In the midst of a lockdown and stuck in her home in the rural Himalayas, Haimantika Mitra picked up a full suite of competitive coding skills from Microsoft’s online self-learn platform. With skills playing an increasingly important role in the post-pandemic world, self-learn platforms grant students the chance to obtain valuable certifications while learning independently from home, boosting their hiring rates in a competitive job market.

In the United States, Mike Bloomberg gifted USD150 million to Johns Hopkins University, expanding the recruitment of minority students into STEM PhD progammes. As STEM fields increasingly originate solutions to the world’s contemporary problems, it is important for STEM PhD programmes to reflect the diversity of the population it serves.

In a time when education opportunities are limited by the pandemic, new avenues in technology and funding open up to make learning an equitable reality.