If you find yourself on a university campus at a time like this, amid a viral pandemic, you might think to yourself ‘I should go home, I’m probably not allowed to be here.’ You might also ask, ‘Where are all the students?’ They’re at home, most of them, in front of their laptops, studying online. And if you’re one of them, you might be starting to ask yourself ,‘Why do I go to university, if I don’t actually go to the university?’
Superficially, universities offer four main things to a student: content, someone to explain it, somewhere to learn and study it, and certification that they’ve understood it. But by offering places to learn and study, universities also indirectly offer chances to engage with other people. And it is this aspect of our education that may be the biggest loss to students if universities can’t weather the COVID storm.
Ostensibly, we go to university to learn things, to consume educational content. But these days, this content isn’t exclusive to universities. In the past it would have been – you couldn’t just go down to your local library and look at thousands of detailed books on everything from anthropology to zoology, nor search the internet for millions more. But these days if I want to learn something, there are endless options to suit my needs, and there are endless hours of free lectures online to supplement the material.
It is useful to have content curated and packaged by someone who knows what they’re talking about – which is what a university course essentially is – but such packages are also available online on sites like Coursera, Udemy or EdX. These are also usually free (or have free versions) and if you’re paying, then it’s to get a certificate or to complete a formal qualification in a normal university course time frame.
Something has to be said for having live, face-to-face lectures and the ability to ask the lecturer questions. But that’s only a significant advantage when the teacher is good: when they’re intelligent, enthusiastic and have good communication skills. And many of those free lectures online are given by some of the best teachers in the world, past and present.
Also, these days many influential academics write very accessible books about their research. Those books might not have the technical detail and rigour of a hefty textbook or forty hours of lectures, but unless you intend to become something of an expert or contribute to research, that level of detail probably isn’t necessary.
Either way, we don’t compete for places at universities just because they offer special content or loveable teachers. One of the main advantages of universities, particularly universities with good reputations, is their certificates. But is it necessary to get these from a physical campus? Sure, you can’t get a Harvard law degree from anywhere but Harvard University. But do you have to get it from the collection of buildings in Cambridge, Massachusetts?
Well, there are a few things we get from attending a campus – any campus – that we can’t get elsewhere. Firstly, we get access to facilities. Without significant improvements in technology, I will never be able to afford the lasers and hardware needed for a quantum physics lab. And without university libraries I would have limited access to vast collections of books and artefacts, and ample places to study.
Clearly, universities are worth more than their content and their certificates. The significant drop in the number of international students shows that few are willing to pay for a degree if they can’t complete it on campus. In some cases, there’s simply no degree to pay for because the subjects, such as anything lab- or studio-based, are impossible to do off-campus without the right facilities.
This all points to the fact that one of the most valuable things about a university campus is the same reason we’re not allowed to go there in a pandemic: physical interaction. On campus we make friends, we make connections, and we perform activities we couldn’t do otherwise.
You might argue ‘Yeah well, tough luck, I can’t hang out with my friends either.’ But the difference is that universities are more than just a place to hang out with friends while also doing some learning. They’re a place where interacting with classmates and faculty are half the reason you can successfully learn and apply the knowledge on offer.
These supportive interactions aren’t explicitly guaranteed in a university education, but they’re certainly more likely studying on campus than from home. Many valuable interactions that are integral to a proper education happen in the food court, at club events, at the end of a lecture, or outside the classroom waiting to go in. And no matter how much you try to instigate those sorts of things, they just aren’t going to happen through a Zoom chat. These interactions also occur through student-run projects and organisations directly funded by the universities – opportunities that can be difficult to coordinate or fund otherwise. And despite not being necessary to a degree, these extracurricular activities are deeply important.
Even from a purely professional point of view, on-campus degrees are valuable because they demonstrate that you can manage the face-to-face campus environment: you’ve shown up and kept to a schedule, formed groups and managed projects with different people, and done everything else that’s usually required for success in any job. These are things you don’t necessarily get from an online degree, even if it’s from the same university with the same content.
The relationships and interactions between the people at a university – students and staff – are where much of our education happens and hence where much of the tertiary education’s value lies. So, while some content and teaching may be sourced elsewhere, the interactions surrounding them are integral parts of an education community that can’t really be separated from the campuses they happen on.
Even if universities survive the pandemic somewhat intact, the many staff who have already lost their positions due to a lack of government support are the same staff who were integral to the community that students rely on to make the most out of their education. If things don’t change, and the importance of academic staff isn’t taken seriously in our response to the pandemic, universities won’t just have lost students from their campuses; they will have lost the main reason why students go there.
A vibrant, healthy and competent education system is fundamental to a functioning society. Universities are a big part of that and they can’t survive solely off online courses. If universities die, we might be able to learn our Kant and calculus online, but we’ll lack the community that helps us integrate what we learn into a broader understanding of the outside world.
Kiall Camden is currently studying publishing and communications at University of Melbourne, and has strong interests in philosophy, science and psychology.