Bogdan-Constantin Ibanescu (p), Gabriela Carmen Pascariu, Alexandra Gheorghiu, Mioara Cristea

Gunther Maier

Unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is of the utmost importance for governing bodies worldwide. Its constant increase during the last months is subject of major concern for both citizens and policy makers, as individuals might experience increased feelings of job insecurity due to the pandemic context and to the latest developments on the job market. Job insecurity refers to a perceived threat to the continuity and stability of employment as it is currently experienced and has a negative impact on the individuals’ quality of life. Many researches have linked job insecurity with low levels of well-being and high levels of stress, as well as local or national measures taken in job creation and job retention. Aside from individual factors, there are other critical influences that should be considered in order to better understand the dynamics of job insecurity against the COVID-19 pandemic. Such influences can come from regional features such as spatial, economic, or demographic characteristics, like gender, age, or education.
Our analyses are based on the PsyCorona database, a study with self-reported data deployed in 116 countries all around the world, that monitored various psychological variables starting March 2020. In order to get a better understanding of the spatial distribution of self-reported job insecurity, we chose to focus on eight European countries (France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, Romania, Spain, and Italy). Respondents from Western Europe countries expressed lower scores on self-reported job insecurity and less variance over time while those from Southern and Eastern periphery displayed higher scores for job insecurity and more variance. Moreover, we found that the higher the overall job insecurity is perceived in a country, the higher the discrepancies between age, gender, and education categories tend to be.

Tomasz Kossowski (p), Jan Hauke, Emilia Bogacka, Anna Tobolska, Justyna Weltrowska

Bogdan-Constantin Ibanescu

Unprecedented events on a global scale, including in Poland from the beginning of March 2020, related to the COVID-19 pandemic, to a varying extent, influenced educational services, particularly the functioning of primary and secondary education together with their direct stakeholders, i.e. teachers and students. Forced e-learning (in Poland without any previous experience in this field) has changed the entire education system. Imposed top-down (centrally) rules had to be implemented in all schools with very different resources, both technical base and human resources. Wielkopolska, as one of the largest regions in Poland, is, therefore, a sufficiently large area to study the spatial differentiation of the effects of e-learning concerning countries that had no experience in distance learning in compulsory education and which suddenly had to switch to this system. The effects, positive and negative, will be studied more carefully (objectively) after a few years. The current effects can only be investigated through surveys. The analysis in the presented study is based on research-based responses from over 3,300 students and over 700 teachers from all counties (31) in Wielkopolska. Geographically Weighted Regression modelling was used to analyze spatial heterogeneity. Among the dozens of models built, only a dozen of them presented a sufficiently high (in terms of statistical significance) level of explanation of the dependent variables (selected survey questions). The substantive analysis of these models is the basis for the conclusions presented in the paper.

Gunther Maier (p), Sabine Sedlacek

Tomasz Kossowski

The Covid-19 pandemic has seriously disrupted our way of teaching and of doing research in institutions of higher education. Many of us had to teach remotely or hybrid, had to organize and manage exams over the Internet, and supervise student research through video conferences. Similar problems arose with the usual research activities. Since travel was restricted, many conferences and workshops were either cancelled or moved to electronic media. While distance friction became less important for cooperation in established contacts, informal exchange and meeting new colleagues at events largely vanished.
The pandemic led to a flood of Covid-19 related research with many articles published on – often newly established – preprint servers. University administrators, policy makers, and the public press are speculating about the long-term implications the pandemic will have on universities and the higher education industry.
These two years have led to an accumulation of anecdotal evidence, speculation, and a few hypotheses about the future development in higher education. Some argue that the sector will quickly return to the pre-pandemic mode once the pandemic is over. Others predict higher education will be torn apart by the fundamental disruptions caused by the pandemic. Relatively little, however, is known about the experiences and the expectations of the main actors in higher education, the faculty members. In our paper, we will present the results of a systematic questionnaire survey of faculty members in Europe about their academic experience during the pandemic and about their expectations for the near future. The purpose of the paper is to identify patterns of reactive and proactive behaviour of lecturers and researchers and to investigate differences in their perceptions.
Since it became obvious over the past years that disciplines were affected and also reacted very differently, it is important to investigate academic disciplines separately and to compare across disciplines. Our investigation will focus on regional science and on real estate economics. These disciplines are thematically quite close, but differ in the types of students they attract and in the segment of society that is interested in their research results and alumni. In our paper, we will show differences between these disciplines as well as differences by country or region, by gender, by academic status, by age, etc. Our survey deals in a systematic way with the experiences during the pandemic as well as with the expectations about the near future in terms of teaching and research management.