The pandemic has significantly disrupted the higher education sector as well, which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future.Sometime in the second week of March, state governments across the country began shutting down schools and colleges temporarily as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. It’s close to a month and there is no certainty when they will reopen. This is a crucial time for the education sector—board examinations, nursery school admissions, entrance tests of various universities, and competitive examinations, among others, are all held during this period. As the days pass by with no immediate solution to stop the outbreak of Covid-19, school and university closures will not only have a short-term impact on the continuity of learning for more than 285 million young learners in India but also engender far-reaching economic and societal consequences.The structure of schooling and learning, including teaching and assessment methodologies, was the first to be affected by these closures. Only a handful of private schools could adopt online teaching methods. Their low-income private and government school counterparts, on the other hand, have completely shut down for not having access to e-learning solutions. The students, in addition to the missed opportunities for learning, no longer have access to healthy meals during this time and are subject to economic and social stress.The pandemic has significantly disrupted the higher education sector as well, which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future. A large number of Indian students—second only to China—enroll in universities abroad, especially in countries worst affected by the pandemic, the US, UK, Australia, and China. Many such students have now been barred from leaving these countries. If the situation persists, in the long run, a decline in the demand for international higher education is expected.A glimpse into the post-COVID-19 education experience in IndiaThe future of education will go beyond brick-and-motor schools or universities. Digital learning ecosystems will be built on the trust of traditional educational brands, supported by governmental initiatives, complemented by Edtech players that assist in not just technical skills but also in vocational skills and will be encrusted with certifications that are enabled by blockchain technology. Having hard infrastructure will no longer be a competitive advantage. What will help leading brands in the education industry to stand out in the post-COVID era is their ability to service their students and ensure that they retain what they learn.A positive externality of this digital disruption would be the creative destruction of traditional exams. One might ask then how would educational ecosystem grade the students, going forward, to assess their acumen? I believe that yearly assessments of students from the K-12 level to the higher education level will shift towards a mix of case study methods, continuous assessment of class involvement and the ability of students to devise unique solutions to traditional case studies and weekly online assignments. The emphasis will slowly shift towards how a student tackles a problem, rather than how well they know the list of problems that exist.As the Indian education system traverses through the economic shock of COVID-19, technology will shift from being a crutch of the educational ecosystem to becoming its key pillar. In the pre-COVID era, only 1.5 percent of the colleges in India were using e-learning to support their learnings. This number will rise to 20-25 percent in the post-COVID era in India. The aforementioned pillar will not only support its delivery but will also ensure digital education brands are able to achieve scale by acquiring more students.Furthermore, the government of India’s push to support digital learning through initiatives like top 100 universities being allowed to start online courses through the automatic route, twelve DTH channels for learning till grade 12th and the launch of PM eVIDYA that aims to enable multi-modal access to education by integrating the governments’ existing virtual infrastructure for education is a timely move that I believe will aid in India’s smooth transition to digital learning going forward. Consequently, the increased traction observed by Diksha—the government's online learning portal—ever since March 24th is a case in point that India has the existing capabilities to ensure that learning does not stop given the difficulties caused by a lockdown.As learnings will be technology-enabled these experiences will be rooted in data—thereby ensuring that the idea of imparting critical thinking, technical skills and problem-solving skills to students will be designed around each students existing skill sets and brands will now have the capability to deliver the same content across various regional languages. I believe that it will be the ability of Edtech players to develop and deploy regional course content in the next 6-9 months that will be their passport to tier II, tier III and tier IV markets in India.Furthermore, as the pandemic has made online conveniences into daily necessities for learning to continue the adoption of digital learning content to vernacular languages will assist in reducing Indian Educations Digital Divide - which can currently be observed across rural hinterlands and urban slums today. I also envision that in the post-COVID era Edtech players will use regional edutainment (regional education content clubbed with entertainment) to reach a section of society that could not transition smoothly to digital learning in this COVID-19 outbreak.Going forward, Edtech players will leverage social media networks and the engagement of these platforms to deploy such vernacular learning content in addition to collaborating with grassroots organizations that work with such sections of society. I estimate that the Edtech market will be valued at ~US $ 15 billion by 2025.Moreover, even though Edtech players have seen a surge amidst the lockdown and there has been a 30 percent increase in the time spent on educational mobile applications during the same time-frame—a large percentage of this growth is driven by making gated services available to Indians at no cost in order to tap into potential new clients. However, this is not a sustainable strategy that firms can adopt in the long run. Furthermore, I believe the words of American Economist Paul Romer—“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” are a case in point of India’s rapidly developing education industry.With over 14 Edtech startups raising institutional funding since March 2020, I believe that investors are optimally utilizing this crisis to revolutionize the education ecosystem in India. This being said, I believe the growth of digital learning cannot happen in isolation from traditional learning institutes. I espouse that the Indian educational ecosystem is going to observe the prevalence of hybrid teaching models that are supported by tech and a host of Edtech service providers. Furthermore, I envision that industry-specific courses will find a place earlier on in the learning ecosystem; AI and machine learning will redefine how learners are assessed, and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Learning will emerge as a dominant trend going forward as it will integrate education and socialization for students.Ergo, I would like to conclude with a quote from the Rig Veda “There are two ways by which knowledge can be imbibed—from an able guru and self-study”. I believe that our current “able Gurus” will be aided by technology and Indians will develop a new sense of discipline as they adapt to digital and remote learning. Therefore, I trust that the Indian education system in the post-COVID era will provide opportunities for students and investors alike.But the fact is, no matter how good the teacher, how small the class, how focused on quality education the school maybe none of this matters if we ignore the individual needs of our students.Roy Barnes