation since long. The speed of changes got expedited in the wake of the Pandemic. Given the role of higher education in creating conditions for development, this chapter looks at how the possible linkages between university and development are changing and what implications these changes have for the nature and content of development. While the reduction in public funding appears certain world over, the introduction of digital technology in the classroom is turning out to be a game changer with the changing concept of time and space associated with the university as the classroom can now become global with the possibility of asynchronous teaching–learning. This chapter seeks to argue that public good character of higher education is to be upheld notwithstanding these changes. In fact, with increasing cross-border mobility, higher education is now a global public good. Higher education plays a unique role in the formation of the self and the society. However, given the increasing reliance on online education, growing university-industry collaboration, increasing reliance on market to achieve efficiency in the context of internationalization, it is doubtful whether higher education can contribute towards development which is humane. Under the influence of world ranking of universities, the top universities are getting disembedded from the local and national context within a system which is getting more and more differentiated. These developments undermine the objectives of access and equity. The concept of quality is being redefined too with changing demand for skill and acceptance of lifelong learning to remain relevant in the job market. While the ivory tower image of the traditional university is no longer tenable, it is important to ensure how the university space can be protected from interference from outside and universities remain both intellectually and morally independent to serve the society better.