Afterword: Reflections on a Post-Pandemic Higher Education Landscape

The chapters in this volume were conceived as the SARS-COV-2 pandemic raged from 2020 to 2022. The projects they describe were born of a public health catastrophe that swept through postsecondary institutions as it ravaged societies shockingly unprepared to grapple with the consequences of a novel, terribly contagious, and highly infectious illness that carried off the elderly and the immuno-comprised in huge numbers. While not immune, university students and faculty were largely spared the worst physical consequences of COVID-19; the emotional, psychological, and intellectual reverberations of the pandemic, however, will resonate through the postsecondary community for years to come. As we navigate cautiously through a post-pandemic world in which a generally lower but nonetheless fluctuating level of contagion has become the norm, it is appropriate to reflect briefly on the lessons learned from our pandemic experience and to offer some tentative and highly speculative thoughts on what the future may hold for higher education in this new context.