Institutional Management during the Pandemic of COVID-19: Analyzing Responses from Universities in Canada, China, and the USA

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Leading during a global crisis: Institutional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Proposal

COVID-19 has challenged higher education institutions (HEIs) in unprecedented ways. Universities around the world continue to make difficult decisions to balance educational needs, health risks, and financial challenges with incomplete public health guidance from local and national governments. HEIs are no strangers to crises and challenges, though. Over the last century institutions have responded to different kinds of manmade crises and natural disasters. They also face the day-to-day challenge of complying with federal policies or court rulings, balancing financial interests, and meeting their educational missions.

Since 2000, a number of education scholars have documented and analyzed HEI responses to a range of environmental and human-induced crises of varying degrees. They include faculty strikes (Vielhaber & Waltman, 2008), racial tensions (Fortunato, Gigliotti, & Ruben, 2017; Fortunato, Gigliotti, & Ruben, 2018) and the financial crisis following the Great Recession of 2008 (Brown & Hoxby, 2014; Liu, Jin, Briones, & Kuch, 2012), among others. The present study captures and analyzes a global sample of institutional responses to COVID-19, a “once in a century pandemic” (Gates, 2020, p. 1677).

Our study critically analyzes COVID-19-related communications from HEIs as they responded to the pandemic’s myriad challenges. We aim to explore how HEIs make their own responses to this crisis within their specific social and political contexts by examining written community updates released from HEIs in three countries. Our research questions are: 1) How do the responses of HEIs to the COVID-19 pandemic reflect institutional crisis communication strategy over the varying stages of the crises, and specifically—given the institutional need to balance varying policy and market constraints with social responsibility—what was their level of autonomy? 2) How do HEI responses compare both across the social and political environments of three countries, and across institutional types within those countries?

We examine the HEIs communication responses to COVID-19 through Situation Crisis Communications Theory (SCCT). Through the theoretical frameworks of critical communications (Coombs, 2007; Moerschell & Novak, 2019) and by conducting a comparative analysis of different tiers of universities among three countries, we explore differences in HEI crisis responses while attempting to account for differences of their respective internal governing structures and external social, physical, and political environments. Employing document analysis, we aim to explore how HEIs make their own responses to this crisis within their specific social and political contexts. For example, HEI decision-making is thought to be influenced by institutions’ interaction with state and federal policies in the United States (Thelin, 2019) and Canada (Jones, 2014), and by the hierarchical political culture and Confucian tradition in China (Yang, 2020).

Researchers employed qualitative document analysis (Bowen, 2009; Gee, 2011) to collect and analyze 600 web pages that were publicly available on HEI websites between January 1 and June 30, 2020. The rationale for this research timeline is that COVID-19 was first detected in North America in January; by late June Chinese universities had reopened and North American HEIs had announced their plans for the fall semester. These web pages contained updates and communications responding specifically to COVID-19 and its impacts to the respective stakeholders and campus communities of 27 HEIs in three countries: China, Canada, and the United States. We employed purposive sampling and convenience sampling (Given, 2008), to achieve a stratified sample of nine HEIs per country, each with three HEIs across three institutional types. We chose these three countries because each took a different national strategy to fight COVID-19, which, we theorized, would likely in-turn influence HEI response behaviors. The three institutional strata within each country were chosen to more completely account for differences among diverse institutional types (e.g., research university versus liberal arts college), and because geography and population density were important factors in the epidemiology of COVID-19 (Lakshmi Priyadarsini & Suresh, 2020).

The data are analyzed under the theoretical framework of Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory (2007) to HEIs (Moerschell & Novak, 2019). First, universities moved to protect the safety of their “stakeholders” or constituents and addressed different messages to different constituents. Travel was restricted and affected students were quarantined. HEIs directed faculty, staff, and students to stay safe before ultimately closing campuses and shifting to online instruction. Second, HEIs provided accurate information quickly and frequently from a central office. Such actions would seek to alleviate the uncertainty or psychological stress caused by the crisis. Finally, all communications fit into a timeline described by SCCT: pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis. We observed common milestones in HEI responses across countries, such as the first notification of COVID-19, the first case in that country, and the announcement of contingency plans.

Frequency and level of detail in HEI communications also varied by institutional type. U.S. and Canadian medical/doctoral universities posted daily online COVID-updates 19, while U.S. community colleges and Canadian undergraduate institutions tended to have a frequently asked question page or general message to the community. This may reflect differences of communication resources or staff. All countries’ HEIs responded quickly to this global pandemic, though their responses reflected local market, academic, and political conditions. In China and Canada, HEI responses fell in line with government guidelines and recommendations. U.S. HEIs followed public health advice, but showed greater variation in how they implemented advice, reflecting the greater autonomy U.S. universities enjoy and the absence of federal coordination. Messages varied according to national social, cultural and political norms, such as collectivism or individualism.

COVID-19 is truly a modern, global pandemic, and our study applies extant theories to examine postsecondary institutional behavior during this historic, worldwide crisis. As some nations lay blame or scramble to inoculate themselves from economic and human harm, we find that HEIs across North America and China demonstrate deep concern and a universal “acceptance of educational responsibility” for their respective students, staff, and faculty that can be examined and learned from. We hope that the evolving findings of this multinational, bilingual study contributes ongoing research from scholars pivoting efforts to understand the unprecedented effects of COVID-19.

Authors

• Michael O’Shea, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

• Leping Mou, OISE, University of Toronto

• Lu Xu, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

• Ross Aikins, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania