The Corona crisis created great economic challenges, and imposed on the world various scenarios in preparation for the future. News and studies put us daily in front of a changing reality of the economic repercussions of this epidemic, including high unemployment rates for record levels and the loss of many of their jobs, in addition to expecting a large economic depression at the level of The world, and we in the Emirates are accustomed to turning challenges into accomplishments based on a vision and leadership thought that relies on anticipating the future and preparing for it.
Today, under the guidance of our rational government, planning has started for post-Coved-19, and the economic aspect is one of the main pillars of this readiness, and we must all contribute to supporting our economy, preserving the gains of the stage of transition to remote work and distance education, and the commitment to control expenditures without extravagance, In this sense, it falls on the public and private education sector, based on professional and social responsibility. Reconsidering "the economics of education" in the sense of researching the best investment ways for educational resources: financially, humanly and technologically, especially that the experience of distance learning and its success has proven economically feasible, and revealed the possibility of providing education as a remote service with high efficiency depending on technology, and at a lower cost .
Therefore, economic challenges impose themselves on the individual and society, and we must not wait, and start working on re-engineering the education budgets through restructuring our educational institutions, and presenting an educational model based on “hybrid” thinking that combines distance learning and education inside the classroom, so that This new model enables diversification of learning options, and an optimized investment of budgets.
Through the "hybrid" thought, we will be able to re-engineer the cost of education as follows: First: allowing more students to be recruited, given the lack of correlation with the absorptive capacity. Second: The possibility of attracting faculty members who have distinguished global talents and experiences for distance education, especially for the exact subjects and specializations, without the need to bring them to teach inside the country. Third: Restructuring and describing administrative jobs within options that allow work from within the organization or remotely, as well as in jobs related to student services, which have been successfully provided online remotely. Fourth: Re-engineering the school or university educational building, so that it focuses on the applied and the technical side, and support the environment for innovation, entrepreneurship and extra-curricular student life.
Accordingly, we will reach to reduce educational costs and operational budgets, which will support the direction of government education institutions towards rationalizing expenditures and supporting the economy, and will also enable private education institutions to offer educational options at lower fees, which is a necessary requirement for the next stage, to support the students ’families and reduce the financial burden on them .
We have before us many opportunities to re-engineer the «education economics», and achieve the equation by balancing the rationalization of exchange and the commitment to maintain the quality of education and its outputs, to successfully overcome the challenges after “Covid-19”.
Abdullatif.alshamsi@gmail.com
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