I’m sure the above statement is somewhat anxiety-inducing – many of us may want to just go back to exactly the way things were before March of 2020 and do things exactly the same ways we did before our worlds were turned upside down. Though we may certainly long for those days for sentimental reasons, I think that the future of higher education will be shaped by the lessons learned over the last year-long after masks and vaccines leave the front of our minds.
Here are some of the top things that I think will be different in our “new normal”:
- Now that we have demonstrated to our distance students that it is indeed possible to provide at least some level of more meaningful programming and personalized interaction that they can benefit from even if they are not physically on campus, we should be ready for them to expect that those opportunities continue to be available to them even when the majority of our traditional students return to our campuses in person
- We should also be prepared for some of our on-campus students to want to continue to be able to access some services and opportunities virtually - even if they are physically present on campus
I don’t think the changes will be limited to how students access our programs and services, either. I also think that we are likely to see some shifts in how we go about our work – some of which could be welcome changes!
- Historically, our field has broadly operated under the assumption that we needed to spend a significant amount of our time on campus in order to be effective – often spending much more than 40 hours a week. The past year has shown that perhaps that is not entirely true. While there will always be programs and activities that are best served by being present and engaged with our students on campus, many of our administrative and behind-the-scenes functions can easily be completed remotely and/or virtually. In fact, giving staff more flexibility with when and how they complete those kinds of functions could help them in finding that elusive “work-life balance” that we so frequently discuss.
- At a minimum, we should be prepared for some of our colleagues that are engaged in support functions, like Finance and IT, to possibly transition to a model where they may be completely or partially remote permanently. Their private sector counterparts have long enjoyed more flexible working arrangements than higher education has allowed for similar positions, which is oftentimes why there is so much turnover in those areas. Adopting a more flexible stance could help those areas recruit and retain higher caliber employees, and could also help ease pressures on the limited space available on our campuses.