Κοντοπούλου Κωνσταντίνα Α.
Kontopoulou Constantina A.
When social workers have to set standards for the global academia, the challenges and negations will be a lot. Especially when economic matters “are wedged” in the equation of academic politics and educational equality, social workers have to come up with ideas and not just bibliography. If Covid-19 taught us that everything is possible even in times of quarantine, people who are in a constant form of a quarantine may provide valuable lessons about equal standards.
Family caregivers, especially those in younger age groups trying to establish their careers and families, face a spectrum of challenges for example, finding the time to balance their professional commitments against their responsibilities in caring for others, the added stress of those responsibilities, and often of watching someone decline and feeling helpless to reverse it, the social isolation that follows from these circumstances.
An unexplored field of social work is the coverage of the gap between the educational chances of a student caregiver and the certified education at the level of a PhD or any prestigious degree that demands physical presence.
This small essay attempts to demonstrate a new pattern of thought in order to universities appropriately address the struggles faced by caregiver academics, in order that they be provided equal opportunities in the world of academia, and that this world be more inclusive of this demographic.
Online learning has been at the center of attention recently, a trend greatly accelerated during the covid outbreak. But what did not follow, indeed for a variety of reasons which are not as significant as democratic education, was the creation and standardization of policies around distance learning – under what circumstances it is required, how it may be balanced with the need to share fully in an immersive academic campus, and which student demographics may be better served by the institutionalization of a hybrid remote/on-site model. Student caregivers are among these demographics. So, too, are students of limited financial means – those who, for example, must pursue their studies while holding employment to support themselves and those in their care.
By normalizing a distance learning component in education, anchored in a robust curriculum involving live workshops and practica, universities can empower and enable students in these circumstances to advance their education and careers. And once these practices become standardized, partnerships become more readily available between universities, making it possible for students and faculty across universities and geographic locations to find workspace, complete coursework, gain access to a campus, while still adhering to the standards of a mother academic institution.A student caregiver should be able to attend the workshops of his school at the nearest certified university according to his geography and this would revolutionize the overall process a more democratic higher education by bringing on the surface a new level of cooperative revolutionary education. Practice should be also possible as an online activity and workload or in the nearest university lab or institutions. A PhD student should be able to have online meetings with his students or supervisors when he is not teaching in person.
Caregivers, as they have to deal with issues of health, fail to achieve the degree of education they are capable of achieving precisely because they do not have the appropriate degree of motivation from the universities. Life experience, instead of being an element of personality identity of the candidate, is an indifferent quality which does not concern them. This leads us to another problematic aspect of higher education, the process of the acceptance to a program. Caregivers should be introduced as a key criterion in the initial application of any university and should be viewed positively especially in fields of psychology, social work and medicine. Of course, this is not just about carers of people with physical or mental issues. The specific model that could be referred as a simple proposal could revolutionize democratic education by introducing a free model of certified and professionally admired education in rational pricing or scholarships.
Overall, there are various solutions to ensure the educational quality while simultaneously ensure that education is not a matter of social class or social and financial difficulties. Obstacles are to create powerful personalities and new alternative ideas.
