Higher education in the Post-Covid era

With the imposition of Lockdown in the wake of the Pandemic, the functioning of the Indian universities came to a halt. As the Indian economy is limping back to normalcy, restoration of normalcy in teaching-learning is taking longer with the online mode emerging as a viable alternate mode. Though introduction of online mode began more than a decade ago, the sudden disruption caused by the Pandemic has expedited the adoption on a much wider scale. This chapter looks at the transformative changes the Indian higher education sector is undergoing in the Post-Covid era with policy support from the National Education Policy 2020 and popularization of online platforms by the government. It is argued that some of these changes are structural as these redefine the concepts of time and space associated with the university as a site for learning and research. Further, this chapter looks at India’s position in the global knowledge space in terms of world university ranking, research collaboration, students’ mobility and India’s preparedness to embrace the new normal at the global level. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Rajib Bhattacharyya, Ananya Ghosh Dastidar and Soumyen Sikdar;individual chapters, the contributors.