The pandemic has exposed gaping inequalities?in universities¡¯ ability to switch online, a conference has heard; a shock that could renew policymakers¡¯ focus on overall teaching quality rather that funnelling money to a select few star research universities.

Prior to the lockdowns that forced teaching online, governments had? been pushing a few elite universities to achieve ¡°global excellence¡±, said Isak Froumin, head of the Institute of Education at the Moscow-based HSE University.

But this led to a ¡°growing stratification of the ÖйúAƬ system, especially in big systems¡±, he told delegates at Times ÖйúAƬ¡¯s Young Universities Summit ¨C and these fissures had been starkly exposed during the pandemic.

Stronger universities showered with money from various national excellence initiatives ¡°became even stronger¡±, he said.

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¡°We found that these universities that already received additional support from the government, they took a lead in switching to remote teaching. They had strong teaching digital resources. They had strong digital infrastructure,¡± he said, drawing on research conducted by HSE and Beijing Normal University about how the Russian and Chinese systems responded to the shutdown.

However, ¡°weaker universities, or say non-elite universities...found themselves in a very difficult situation¡±, he said.

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In Russia, he said, HSE¡¯s joint research found that 20 per cent of universities merely ¡°imitated¡± distance learning. ¡°This gap became dangerous for the system,¡± he said.

¡°It's not their fault. They didn¡¯t have resources to invest in development. They didn¡¯t have experience to do innovation.¡±

Governments?that pushed universities to switch online suddenly found radically different capabilities to do so among institutions, he said.

The question now, he said, was whether this would lead to a broader turn in the policy debate, away from championing ¡°excellence¡± and towards support for all teaching.

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¡°If you look at the rhetoric of ministers of education in big countries, they now have more concerns about those universities that are lagging behind this elite group,¡± said Professor Froumin.

Excellence strategies will continue, he cautioned. ¡°But I think, I hope, that they realise the danger of over-stratification within the system, and they will support all universities in some degree.¡±

Ellen Hazelkorn, a former policy adviser to Ireland¡¯s ÖйúAƬ Authority, concurred, and said that there was now ¡°increasing concern¡± over the vast majority of students who studied outside highly ranked universities.

¡°Fundamentally, teaching should always have been the issue,¡± she said. ¡°We spent too little time thinking about that. There¡¯s been too much focus also on research with little impact.¡±

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david.matthews@timeshighereducation.com