What will the pandemic mean for studying abroad?

With COVID-19 cases on the rise, people remain to live in a state of uncertainty. One of the groups that are most stressful about their futures are the students who had planned on studying abroad for their higher education. With governments battling the corona pandemic and trying to save lives, international travel seems to be one of the least topics concerning them. They continue to remain perplexed about how to handle the local problems, with international journeys discouraged. Saint Louis University wishes to continue providing its students with quality education as they always have but is in a dilemma as to how to do it, given the situation.

Paul Vita, Director and Academic Dean of Saint Louis University-Madrid campus, says that the University has notified its students who were to join them from this fall semester that the classes would start from September and end in December with remote classes being offered in the first few weeks. However, the University is yet to confirm this considering how the situation is going to progress in the coming days.

Students who wanted to come to SLU this fall from abroad are trying to make sense of the situation in their own way. Amelia Bottcher is one of them. She says that while the COVID-19 situation has put her in a dilemma, especially with international travel kept on hold, she is still hoping that she would be able to join, in spite of her doubts and fears. On the other hand, there are students like Emily O’Gorman who has decided to call it off and stay back at her native, taking into evaluation the risk of the situation.

How the situation is going to unfurl in the coming months, only time can tell. As everyone hopes for normalcy to return, a big question mark of uncertainty stares back at us all.

N Malavika Mohan

Originally published at https://globalshala.com.