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Reflecting on COVID-19 and Internationalization of Higher Education: Implications and Complications

Joe Tin-yau Lo (The Education University of Hong Kong)
Suyan Pan (The Education University of Hong Kong)

Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2021

ISBN: 978-1-80262-522-6, eISBN: 978-1-80262-521-9

Publication date: 19 July 2022

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a fast-moving pandemic that has brought about calamities and challenges to the human world. In the field of international higher education (IHE), it problematizes and challenges the operation of neo-liberal mentalities and rationales, while generating disruptions and impediments to the flows of globalization. Drawing upon extant research on IHE across spatial and cultural contexts, this essay aims to: (1) unravel the deficiencies of neo-liberal mentalities and rationales in coping with the challenges of COVID-19 to IHE; (2) assess the impacts of COVID-19 on the developments of globalization and internationalization of higher education with particular focus on the complications therein; and (3) explore the possible spill-over effects on and implications for the re-positioning of IHE in the post-COVID-19 era. Albeit the negative impacts of COVID-19 may not last, its spill-over effects are bound to cast a long shadow over IHE’s future development. This essay explores how IHE can persist in spite of deficiencies in neo-liberalism and fluidity in globalization.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to the editor/publisher of Asian Education and Development Studies for allowing us to make use of the article titled “COVID-19 and the Neo-liberal Paradigm in Higher Education: Changing Landscape” (Pan, 2020) as a textual source on which the discussions and reflections in this essay is based. The work presented in this essay attributes to the research project, “Reflection on the Rationales and Realities of International Student Exchange in the Era of Globalization,” which is fully supported by the General Research Grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (EdUHK 18612018).

Citation

Lo, J.T.-y. and Pan, S. (2022), "Reflecting on COVID-19 and Internationalization of Higher Education: Implications and Complications", Wiseman, A.W. (Ed.) Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2021 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 42A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 119-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792022000042A010

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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