Keynote presentation: The COVID-19 pandemic and internationalisation of higher education: International students’ knowledge, experiences, and wellbeing
Start Date
14-11-2020 9:00 AM
End Date
14-11-2020 9:45 AM
Description
Internationalisation of education is facing unprecedented challenges when the world is presently confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic. Well before the current global health crisis, growing concerns have been raised about the value and benefits that international education brings to different social groups. Critics against internationalisation of education claim the phenomenon favours only the elites in society and disadvantages groups with low socioeconomic status. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, this argument is even more critical.
Leading scholars in the field of international higher education believe a broad-based crisis for higher education globally is emerging, and one major consequence is intensive inequality and incertitude in the post-pandemic period. To prepare well for the unpredictable future that lies ahead, there is the need to understand the gaps in current support systems for students involved and the implications for internationalising higher education. This paper sets out against the unprecedented global health crisis to critically examine how international students assess their well-being under the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. The paper will reflect upon the implications for university management and governance when dealing with international students.
Recommended Citation
Mok, K.-h. J. (2020, November). Keynote presentation: The COVID-19 pandemic and internationalisation of higher education: International students’ knowledge, experiences, and wellbeing. Presented at the Conference for Higher Education Research (CHER) - Hong Kong 2020. Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Keynote presentation: The COVID-19 pandemic and internationalisation of higher education: International students’ knowledge, experiences, and wellbeing
Internationalisation of education is facing unprecedented challenges when the world is presently confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic. Well before the current global health crisis, growing concerns have been raised about the value and benefits that international education brings to different social groups. Critics against internationalisation of education claim the phenomenon favours only the elites in society and disadvantages groups with low socioeconomic status. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, this argument is even more critical.
Leading scholars in the field of international higher education believe a broad-based crisis for higher education globally is emerging, and one major consequence is intensive inequality and incertitude in the post-pandemic period. To prepare well for the unpredictable future that lies ahead, there is the need to understand the gaps in current support systems for students involved and the implications for internationalising higher education. This paper sets out against the unprecedented global health crisis to critically examine how international students assess their well-being under the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. The paper will reflect upon the implications for university management and governance when dealing with international students.
Speaker
Joshua Ka-ho Mok
Joshua Ka-ho Mok is the Vice-President and concurrently Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Comparative Policy of Lingnan University. Before joining Lingnan, Professor Mok was the Vice President (Research and Development) and Chair Professor of Comparative Policy of The Hong Kong Institute of Education, and the Associate Dean and Professor of Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences of The University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, Professor Mok was appointed as the Founding Chair Professor in East Asian Studies and established the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
Professor Mok is no narrow disciplinary specialist but has worked creatively across the academic worlds of sociology, political science, and public and social policy while building up his wide knowledge of China and the region. Professor Mok completed his undergraduate studies in Public and Social Administration at the City University of Hong Kong in 1989, and received an MPhil and PhD in Sociology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1991 and The London School of Economics and Political Science in 1994 respectively.
In addition, Professor Mok has published extensively in the fields of comparative education policy, comparative development and policy studies, and social development in contemporary China and East Asia. In particular, he has contributed to the field of social change and education policy in a variety of ways, not the least of which has been his leadership and entrepreneurial approach to the organisation of the field. His recent published works have focused on comparative social development and social policy responses in the Greater China region and East Asia. He is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Public Policy (London: Routledge) and Asian Education and Development Studies (Emerald) as well as a Book Series Editor for Routledge and Springer.