**1. Introduction**

In April 2020, Covid-19 instigated reforms in higher education institutions (hereafter, HEI) across the world. Nations, students and faculty experienced sudden closure of HEIs' premises and resorted to emergency remote teaching for continuity in education [1]. In less than a month, educational technologies took precedence over physical learning spaces and suddenly online teaching platforms, learning management systems, and communication technologies found their place in homes. The HEIs that were in the market of distance education and online learning had to make minor modifications, while others experienced numerous challenges and obstacles to continue providing education. The HEIs, besides managing panic among the students and following government regulations, had to devise strategies to provide education. Many HEIs across 188 countries, surrounded by uncertainties caused by Covid-19, were forced to take drastic measures to deliver remote education. This meant undertaking a series of steps—exploring the alternatives to face-to-face teaching, reviewing the alternatives, selecting the best alternative within the constraints of

resources, and implementing the chosen approach. Also, developing or procuring the educational technologies and re-engineering the course delivery was another task. At this juncture, the nations with powerful technological infrastructures and the HEIs with resources survived the pandemic and continued to provide higher education. The HEIs with capabilities to procure/develop technologies, with capable faculty equipped with technological know-how to deliver remote classes, and with students owning devices and broadband connections continued to sustain. On the other hand, nations with underdeveloped technological infrastructure and HEIs with poor technological capabilities could not impart education. This created a disparity in higher education provision among different nations. The Covid-19 caused pedagogical shifts [1] and expansion in the faculty's workload (job demands). However, many low-income nations and under-prepared (or unprepared) HEIs could provide the resources needed to match the shifts. Limited literature is available that informs us about such disparity in higher education. This informative chapter discusses the shifts in pedagogy experienced by faculty during Covid 19, the disparity in higher education caused by not having adequate resources to fulfill the faculty's job demands, and the disparity caused by the technological capabilities of nations. The principles from the job demand-resources model are applied to understand the reasons for the disparity in higher education provision. A convex lens approach was used to comprehend how pedagogical shifts influenced the faculty's job demands-resources and how the provision of resources required by the faculty are influenced by nations' technological capabilities, causing disparity in higher education provision across different countries.
