The coronavirus pandemic has affected the minds of the youth by forcefully making them leave their precious college lives behind to instead build their career and life. This havoc has suspended the education setup in the country which serves to build the nation academically. There is an automated pause in the development of the students which is a huge loss of the countries’ intellectual capital. As per statistical data, there are a total 262 million students around the globe.
This lockdown, especially in India, has lead to creating different levels of psychological imbalances, which has, in turn, created special challenges for the family, professors, and academic professionals to create ways to protect students from the sudden gap in their schooling years.
While much harm has been caused by the epidemic, institutions could use the crisis to sharpen strategies and practices in areas such as internationalization and e-learning, experts suggest.
The impact from the deadly coronavirus is likely to reverberate across the field of global higher education long after the outbreak is eventually brought under control, experts have warned.
Situation Abroad
In the most affected areas, universities face the prospect of losing an entire semester or more. In China, where the health emergency started and where most of the cases have occurred to date, institutions, including foreign branch campuses, have called a halt to in-person teaching. Administrators in Hong Kong universities, which are among the most internationalized in the world, have been frank in their assessment that a return to normal teaching in early March is “unlikely”.
Travel bans have prevented hundreds of thousands of Chinese students from returning to universities where they were studying or were due to begin courses.
Especially in remote geographical parts of the country, students live in ignorance since they are confined to their homes without any access to digital education either. Even if the world declares itself to be an updated platform to transmit each and every information to the right place and the right person. There is still a requirement of perfect strategies to protect the students, since they play a very significant role in building and constructing states and countries.
Situation In India
All the universities throughout India have been shut down due to the implementation of Section 144, which is creating high levels of tension among the student community about their tenure of studies. This outbreak of corona has suppressed their minds from reaching their destined goals and embarking on a wonderful future.
Each and every district of every state has brought their children back home in a position where they are unable to send them back to their expected avenues.
Student’s time mostly is being spent sleeping and keeping themselves engaged with social media, just keep themselves connected with their peer groups. A lot of junk content is being passed around including creating new challenges and games on media sites, which is time that could have been spent moulding them into beneficiary assets for the future.
There is no space for new start-ups, new ideas to be implemented and no constructive work that is being done by the most powerful sector of the country i.e. youth, the college students of India.
India is facing immense pressure when it comes to its students who are confined inside the four walls of the house.
Student’s spirits are curbed. Some universities are running classes online but they are unable to assess and evaluate the progress made. This creates an added level of stress in the learning process. A solution needs to be found soon.
Nirupama Aradhya, Government Arts College, Bengaluru Central University