Tailored approach needed to catch-up learning post-COVID

Nearly a year and a half after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities are no longer what they used to be. International mobility has been affected heavily, many universities have faced severe financial problems and campuses worldwide have been locked down for weeks or even months.

Consequently, the students’ relationship with their universities has changed dramatically: teaching had to be switched almost overnight from face-to-face learning to digital or blended modes of delivery. Many students who started their coursework in 2020 have never been on campus and have never met their teachers in person.

As higher education is a highly self-reflexive system, several studies on the impact of COVID-19 in higher education have been conducted and published.

In the first months of the pandemic, the focus was mainly on the financial impact and the negative effects on international mobility (something that is closely linked in some countries).

Later on, other studies focused on the student experience and student life, but many conclusions regarding the impact of COVID-19 on students (for example, on the growing incidence of depression) are not specific to higher education, but rather reflect general impacts of the pandemic on young people’s social life and individual well-being.

A crucial question – which has so far not really been addressed – is whether the recently enrolled student COVID cohorts feel that they have been negatively impacted by the restrictions and hence face future qualification and career disadvantages.

To answer this, U-Multirank linked specific data on the impact of COVID-19 and the pandemic’s management with its general data on institutional performance and the views of students on their learning experience.

U-Multirank data allow for comparisons between the pre-pandemic situation, based on previous data collection, and the pandemic situation. Additionally, U-Multirank data also allow for distinctions to be made between academic fields, something that has been largely overlooked in existing studies.

Dramatic shift to online learning

Due to the outbreak of the pandemic, universities worldwide have had to close their campuses, often for long periods of time. Almost overnight universities had to switch from in-person classes to digital and blended classes. According to U-Multirank’s institutional data, in autumn 2020, 92% of all courses were held either fully online or in a blended form, compared to only 10% before the pandemic. This shift shows that universities worldwide were ready to make this digital turn within the shortest of time frames.

Based on the most recent U-Multirank student survey, which ran from October 2020 to January 2021, around two-thirds of the 30,000 respondents rated the overall pandemic management of their university as either ‘very good’ or ‘good’, while only 6% gave a negative rating (‘bad’ or ‘very bad’).

At the same time there were substantial differences between academic fields. Students in medical programmes (including veterinary science) were less satisfied than students on other programmes such as psychology, social work or agriculture.


Fig. 1: Overall assessment of COVID-19 management by academic field

How academic discipline affects student experience

Offering digital education helped many universities to sustain their classes and avoid cancellations, but the picture was different across the educational disciplines.

For example, in social work and psychology around 70% of universities faced no cancellations at all and all classes took place. However, in medical fields cancellations were higher. In these fields, practical courses, including direct contact with other people (patients), are highly relevant and were not easily transferred online.

We believe that the differences in student satisfaction with their university’s pandemic management are linked to problems related to the provision of certain areas of these subjects.


Fig. 2: Courses cancelled due to COVID-19 per academic field

Nevertheless, a clear majority of students across all fields are optimistic that they can continue their courses as planned after the pandemic. But students in the medical fields particularly are more likely to be worried that this may not be possible.

In social work, psychology and agriculture, almost 80% of the students rated their expectations of being able to continue as planned as ‘very good’ or ‘good’ compared to less than 60% in dentistry and less than 70% in medicine and nursing.

Lessons learned

It is likely that after the pandemic, universities will not simply go back to the pre-pandemic mode of delivery. Teaching and learning will be different from what they used to be, and a variety of new mixtures of on-campus learning, remote learning and blended learning will emerge.

In their efforts to deal with the pandemic and to compensate for its negative effects thereafter, universities and higher education policies must bear in mind that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for all subjects.

“A key message of the U-Multirank analysis is that in designing the ‘new normal’ post-pandemic, we must concentrate efforts and resources particularly on those disciplines that have more catching up to do and devise novel ways to deliver virtual teaching and learning experiences in them. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat this experience when the next pandemic inevitably arrives,” said Michael Murphy, president of the European University Association.

In general, practical education and contacts with a work environment (for instance, excursions or internships) suffered most from the restrictions caused by the pandemic.

Nevertheless, in many academic fields (not only the social sciences and the humanities, but also the sciences and engineering) new forms of online and blended learning were helpful to deal with the pandemic and may even bring new opportunities for innovative teaching in the future.

In other fields where personal interaction and contact are a major aspect of the education and qualification process – such as medicine, dentistry and nursing – the replacement of (practical) teaching with online formats appears more difficult or has so far proven to be impossible. This is indicated by the high percentage of courses that were cancelled in these fields.

After the pandemic, these courses will, for the most part, be possible again. But the most recent cohort of students (with students who enrolled in spring 2020 having already spent more than a full academic year under COVID-19 restrictions) – and particularly those in health-related subjects – fear that it will become difficult to graduate as ‘normal’ and with the ‘standard’ set of qualifications and skills.

Here universities face the particular challenge of introducing specific means and programmes to compensate for these negative effects of teaching and learning during the pandemic.

Gero Federkeil is managing director of U-Multirank at the Centre for Higher Education, Germany. Frans van Vught is U-Multirank joint project leader and former president of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. To read the full analysis, visit the U-Multirank website.