Crisis – What Crisis?

Introduction

In 1975 Supertramp released the album ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’. Overall, it is a pretty upbeat record as most of their music was. 45 Years later we can repeat the question. Unfortunately, the result has to be less upbeat. Politically we have seen the ongoing rise of the political dictator and demagog, and not only in countries that we used to dismissively call a ‘Banana Republic’. The phenomenon has become far more mainstream in what used to be established democracies. With it has come the exodus of political civility, fueled by both political leaders and an increasingly ideological press, in writing, on internet and on our daily TVs. Our vocabulary has been extended by phrases such as ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative truths’. More importantly, significant parts of our global community have taken these to heart and for granted.

And if these trends weren’t enough to have many of our colleagues worrying about the fabric of our societies, a pandemic hit. And it hit incredibly hard. It did not distinguish between developing and developed countries. It did not discriminate between age groups although obviously the older bracket of our societies was more vulnerable. It laid bare the complete unpreparedness of dealing with such an event on a global scale. It also laid bare the faltering health systems that we collectively have neglected over the past decades under the veil of continuous economic growth and marketization. The signs and scientific evidence were clearly there predicting the likelihood of another pandemic, but governments everywhere did little to invest in appropriate vaccine research or public health measures.

Again, our vocabulary has been extended. None of us now looks surprised when hearing about an ‘intelligent lockdown’, PPEs, ‘flattening the curve’, ‘second or third waves’, ‘contract tracing’, the ‘reproduction number’ and ‘super spreaders’. For Australians ‘double doughnut days’ have become a welcome term, meaning a day without new infections or deaths. And we’ve seen an explosive rise of experts on viral diseases and contamination. Much of it based on nothing but quite fraudulent populist interpretations of serious academic studies and ‘Chinese whispers’ – no pun intended!

We came up with the idea for this special issue in February 2020. It would be fair to say that none of us had any idea of the scale of what was about to enfold. We had thought it would disrupt our sector but we had also thought that national and institutional systems would be able to deal with this. With the benefit of hindsight anyone may call this naïve, but for many of us the concepts of ‘institutional thickness’ and ‘innovation’ resulted in a belief that we ‘could deal with this’. As this special issue demonstrates, we were very wrong.

Our initial brief was very simple. Approach a cross-section of our sector, ranging from senior executives to graduate students, have a semi-sort of global coverage, and ask our contributors to keep a six month diary and use that as the evidence-base to both describe and analyze national and institutional responses to the unfolding crisis. As the articles included in this issue demonstrate, it all became a bit more complex when we started to grasp the scale of impact and disruption.

As you will see from our list of contributors, we achieved our objective of a cross-sectional representation and a global coverage, at least to a degree. And more by accident than design we have managed to cover some of the hardest hit countries, though obviously not all. What the contributions to this issue demonstrate beyond any doubt is the profound impact this pandemic has had on our sector.

For the sake of future reference we will start with an overview of where we find ourselves in November 2020.¹ By necessity this is but a partial coverage of the global impact of the pandemic as it continues to devastate nations through second and even third waves. Next, we briefly take you through the individual contributions through a comparative analysis. We will finish this editorial with what we see as the takeaways in terms of conclusions and possible lessons learned. Whether this prepares us better for what is to come obviously is an academic question. We, however, felt the Journal needed to make this contribution. And we pay gratitude to the contributors to this Issue for sharing their deeply personal experiences. This is not what we normally do as standard academic practice. We tend to adhere to semi-detached analytical reflective practice. What follows here is an entirely different ‘kettle of fish’ in terms of reflecting on the ‘lived experiences’ of our contributors. But before getting to that, we want to have a brief discussion on the macro perspective: how our countries have (not) dealt with the challenges of a pandemic.

A world in chaos and transition

What becomes very clear from the accounts presented in this volume, is the absolute level of unpreparedness of our nation states for what has come over us this year. One can argue this is a once-in-a-lifetime event and hence it is not surprising that a degree of chaos emerged when the virus took hold. We would argue that from a public policy perspective this is a ‘cop-out’.

In our sector, day in day out we are being urged to think about risk management and have plans in place for the unforeseen. We will get back to the extent this has worked a little later. But from a national perspective it is very hard indeed to understand the level of unpreparedness. It would be fair and proper for citizens to expect their governments plan for the unforeseen and have action scenarios in place to deal with this. Yet the accounts rendered in the articles to this volume tell a very different story. They are one of chaos. Almost without exception, all reflect on the lack of availability of protective equipment. And almost all point to vague and contradictory policy responses at the national level when the pandemic broke. No one has reflected on the global non-coordinated response, but it is obvious to all that the briefings of the World Health Organization did not really get beyond the ‘Crisis, What Crisis’ level. Politicians initially appeared more concerned with scoring political points from their opponents than formulating science-driven policy responses.

What we have seen is the resurrection of John Maynard Keynes. Without so much as a blink of an eye, many of the countries featuring in this volume dropped their neo-liberal policy ideals and believes in ‘the market’ and went full guns blazing for national stimulus packages. In Europe it took a bit of time for the EU to reach agreement on the size of the stimulus package, with some resistance from the fiscally conservative ‘Frugal Four’ – Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. But there was never any doubt such a package in one form or another would be agreed upon. In itself, these initiatives can only be commended. And they do reflect to ground-breaking work of Keynes following the Great Depression. The fact that globally we are experiencing extreme low interest rates only furthers the argument for governments spending us out of a depression. But there is a caveat to this. Prior to the pandemic hitting, there was a discussion on the ‘Entrepreneurial State’, on dealing with ‘Grand Challenges’, and on ‘Mission-based Innovation’ (Mazzucato 2013, 2018). This seems to have been moved from the policy agenda in favor of the traditional approach to spending on infrastructure and tax breaks. In other words, a short-term response to dealing with a crisis rather than taking the longer-term perspective of how to make the best of a truly problematic situation with at least a mid-term policy horizon. It is easy to critique the above as the ‘benefit of hindsight’. And we will not deny there is some truth to that. But it does not take us away from the central questions raised above: why were we so unprepared and why haven’t we taken the opportunity for transition provided by the massive stimulus packages to indeed tackle our Grand Challenges”?

Finally, before getting into the lived experience of our contributors, we do have to note the very different action-sets taken by our tertiary institutions across the countries documented in this volume. They range from an almost singular focus on solidarity and community to an equally singular focus on the bottom line and staff retrenchments. It is not for us to pass judgement on what for each and every institution will have been challenging decisions. But it is for us to note the vulnerabilities our sector is confronted with, and where our differing political choices and priorities over the past decade have landed us.

The lived experience of dealing with a pandemic: frustration, isolation and reflection

As you will see from the articles that make up this Special Issue, not only has the pandemic hit differently across the globe, individuals have responded very differently. We have accounts of working from home in cramped spaces, complicated by home-schooling duties and caring. Of families trying to make sense of their very rapidly changing environment and maintaining a sense of normalcy and physical and mental health in an otherwise unreal world. Whilst the political rhetoric very much is about the ‘new normal’, normality does not feature prominently in the contributions to this issue.

What jumps out of these pages is a predominant sense of frustration. Of not being able to engage as deeply with our students as we would have liked and have done in the past. In some countries international students have suffered particularly hard, with many left destitute and not allowed to return to their home countries. There is little doubt that in part this is looking at this past through a bit of a rosy lens. A bit like the hallowed belief in the collegial academy. But equally, and probably more, there is a true sense of not delivering to our students what they came to our institutions for in the first place. On-line study certainly can work and does work, blended learning without a doubt has strong future potential, as is reflected in many of the contributions. But the notions of place-based education and community come through very strongly, both in the writing and the visuals that are part of this issue.

In similar vein, a clear feeling of isolation is reflected in the contributions. Working from home can be done. Zoom and similar technologies can bring people together. But it is not the same as the coffee machine or coffee shop discussion with colleagues, let alone the Friday afternoon social get togethers. It clearly impacts on productivity, creativity and mental wellbeing. It highlights that both academics and professional staff need personal interaction to optimize the effectiveness of their work. No technology can compensate for that. Interestingly, whilst some report serious disruptions for their research activities, others much more see this as relatively un-impacted.

Yet, we should also note the positives we find in this Issue. International research collaboration to find ‘a’ vaccine. An academic and professional community that still can manage to make things come together and deliver to our communities. And some very impressive accounts of concerted institutional responses to the challenges we have faced in 2020. It indeed has been tough, but it also has not all been gloom and doom as this diverse set of contributions very clearly demonstrates.

Our final observation is on the reflections for the future. There is a strong consensus amongst our contributors that this year’s experiences will have a lasting impact on our sector. We have already mentioned blended learning. But some of the contributions raise more fundamental questions about the role of our sector in the face of global challenges and our ability to respond or perhaps even play a leading role in driving change. Others have raised some quite challenging questions about the role of research and its foundations. Is it really about investigation, analysis and reflection, or are we sliding towards the mere reproduction of information? And questions have been raised about the make-up of our sector, the drivers for executive management, and fundamentally what we are here for. The latter may be a bit too existentialist for some of us, but we feel it is worth reflecting on whether we still adhere to the mission(s) of tertiary education compared to the strong business imperatives that have been driving the sector over the last decennium across continents. We do not have the answers to this, but it certainly is food for thought. Having said that, we should also recognize that predictions on the future of our sector based on a very disruptive period are wrought with difficulty and challenges. They clearly are pointers for discussion, and a discussion we must have. But the outcomes of this are far from certain given the complexity of the challenges ahead. From the perspective of tertiary education research this without a doubt is a positive as well as a serious responsibility. For Studies it means rigorously sticking to the quality of our submissions and providing thought leadership for the future development of our sector, preferably through a comparative lense.

A final note on methodology

You will find in this issue an eclectic use of social science research approaches. We left it to our contributors to frame their contributions in whatever form or shape they thought appropriate. We believe the resultant is a confirmation that there are many ways for social science to answer pertinent questions. The richness of the contributions to this issue reaffirm the basic tenant of Studies that there is no one way of doing tertiary education research. It also is evidence to the fact that different approaches do not mean loosening the rigor of analysis and reflection. We thank our contributors for all the time and effort they have put in making the articles in this volume a special document of what by any standard is a unique time in our lives.

On behalf of the Editorial Team,

Notes

1 Originally, we wanted to present some comparative statistics. Given the very rapid developments across the countries involved in this project, we did not feel that would be helpful. We, therefore, have opted for a qualitative rather than quantitative analysis.