COVID-19 and the crisis in the internationalization of higher education in emerging contexts

Abstract

This article analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Brazilian context and highlights the impacts of internationalization of higher education in the country. Qualitative in nature, the article is characterized as an exploratory-descriptive research, carried out from a bibliographic and documentary examination. Analysis: it was revealed that Latin America and the Caribbean are parts of the global regions most affected by the pandemic that experienced severe negative aggravation in their economies. In particular, in Brazil, findings reveal that the repercussions of the crisis impacted the public resources for education through budget cuts, while the private institutions suffered from an increase in defaults and evasion. Internationalization as a transversal dimension of higher education also suffered from the effects of the pandemic, and in Brazil, information and communication technologies were used to maintain international and intercultural learning and academic cooperation. This made it possible to increase the number of students benefited and to print out an equitable perspective on internationalization of higher education. For the future, it will be necessary to consolidate strategies that include information and communication technologies and promote the strengthening of cooperation networks, with the development of policies that support a more symmetrical relationship in the South–South and South–North, even in unfavorable scenarios.

Keywords

COVID-19 emerging contexts higher education internationalization Brazil

Introduction

The current global health crisis began in the city of Wuhan in China at the end of 2019 and was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). In June 2021, the SARS-CoV-2 virus had already infected more than 170,747,372 people worldwide, of which 3,555,726 have died, with the countries located in the Americas being the most affected (67,594,259) (WHO, 2021). In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), there are 33,286,000 confirmed cases, and in Brazil, 16,624,480 (Reuters COVID Tracker, 2021).

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of higher education in Brazil and highlighting the consequences on the internationalization of higher education. To build the analysis, the authors decided to understand the impacts of the pandemic on private higher education institutions (HEIs), as they represent 88.4% of the total HEI in Brazil (INEP, 2020).

The search was built from documents available in the official/institutional repositories of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), Social Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Ministry of Education (MEC) of Brazil, National Education Council (CNE) of Brazil, and Institute of the Union of Maintaining Entities of Higher Education Establishments in the State of São Paulo (SEMESP Institute). In the sources, it was sought to understand the position of these institutions in the face of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in LAC and in Brazil.

This qualitative study is characterized as an exploratory-descriptive research, carried out from a bibliographic and documentary examination. This choice allows knowing the recent productions, providing an analysis structure that makes it possible to meet the research objective and expand the previous studies (Creswell, 2014).

The study is built in four sections, in addition to an introduction and final considerations. The first section presents the macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in LAC. Then, the impacts of the CoOVID-19 pandemic on private HEIs in Brazil were examined. The third part analyzed how the pandemic influenced the processes of internationalization of higher education in Brazil. In the sequence, the results found in the research were discussed.

Macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, LAC was already facing structural problems such as “high levels of inequality, job informality, social deprotection, poverty and vulnerability” (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2021). These characteristics classify the region as the Global South, by “lumps together very diverse economic, social and political experiences and positions into one overarching category” (Clarke, 2018).

The data regarding to the period 2014–2019 indicate that LAC’s gross domestic product (GDP) showed signs of stagnation, as it presented an average growth of 0.3% per year (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated this context in LAC countries. One of the consequences was the drop in the GDP of 7.7% in 2020 (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2021). In this same analysis, it is estimated that in the year 2021, the region’s economies will register a GDP growth rate of 3.7%. Therefore, the likely growth of the economy in 2021 will not be enough to reverse the effects of the recession that LAC countries were facing.

In Brazil, in the pre-pandemic period, the number of unemployed already represented a complex scenario, and in 2020, the unemployment rate reached 14.9% of the population, representing 15.8 million people (SEMESP, 2020a: 6). Another element that aggravated this context is constitutional amendment No. 95/2016, which limits the growth of Brazilian federal government expenditures for 20 years. In higher education, the losses of this measure affect the actions of teaching, research, outreach, and other activities of HEIs and impact the entire society (Knobel and Leal, 2021: 36).

With the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a 4.1% drop in the Brazilian GDP for the year 2020 (IBGE, 2021). For the year 2021, the Central Bank of Brazil (2021) estimated a growth of 3.8%, subject to the performance of fiscal policies and reforms that are being established in the country. In addition, the increase in Brazilian federal government expenditure to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to produce a deficit of 12% of GDP, raising the public debt to around 90% of GDP (Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, 2020). This is a determining scenario to assess the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brazilian education.

As one of the results of the crisis imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal public budget foreseen for Brazilian education for the year 2021 is 8.61% lower compared to the values for 2020 (BRASIL, 2020). This factor aggravates the scenario of dismantling public policies. This is because in the period from 2014 to 2020, there was already a reduction of 28.5% in education resources and 57.5% in resources allocated to science and technology (Amaral, 2021).

From the survey data, it was possible to observe that in the pandemic context, two aspects influenced the financing of education: in the public sphere, as the economy was impacted, revenues decreased and investments are being directed primarily to health and social welfare (Schleicher, 2020) and in the sphere of private investments, without a significant economic recovery, investments also become scarce, says Schleicher (2020).

In a broader context, Altbach and De Wit (2020) assess that the global economies and national states are in crisis and that the recovery in countries with low per capita income should be slower, making it difficult to incorporate higher education into national policy priorities. In Brazil, the macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will still be identified for some time. Although “the economy of countries suffers from the pandemic, investments in education must be maintained, perhaps increased” (Dias and Pinto, 2020: 545). This is a framework that needs to be revised and that is why the presence of the State is essential, which must provide public policies that prioritize education and the most vulnerable (Dias and Pinto, 2020).

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brazilian private higher education

With the Sars-COV-2 virus crossing borders quickly, in an attempt to mitigate the effects of its spread around the world, governments have decreed the temporary closure of educational establishments. In Brazil, interruption in school flows affected 8,571,423 students in higher education (UNESCO, 2021a, 2021b). In June 2021, with the COVID-19 pandemic still leaving deep marks in the country, due to the circulation restriction measures imposed by local authorities, educational establishments still remain partially closed (UNESCO, 2021a, 2021b).

To direct HEIs during the pandemic period, recommendations were proposed by the CNE, MEC, entities representing private and public HEIs and research associations among others. The time for these responses to reach students was largely related to the capacities already installed in HEIs before the pandemic, such as qualified teachers for pedagogical mediation with the use of technologies, information technology support personnel, and hiring digital platforms, among others (IESALC, 2020).

The MEC authorized the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to replace face-to-face activities, except for professional practices, internships, and laboratory activities. The mandatory 200 academic days of the academic year were also removed, maintaining, however, the minimum workload at all levels of education. The MEC’s instructions allowed HEIs to anticipate the graduation of students from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and physiotherapy courses. The measure collaborated so that 7611 new health professionals to join the workforce responsible for the actions to fight the pandemic (MEC, 2021).

The CNE (the agency responsible for advising the federal government on educational issues) also manifested itself about school organization during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of higher education, it reinforced the MEC guidelines and established that HEIs could use ICTs as an alternative for curricular and pedagogical organization during the COVID-19 pandemic (CNE, 2020).

This guidance sought to direct the 2608 Brazilian HEIs. These institutions were oriented to implement telework for teachers and administrative staff, serve the university community following the sanitary protocols established by local authorities, organize the functioning of HEIs according to the guidelines of local and regional authorities, and provide information to regulatory bodies of higher education in national and local scope on the activities that were offered through the use of ICT resources (CNE, 2020).

With the recommendation of MEC and CNE to replace disciplines and other face-to-face activities with remote activities, HEIs had to train their faculty to use ICTs in the teaching and learning process, and use social media to stimulate student participation in academic activities (CNE, 2020).

In addition to the impacts on the organization of the higher education curriculum, the pandemic has accentuated previously existing problems in private HEIs, such as the growth in student dropout and default (Gemelli and Cerdeira, 2020; SEMESP, 2020a). It was possible to observe an “increase of 71.1% in the default rate and 11.5% in the evasion rate in April 2020 compared to the same period of the previous year” (SEMESP, 2020b: 1).

With the prolongation of the economic crisis in the Global South, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, “unemployment and the fall in incomes will impact on the population’s ability to afford the payment of tuition fees” (Gemelli and Cerdeira, 2020: 116), hindering entry and permanence in higher education (Gemelli and Cerdeira, 2020; UNESCO and World Bank, 2021). With the reduction in investments in public policies and the offer of student financing, private HEIs will be the most affected (SEMESP, 2020a).

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on education reproduce “a vicious cycle of inequalities, which overflows in a worrying way a latent expansion of previously existing asymmetries between social classes, regions and localities, in the performance of the public and private sectors or even in the educational effectiveness at different levels” (Senhoras, 2020: 28). In other words, the pandemic intensified these social problems and those inherent to education in Global South contexts.

Internationalization of higher education in times of crisis in Brazil

The development of internationalization in Brazil has some limits, and internationalization is not part of the strategic plans of HEIs and is not aligned with teaching, research, outreach, and management processes (Maia, 2020). In the first place, this can be related both to the prelude to the internationalization process of Brazilian HEIs, which began in an “induced way, with a strong presence of the State and historically subordinated to the Federal Government’s developmental priorities and interests” (Knobel et al., 2020: 674). Second, the current model is linked to state fostering for the development of graduate programs and research groups (Neves and Barbosa, 2020).

The internationalization of higher education assumed relevance and prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, which:

has reinforced the importance of international research cooperation. The connections between research groups and laboratories in different areas of knowledge around the world have greatly increased in the search for solutions to problems that affect everyone. Joint publications with international partners were intensified, as well as bi / multilateral funding for the development of joint research (Maia, 2020: 144).

However, the crisis that has taken hold in the educational sector has brought negative consequences for the most well-known internationalization strategy: academic mobility (Altbach and De Wit, 2020; Jacobs et al., 2021). In LAC, the first reflexes were related to the closing policies of HEIs and national borders. This caused an operational difficulty for HEIs that had students participating in mobility abroad and needed to support them in their return home (IESALC, 2020).

For Toro (2020: 50), the deceleration of physical mobility provided HEIs with an opportunity to “design, implement and strengthen substitute strategies” helps students develop skills and achieve the goal of international learning without leaving home. Brazilian HEIs, in order to continue promoting international and intercultural learning processes at a time of crisis, have enabled virtual mobility programs, Collaborative Online International Learning projects, webinars, scientific congresses, short courses, and/or with double degree (Woicolesco et al., 2021, in press) in collaboration with partner institutions, reinforcing the bonds of international cooperation between institutions; today, it is more necessary than ever (Altbach and De Wit, 2020).

As already mentioned, one of the impacts of the crisis imposed by the pandemic in Brazil and other LAC countries will be the decrease in public resources for financing education. In internationalization, this impact is added to the potential impoverishment of families. Thus, it is estimated that in the medium- and long-term possibilities for international academic mobility will be reduced (IESALC, 2020).

In Brazil, the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the processes of internationalization of higher education are variable, as the set of HEIs is complex and diverse, and there is no homogeneity in the actions taken (Maia, 2020). As a way out of the crisis faced by the internationalization of higher education in emerging contexts, such as the Global South, Quintero (2020) indicates that cross-border education could remain attractive if students could take courses at a distance since the virtual mobility model, using ICTs promotes the benefits of physical mobility to students unable to travel.

As the year 2020 confirmed that education is not only about place and physical space, but that there is a virtual space of education that is equally important to consider (Tesar, 2021), internationalization carried out with the mediation of ICTs also fulfills one of its essential objectives: to provide international and intercultural learning experiences for all students.

It was identified that the internationalization actions developed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil are also aligned with the new UNESCO project “Futures of Education 2050.” By launching “learning to become,” UNESCO proposes to reflect the place of education in our society. The proposal seeks to ensure education as a common public good through the construction of inclusive educational systems that foster the shared construction of knowledge and pedagogical practices, establishing new paradigms for teachers and for higher education, in addition to highlighting the urgency of solidarity global and international cooperation (UNESCO, 2021a, 2021b).

Discussion of results

From the results obtained in this research, it was found that LAC has a fragile economy and social protection system, which were aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with an unknown and unpredictable situation, a new crisis took hold in the region and forced governments to provide resources and policies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

One of the consequences of this crisis was the worsening of “living conditions, as well as substantial increases in unemployment, poverty and inequalities” (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2021: 16). Another consequence was the decrease in public and private resources for education (Altbach and De Wit, 2020; Dias and Pinto, 2020; Schleicher, 2020). As presented in the research, the decrease in public resources for education in Brazil reflects directly on public and private HEIs as in the country, private HEIs are basically dependent on public investment.

In a context of global crisis, higher education was called to respond to the challenges that emerged with COVID-19, and its institutions maintained their teaching, research, outreach, and internationalization activities and took on numerous work fronts in the fight against the pandemic, increasing its operational cost. With the decrease in resources allocated to education in Brazil in recent years, including 2021, it was verified that investments in education in the country are not adjusted to the challenges that emerged with the current crisis (Dias and Pinto, 2020).

In the internationalization of higher education, the pandemic also left its marks and revealed the importance that internationalization has in the search for common solutions to the problems that affect people around the world (Maia, 2020). International cooperation in research was exponentially increased and facilitated in the pandemic scenario, and connections between researchers and institutions around the world were established in the search for a way out of the crisis imposed by the pandemic. Although academic mobility has been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic (Altbach and De Wit, 2020; Gómez, 2020; Jacobs et al., 2021; Toro, 2020), in Brazilian HEIs, the internationalization strategies developed during the COVID-19 contributed to a greater number of students having access to international and intercultural learning during their formative path.

In view of the experiences of internationalization carried out by Brazilian HEIs during the analyzed period, it was identified that the limits between face-to-face education and distance education has been less expressive. In other words, “wherever there are new demands for initiatives of international education, there are opportunities for (and expectations of) enacting the aspirational goals as fostering international/intercultural cooperation, respect, and understanding” (Tarc, 2019: 737). It is important to highlight that by having incorporated the use of ICTs to promote internationalization, Brazilian HEIs have imprinted an equitable perspective on this dimension of higher education, as pointed out by Gómez (2020); Toro (2020) and Woicolesco (2021, in press).

Final considerations

From the constructed scenario, it is evident that the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving deep marks in the Global South, which has impacted higher education and, in this case, the internationalization of higher education. The incorporation of ICTs in internationalization actions has given rise to an emerging proposal, which gives students and researchers unable to travel the opportunity to meet people and cultures different from their own, within the campus itself, thus promoting internationalization at home. Through online collaboration, students, researchers, and institutions from different countries and contexts were able to connect and seek solutions to common problems in this pandemic time.

These practices and perspectives of internationalization contribute effectively to equity in higher education, corroborating the movement led by the UN that seeks to build an inclusive and equitable quality education, and the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2016) and, more recently, with the proposition “learning to become” in the perspective of Education for 2050.

In the face of so many scenarios and uncertainties, what can we expect from the future of the internationalization of higher education? It will be necessary to consolidate strategies that include ICTs in the internationalization of higher education and promote the strengthening of cooperation networks, with the development of policies that support a more symmetrical relationship in the South–South and South–North, even in unfavorable scenarios.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was carried out with the support of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brazil (CAPES) - Funding Code 001, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico grant number (Research Fellowship 1A) and National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) - Research Productivity Grant.

ORCID iD

Vanessa G Woicolesco

Vanessa Gabrielle Woicolesco: A PhD student in Education at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul—PUCRS, fellow by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel—CAPES/PROEX. B.A. in Pedagogy and M.A. in Education from Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná—UNIOESTE. Currently works as a Technician in Educational Issues at Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA). Member of the Higher Education Study Center (CEES/PUCRS) and the research group UNIVERSITAS/RIES, and the Study Group on University (GEU/UNEMAT/UFMT). Current research interests are as follows: higher education, internationalization of higher education and university teaching. Email address: vanessa.woicolesco@edu.pucrs.br. Telephone: +55 (51) 999821808. ORCID:. (Corresponding Author).

Marilia Morosini: A PhD in Education from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul—UFRGS. Develop postdoctoral research at LILLAS/University of Texas. 1A CNPq (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development) fellow. Served as a professor at UFRGS for more than 25 years. Full Professor at the School of Humanities of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul—PUCRS. Coordinates the Higher Education Study Center—CEES/PUCRS and the Southern Brazilian Network of Higher Education Researchers—RIES. Current research interests are s follows: higher education, with a focus on internationalization, quality and higher education encyclopedias. Email address: marilia.morosini@edu.pucrs.br. ORCID: .

Jocélia Martins Marcelino: A PhD student in Education at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, fellow by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel—CAPES/PROEX. Master in Sociocultural Practices and Social Development at the University of Cruz Alta. Member of the research group UNIVERSITAS/RIES (CEES/PUCRS), the Center for Studies in Higher Education—CEES/PUCRS, the Center for the Study and Research in Social Practices (Unicruz) and the Study Group from Higher Education to Basic Education: articulations, movements and perspectives in training (Unicruz). Current research interests are as follows: higher education, internationalization of higher education, internationalization of the curriculum, and global citizenship. Email address: jocelia.marcelino@edu.pucrs.br. ORCID: .

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