New Work in Education and Teaching

According to UNESCO, the outbreak of COVID-19 has disrupted the education of 1.5 billion learners across the world, this is 91% of the world’s student population. In the university and college sector, institutions have been forced to close the doors to their campuses. Students studying practical courses have had to put their learning on hold. Those studying theoretical courses have had to shift to learning at home, with teaching moving online (IAU, 2020). This is a level of disruption the likes of which we have never seen before. Many scientists and experts believe that degree of online classes at universities and colleges will increase in the future even more. The questions is, what will the coronavirus pandemic mean for higher education in the coming years? For historical and functional reasons, universities are at odds with social developments. On the one hand, universities have a decisive influence on these developments; on the other hand, they are also shaped by them, but must not simply adapt to them. By generating and imparting knowledge, universities provide the chance that the problem horizons of the societies around them generated by everyday theory are exceeded. They do justice to their role as actors in the dialogue that builds on this, especially when they prospectively take up the foreseeable changes in social framework conditions. At present, modernization processes can already be observed or foreseen, which pose considerable challenges to the ability of societies and states to cope with social change. The challenges result from the fact that societies can only adapt to the upcoming changes through mobilization long unnecessary resources of conflict management, differentiation and innovation processing will succeed. The dimensions of these modernization processes are knowledge society, globalization, Europeanization, regionalization and demographic developments. The mobilization of appropriate coping resources requires democratization processes, changes in state tasks and developments in labour markets and work requirements. Figure 14.1 shows trends in the educational and teaching area. A trend towards greater privatization or partial privatization of education at all educational levels is an expression of education and training that is more focused on application and practical relevance, as well as the simultaneous limitation of state funding in Europe. Companies set up their own educational institutions or cooperate specifically with state educational institutions. Private schools of all levels are gaining popularity compared to state schools. Private financing shares are increasing. Financial stress is an issue in all systems of tertiary education. The answers to this are, on the one hand, the search for efficiency reserves, and on the other hand, the shifting of costs to the demand for education. A distinction must be made between financing the educational processes themselves and financing. At universities e.g. the educational process is 85% publicly funded and 15% privately; In the case of livelihood it is the other way round: 78% are financed privately and only 22% by the state.