Could coronavirus make university education fairer?

In the coming months, Covid-19 is going to force us to try out virtual teaching on a mass scale. If down the line it leads to students being taught by the brightest and best, shouldn’t we embrace it? Steven Cutts isn’t so sure

A lecturer speaks to students via a video-conference app in Thailand (EPA)

I remember thinking during my first few days at Imperial College London that this great institution was supposed to change you profoundly, to turn you into something better – namely a graduate. How on earth was that going to happen? What were they really going to do to you over the course of three years that would make you in any way different from the person you were to begin with?

It’s not an easy question to answer, but we assume these things to be true. There’s also not much point in pretending that Imperial wasn’t an elite institution, because it was. They weren’t that strong on presentational skills there, and you don’t see a lot of alumni in the House of Commons or on any of the popular TV shows, but it remains a top university, available only to a limited few. Again, another assumption.

But in the future, many of our assumptions about education will change. If the coronavirus keeps us all indoors, they’ll have to – and pretty sharpish.