The Covid-driven online teaching shift highlights an ¡°unprecedented opportunity¡± to provide ¡°essentially free¡± higher education to ¡°millions and millions¡± of poor students around the world, but the rise of a ¡°monopoly Amazon university¡± must be guarded against, according to sustainable development expert Jeffrey Sachs.

The Colombia University professor and director of its Center for Sustainable Development, a former special adviser to United Nations secretary generals on its Sustainable Development Goals, also told the British Council¡¯s Going Global conference that the US crackdown targeting academics with research links to China was ¡°disgusting for a society that calls itself free¡±.

The digital shift in university teaching, accelerated dramatically by the pandemic, offered ¡°unrivalled, absolutely unique, unprecedented opportunities to extend higher education to all learners that seek it¡±, Professor Sachs told the event, held virtually, on 15 June.

Teaching could now be brought to students at ¡°extraordinarily low cost¡±, pointed out the economist, whose most recent book,?The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology and Institutions, was published last year.

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¡°I believe we should be working very hard to develop open online, essentially free, university teaching around the world, so that the millions and millions of students in lower-income countries have a chance for quality education now made possible by digital, as long as you have good connectivity and a device¡­a smartphone, a tablet or a laptop,¡± he continued.

¡°That can be the gateway to higher education now, for young people in villages or who have to work to make a living, but who want higher education. It can also be an opportunity for breakthroughs in continuing adult education around the world.¡±

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The new digital possibilities were ¡°vastly more powerful than the old distance learning models¡±, Professor Sachs said. ¡°I¡¯m excited about that because I think access is absolutely one of the most important objectives for global society.¡±

He also said: ¡°Shouldn¡¯t each of us be taking classes ourselves throughout our whole lives, now that we have the chance to do it at home while holding a job, raising a family ¨C but also studying a bit throughout our lifetimes?¡±

Professor Sachs predicted that higher education was ¡°going to see lots of different kinds of experiments, lots of innovations, lots of new ways of learning¡±.

But he added: ¡°We should be careful that we don¡¯t end up with one monopoly Amazon university, that would be a disaster¡­And I don¡¯t mean Amazon, Brazil ¨C you know what I mean.¡±

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Professor Sachs also said that the pandemic had highlighted the unique role of universities across teaching, research, policy, innovation, convening power and global cooperation ¨C essential in rising to global challenges like the pandemic.

In innovation, there was a ¡°bad habit¡± for Covid vaccines developed in research at the University of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania to be referred to as the AstraZeneca or BioNTech vaccines, he argued. Drug companies were ¡°not the innovators¡±, he added.

The pandemic ¡°gives us even more reasons for investing in higher education,¡± he said.

¡°Governments are not such great collaborators¡±, whereas academics and universities prioritise international collaboration, Professor Sachs continued.

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¡°I¡¯m aghast at the crackdowns taking place in the United States [on] researchers who collaborate and cooperate with China,¡± he added.

This, he continued, was ¡°part of a mindset that¡¯s growing in the US government and in other governments¡­to see other countries as enemies and to try to break connections. It¡¯s our role as universities to keep those connections, to work closely with our Chinese colleagues, for example, not to let some government official or politician without a passport¡­tell us who is the enemy and who isn¡¯t the enemy, because most of that is a fiction.¡±

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john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com