Digital transformation in higher education: trends and impact of the pandemic in 2020

The goal of digital transformation is to better serve customers and streamline business operations. In higher education, the customers are the students and they have an immense amount of learning options to choose from — private vs. public schools, online vs. on-campus learning and full-time vs. part-time enrollment.

And with more options than ever before, college and university leaders are struggling to maintain a competitive edge, which is even more concerning when you take into account the declining rate of high school graduates. As Forbes reports, the number of high school graduates has decreased across most of the country every year and won’t see an increase until 2024 [1].

The main goal of this research paper is to identify current trends of digital transformation in Higher Education, and determine the change in the pace of digitalization of education in the context of a pandemic in 2020.

The object is the main trends related to the digital transformation of higher education.

The subject is the world education system.

The main hypotheses are the assumption that:

• •    digitalization in the higher education system is an inevitable ongoing process;

• •    the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 was a driver of the growth rate of digitalization in higher education systems.

To achieve the goal, in the first part of this research paper, key trends of the digital transformation in higher education will be examined. The goals of digital transformation in higher education will be considered.

The second part of the work examines the tendency for the development of digitalization in higher education within the context of the spread of covid-19 in 2020.