ABSTRACT
The Indian economy, like the rest of the world, has been severely impacted by the pandemic with a high number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities. All spheres of economic and social life have been struck by the disruptive effects of COVID-19 and lockdown measures. There is hardly any sector that remains insulated, and higher education is no exception. The pandemic has been onerous for both students and educators.
To overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic, the educational institutions made a paradigm shift from the long practised traditional methods to online teaching. The transition to online teaching-learning, however, was not very smooth. The objective of this chapter is to critically examine the theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, to understand how systematic, deep and disproportionate these effects are. The discussion focuses primarily on the learning outcomes and economic consequences and the discourse on the literature is 270further substantiated with students’ experience of the pandemic based on a survey of students of Jesus and Mary College and Hansraj College. The chapter argues for a comprehensive blended teaching model; a sustainable blended model of education requires a well thought out roadmap with the following pivotal components in place: robust infrastructure, institutional assistance, technical support and effective educators.
