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Exploring Recent Online Enrollment Trends
302 Plays2 years ago
Phil, Morgan, and Neil address recent news on 2U and OpenAI turmoil, followed by a look at recent online enrollment data. How is online expanding beyond its sweet spot and which trends are structural or pandemic-driven?
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Transcript
Introduction and Edtech News
00:00:05
Speaker
Well, welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. This is Phil Hill. I'm here with Neil Motley and Glenda Morgan for another episode. Well, Morgan, just to get started out, what a week you chose to travel over to Europe in terms of all the news that was happening in the edtech world. Hopefully it was worth it.
00:00:27
Speaker
Yeah, no, it was absolutely worth it I mean it was a crazy time in terms of trying to keep track of what was going on with open AI and and those sorts of things but it was really worth it it was. It's really good to get out of the bubble, I think, and sort of see things from a slightly different perspective. And, you know, my, my typical.
00:00:46
Speaker
three-part conference list which is have you did you learn something did you meet somebody new and did you have a good meal all three boxes got checked so uh so i'm a happy camper in that regard
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah.
Impact of OpenAI on Edtech
00:01:00
Speaker
So were you guys either one of you, I mean, obviously the open AI news, we're going to cover some of the news. And then eventually what we're going to get around to is talking about online enrollment, you know, what data we're seeing and which trends are real. And so we're going to explore that. But first, there's so much that's going on. I wanted to just, you know,
00:01:21
Speaker
have a discussion around everything that we're hearing. Were you overwhelmed with open AI news in the same way that was happening in the US? I guess I'm looking at both of you. Neil, what were you hearing?
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's just a bit of a saga, wasn't it really? And I think it kind of obviously speaks to the company itself, but also it kind of speaks to a little bit of the stage that we're at with AI. I mean, even now it's kind of hard to know what actually went on there, which I think is
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of a bit worrying, isn't it, really, that lack of transparency? Because then the room and wheels come around, you know, what is actually being developed there, which plays into the kind of existential aspect of AI nervousness and what it's going to mean. So, yeah, I mean, I didn't follow it really, really closely, but it was hard to kind of avoid it.
00:02:26
Speaker
But I kind of am now left with this sense of I
Sam Altman's OpenAI Drama
00:02:30
Speaker
kind of want to know what really went on there. And I don't think we're getting that. Well, they did talk about having an investigation. And I was saying this, I was talking to my daughters because I went up to visit them in Denver over Thanksgiving. And while this was all happening, I was saying, I can't wait to watch the Netflix documentary that I'm sure they're already producing. I mean, this will be fascinating to find out what the heck actually happened there.
00:02:56
Speaker
And then I'm actually, you know, it's funny. So we're recording this now. I don't know. Are we stable yet? I mean, at this stage for our listeners, we're back to where Sam Altman is back as CEO of OpenAI. We haven't heard any updates yet, but it was funny. I was thinking about writing some newsletter posts of here's what I think it means for EdTech.
00:03:19
Speaker
And I'm glad I did, because one day later, he moved to Microsoft. He came back. Things were just changing so radically. I'm glad I didn't write about it. So I don't know if it's stable at this point.
00:03:32
Speaker
Well, it seems as well like it might have worked out quite well for him in terms of, you know, when you've got, what was it? Does it 270 odd or more than that employees basically saying we want this guy back up. Otherwise we're, we're heading. Oh, no, no. It was like 700 out of 770 employees that wrote, you know, signed the letter saying we're going to quit, you know, if things don't change.
00:03:55
Speaker
It's not a good endorsement of the board, I'd say. No. And I'm surprised there's not given the given how opaque some of this stuff is, I'm surprised there's not kind of stories out there. Maybe there are stories out there around. This is how he always intended it to play out. And now he's come back with, you know, greater support, you know, given the nature of this story, I'm surprised that there's not that kind of those kind of things coming out, too. Well, I am hearing like more
00:04:23
Speaker
Like the paper by Helen Toner, one of the board members. That was one of the triggering events. And I haven't read that paper. It seems a little bit overwrought to me from the summaries of it that I've seen. But I'm hearing that type of thing, but I think there's got to be a lot of background goings on that were happening. Yeah. But really, Larry Summers on the board now? Really?
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, the best thing I heard about him, well, first of all, he's a big name, but the most interesting is, you know, there's such a world of regulation that started to come down on AI. And the best thing I heard is putting him on the board to be somebody who can deal with Washington. And, you know, it was a little bit of a head scratcher to me, but that's the best thing I had heard.
00:05:13
Speaker
I think it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if there hadn't have been that involvement with Microsoft. I feel like that was a bit of an anchor for them. And it would have been interesting to see how things might have unraveled if there wasn't that relationship there. But it feels like, from what I've read, they now have greater influence over open AI. So that would be interesting to see what that means in the future.
00:05:41
Speaker
there had to be some panic there. Investing 13 or committing to investing 13 billion dollars with no influencer seat on the board and don't even get told. So I'm not a pro Microsoft like as in I think they need to have more control of AI. However, it is stunning to hear that they had no
00:06:04
Speaker
No, no input on the governance at all, which I bet there were some panic days for them, you know, thinking of how do we tell investors, Oh, we threw this money
OpenAI's Edtech Influence and Diversification
00:06:15
Speaker
away. Yeah. That must've been a tense moment there.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess part of the question, I mean, do you guys, how does this apply to EdTech? I mean, EdTech is certainly, everybody's talking AI. Well, they're talking AI in general. They're making product announcements. You know, all three of us have sort of talked about it in newsletters.
00:06:37
Speaker
And it seems like open AI and chat GP is the default or has been the default position for edtech vendors on how they're going to research and work with generative AI. Does this matter to edtech, I guess is one of the things I'm trying to think about. The whole drama around the firing, the employees threatening to quit, the reconstituting of the board. So does this matter?
00:07:07
Speaker
I hope it's a bit of a wake-up call in terms of getting more diverse in terms of how they're engaging with AI, because I think you can't sort of focus on one provider. So I would hope that would be the case right now. Yeah, and I think maybe...
00:07:28
Speaker
Does it matter? I mean, it's kind of an interesting question at what level. But I suppose it maybe adds a little bit more nervousness to people around this kind of thing. Because there's something about the story which even makes you feel
00:07:50
Speaker
chimes with a kind of certain sense of instability around the companies that are leading the charge on AI. And given the relationship they have with Microsoft, given certainly in the UK, Microsoft is just kind of embedded within universities. I'm not sure that anything tangible will have resulted on the back of it, but it just kind of increases the level of
00:08:17
Speaker
unease or questioning around AI and the companies behind it and how they're incorporated and used within the university context, I suppose. I think it kind of affects the climate a bit more. Yeah. If I'm an ed tech executive, I mean, I would be not as scared as Satya Nadel had to have been that weekend.
00:08:41
Speaker
And it is nervous, but I would be going to your point, Morgan. I don't see how this doesn't diversify the approaches to AI, because if I'm an ed tech vendor, it was just the ones I've talked to was like the default. Oh, you're trying this AI tool. What are you using? And it was almost just like the default. We're using open AI.
00:09:05
Speaker
And they would say, well, we don't know if this will be the long term, but that's where they seem like everybody went. Well, if I'm an executive right now, I would be very nervous and telling my teams today, we need to broaden. We need to spread the risk because we're that close to them.
00:09:24
Speaker
not shutting down AI research, but slowing it down significantly and huge chaos going on. And, you know, 700 employees threatening to quit. So I don't see how this doesn't diversify the ed tech approach to AI. I think there's got and given the nature of education, there have there has to be a lot of people saying this is why we have to look at open source, the llama models through meta.
00:09:54
Speaker
My guess is that's going to get a boost in ed tech usage, all because
Diversifying AI Approaches in Edtech
00:10:00
Speaker
of risk handling risk. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's one way I do think this matters. Yeah, it's risk management, isn't it? It increases that sense of the level of risk of things. And I guess it opens up opportunities for those players that may have been in the shadow of open AI a little bit.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, and I think I sort of a downside for ed tech or as I think about it's not just AI. It was the fact that chat GP chat GPT was sort of building a whole new way to interface to computing a natural language one simple place in a way that could even replace search and a lot of other things.
00:10:43
Speaker
And there are other AI tools, but nobody is to the place that OpenAI has been in terms of that simple all-in-one user interface type thing. So I also suspect this will slow down the edtech adoption of taking advantage of that simplified human interaction that's out there.
00:11:06
Speaker
I guess one of the byproducts of this was that it was probably a good time for other ed tech companies to share particular news that might be perceived kind of negatively, thinking of two you here.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder if they, uh, yeah, if they, if they were timing it to saying, let's not make our news of, uh, and just for our listeners, uh, the CEO of, uh, to you, the co-founder and longtime CEO chip chip Palsack, uh, left to you and was replaced by the chief financial officer. The chief financial officer was replaced by another finance guy. So it's now a finance.
00:11:47
Speaker
driven company, but it was a major change with chip actually leaving. So you're right. I think that came out the more the same day or within a day of the open AI news. So you're right. It definitely seemed to I mean, I found it fascinating, but it did seem to bury the news somewhat. How surprised were you by it, Phil? I was surprised it took this long.
00:12:16
Speaker
before it to happen. I didn't see how they couldn't have made a change. And I'm doing analysis, as Morgan's been seeing in the back channels, tried to write about that. By the time the podcast is out, it might be after it. But I was surprised it lasted this long, because you're talking a financial crisis to the company. You're dealing with bonds. You're dealing with stuff. Those are things that companies are pretty aggressive about. And the handwriting was already on the wall.
00:12:45
Speaker
But I was surprised and not surprised. I was surprised it took this long, but when it happened, it was still sort of a shock to the system. So I was surprised, but not surprised. Morgan, what about you? Yeah, like you, I'm surprised it took this long. And I think you made the comment on social media that
00:13:07
Speaker
it happened on like the best week since 1985 or whatever it was, whenever Steve Jobs got fired. And so it wasn't much in the news, but I think it's important.
Leadership and Financial Shifts at 2U
00:13:20
Speaker
But, you know, too used to me is still what is it that Winston Churchill used to refer to things as an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in things. You know, too you is perplexing to me because
00:13:34
Speaker
they do good work. And so it's sort of interesting that they've sort of come upon hard times like this because, you know, and it's interesting to sort of start to unpeel some of those decisions. But yeah, and then of course Wiley also, the announcement got made that Wiley was, their university services division was sold to academic partnerships. So it was a big week for big news that would have consumed us normally.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, all fitting into my master plan to justify saying that just what was my phrase? I've already blanked on it. We talked about it in the first episode where we were talking about maybe it was overwrought the criticism I had about the existential crisis that the OPM is on life support support the OPM market on life support and
00:14:30
Speaker
Wiley and 2U are coming to my rescue, at least partially. I don't know if you view it the same way, but that's how I interpret it. It's all about me justifying myself to YouTube. You spoke it into existence, didn't you Phil? I mean, you could see this happening, maybe. I don't know, some premonition, but yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
It was, I thought, similar to you guys. It was one of those ones that it didn't surprise me, but it felt like a big announcement. Someone who's been associated with the company from the very start, someone that you really inevitably think of when you think of to you. But given all of the travails that they've been going through, it's not really surprising. But if you seem to see the next chapter and what that means, I think
00:15:16
Speaker
I was interested in what you said Phil around the kind of more of a financial focus which kind of makes sense but what would that mean for for 2U and its future and the level of the level in which the border kind of invested in that kind of that kind of business I suppose.
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, first of all, some of this was gut feel and dot connecting. I didn't quite speak it into existence. I did have a, when I made the statement, it was, there was just some things that were some trends and combinations where I was saying this is deeper than just the Pearson and the Wiley News and regulations. I sense it being bigger.
00:15:56
Speaker
I still didn't know that this was going to happen, but I'll go on the record here because it's going to come out in a blog post. I'll be very surprised. Wait, I call it a blog post. That's very old school. It's coming out in the newsletter. I don't think that to you can survive as is through 2024.
00:16:17
Speaker
next year they're going to have to have either they're going to have to sell off components like trilogy and the get smarter, unwind those and try to make cash from it, or they're going to have to go bankrupt. And the bankrupt is going to be financially driven by how do you maximize the amount of the debt
00:16:38
Speaker
paying back the debt to the debtors. So Morgan had a interesting reader contact of hers who gave her some interesting insight that's triggered me to do a lot of analysis. But if you think about it, this is no longer a stock driven company. The total stock is like 90, $100 million.
00:16:59
Speaker
They have over $900 million. So a factor of 10 greater on debt. It's the debt holders that are really on the line and control the future of the company. Their debt matures in early 2025. And I, from what I'm looking at, there's almost no way or very
00:17:21
Speaker
remote chance they can actually pay off the debt that's maturing in 2025, meaning they have to refinance or do something with the debt holders. I think they're jumping in saying, okay, we're in control and we're going to dictate some changes you guys are going through. So I'll lay out my case. I don't think they're going to exist as is, certainly beyond 2024. Something big is going to happen with them.
00:17:49
Speaker
And then if you look at it, you've got them, Wiley and Pearson, three of the biggest five OPM providers, getting out of the business completely changing.
Edtech Challenges: Regulation vs Financial Crises
00:18:03
Speaker
And the ones left standing on the large side are academic partnerships, Coursera, or the nonprofit conversions like Grand Canyon Education or Kaplan that serves Purdue Global. So I think this is,
00:18:19
Speaker
This story continues with additional big news over the next few months is my opinion. Something interesting to me is how much of this say in the US is regulation driven and how much is just finances driven. I mean it seems like almost it's more finances driven you know the regulation is there hanging like a dark cloud.
00:18:41
Speaker
Well, one potential thing that I'm looking at is what kind of leeway do they have to deal with the financial crisis, with the balance sheet, the debt in dealing with that. And the lower their stock prices, the less financial room they have to be able to do additional public offering of stock to be able to manage this. Well, the regulations certainly are impacting the stock.
00:19:07
Speaker
So I think they are interrelated. My gut is at its core a financial crisis based on the balance sheet. But then the stock price and the regulations feed into, well, what can we do about it?
00:19:23
Speaker
And financial people, they're cold. And what I mean by that, they go by the money, not by sentiment, not by future stories too much. So I think that what we're seeing is not new to them. It's just we're discovering how the financial people, particularly the debt investors, how they're viewing the situation. I think the interesting thing for me is in terms of their journey,
00:19:52
Speaker
And maybe to Morgan's point a little bit, is how much has the overall climate and operating conditions, which we know that are difficult, affected this fall from grace, you might call it, versus how much has it been their strategic pivot and the decisions that they've made that's led them down this? And this makes me think of,
00:20:15
Speaker
you know, when I worked in a business school and the potential for this to be a case study in the future.
2U's Strategic Pivot and Challenges
00:20:20
Speaker
And maybe there is something in this in terms of all of the OPMs that you mentioned, Phil, that are kind of no longer in existence. But I think that'll be an interesting thing to reflect back on, you know, next year when we probably have a clearer picture on, you know, where to you're at and what's happened.
00:20:38
Speaker
And I feel Morgan and I were having this conversation on Slack this morning, at least indirectly. And we're talking about the pivot that you refer to. I mean, 2U used to be all about no back row for elite programs. But then they did get smarter acquisition. Then the bigger one was the bootcamp with trilogy. That's when they started putting on big debt. And then they bought edX and they're becoming a platform company.
00:21:07
Speaker
But that fundamentally is different than no back grow and elite program. So you're right. It wasn't just they were adding things on there really are pivoting the company. And good question. I mean, I'm, you know, we're talking about the same things as how much of this was the pivot, the environment.
00:21:26
Speaker
And some of it, we'll be able to learn some lessons from it. Right now, I just feel confident that it's a balance sheet driven financial problem. But I think you're right. There's going to be some good coverage opportunities over the next year to try to say, what can we learn from this?
00:21:43
Speaker
I think we also have a new and updated curse. You know the old one about, may you live in interesting times. I think the new curse is, may you live through something that should be a Harvard Business Review case study.
00:21:59
Speaker
or a net yeah i use netflix documentary you're going a little bit more highbrow than that a case study is will be fascinating to read well let's pick up one other piece of news and times higher education announced that they're going to
00:22:17
Speaker
be doing rankings on online programs or institutions.
Skepticism on Online Program Rankings
00:22:23
Speaker
It wasn't entirely clear. I don't know the details of when that fully rolls out, but that will certainly be new. I know you had somewhat of a skeptical take on that, Morgan, just to get started.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, and Neil can chime in here because I know he certainly tweeted about it or probably wrote about it too, but yeah, they're gonna be ranking. They've got a whole lot of rankings that they do, and now they're gonna be ranking online programs, but excluding business schools, which that was sort of part of my beef with them. So especially outside of the US,
00:23:03
Speaker
business schools are like in the forefront of online and I think online is not as as far along in many parts of the world as as in the US so excluding business schools means that you're going to have very US dominated ranks there and also how do they how do they deal with say a southern Methodist university which has three or four or or an NYU which has three four five six
00:23:28
Speaker
OPMs working, you know, how do you measure those kinds of things in terms of presumably they're going to have to have inputs there in terms of what people are spending. So to me, it was very confusing. And they're rolling it out in April, which suddenly, which seemed like far away. And then I realized, oh, my gosh, gosh, it's, it's December. So before we know it will be April. I don't know. What do you think, Neil?
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah I've kind of been vaguely aware that they were going to announce something for a little while now so it didn't come as a big surprise to me and I guess it makes sense for them you know I think in their press release you know they're they're talking about responding to the growth in online degrees so it kind of makes sense to me in lots of different ways but yeah I mean I think there's a big question mark over it I mean I think
00:24:15
Speaker
I think human nature dictates that if I can put it like this, I think sort of rankings are doomed to succeed.
00:24:25
Speaker
We all outsource decisions to a certain extent, and actually having something like a simple thing like a ranking kind of helps. I think it's very much for a student audience, although it will be of interest to people like us and for universities. And a student isn't necessarily going to engage deeply with the methodology of
00:24:47
Speaker
the rankings necessarily, but take on trust that this organization that they may have looked for for their undergraduate degrees is going to have a similar kind of validity around the ranking. So I think that's probably the first thing to say. But, you know, just similar to you, Morgan, like a lot of question marks for me, you know, I get
00:25:08
Speaker
I get why they might have decided to exclude business schools and business degrees, but you're basically wiping out a really huge proportion of online degrees. Well, why is that? Why do you believe that? And I don't know if they explicitly stated, why are they excluding business programs?
00:25:30
Speaker
I haven't seen anything that justifies why they're doing it. There are things like online MBA rankings out there.
00:25:41
Speaker
Poets and quants. Poets and quants times higher ed owns now, don't they? So they've kind of gobbled up a bunch of companies. So I suspect it's because of the pre-existence of rankings around those programs. But if this is a wholesale online degree ranking initiative,
00:26:02
Speaker
you don't really want to exclude business, you don't really exclude health care and medicine, you don't want to exclude the areas that have a dominant focus for degrees, I don't think. But I think other question marks are around how are they going to gauge this. I think this space is a bit more complicated and I think it's going to require a bit of a deeper knowledge and understanding of
00:26:32
Speaker
the different flavors of online education. You can have universities where you've got online programs run in a traditional way, and then you've got online programs through an OPM. You've got different brands. What does that mean in terms of resource? What about deliberately asynchronous modes of online learning in which maybe student engagement isn't
00:26:57
Speaker
meant to be quite as regular and as rich as it might be in other formats. So yeah, I think they have a tough task in terms of a kind of ranking system that people are going to really respect.
00:27:18
Speaker
But I think it would be an interesting metric as someone who's an online education advocate. You kind of almost feel like no news is bad news. But I think they have a big ask, particularly in the early days around kind of making this work. I foresee a bunch of newsletter posts in our future. Full employment.
00:27:43
Speaker
So I'm a little bit neutral. I mean, I hope that they learn. In other words, I hope that they are understanding the same questions we're raising and therefore they get started and then they can adjust as they move on. So I'm more interested to see how Times Higher Ed learns over the first year or two to improve what they initially put out in April.
00:28:08
Speaker
The second thing is, I had forgotten about the Poets and Quants acquisition. I'm quite confident that's why they excluded business schools, because if they added business schools, that would destroy a lot of the value of the Poets and Quants that they acquired. So I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, they've been really snapping up lots of different companies, haven't they, recently, that it's kind of hard to keep up at times.
00:28:35
Speaker
That's right. Education is the juggernaut. OK, so let's there's so much going on, and I didn't even mention the King's speech. King Charles calling out low value programs, but we need to move on to our main topic of today, or at least I think we do. So what I wanted to cover is as we look at online education, we're out of the pandemic.
Growth in Online Enrollment and Education
00:29:04
Speaker
And all three of us have written recently about recent data on enrollment. So how many students are actually in online programs and what does that actually mean? So I had written a post looking at the 12 month unduplicated headcount data from our US Department of Education from iPads.
00:29:28
Speaker
which is a much better metric for online programs, as opposed to the other approach for traditional schools of just doing a fall census enrollment, like a one day as of this date, how many students you have.
00:29:43
Speaker
Because online has a lot more part-time, students jumping in and out, and a 12-month, unduplicated headcount is a much better metric. And in the US, one of the key findings from the most recent data, which is a year out of date, or a year and a half at this point.
00:30:01
Speaker
is saying that overall, 33% of students took only online courses and a further 37% took a mix of online and face-to-face courses. So in US higher education, 70% of students are taking at least some online courses. It's obviously less than during the pandemic, but that's pretty significant. And then,
00:30:29
Speaker
Morgan has done a deeper dive looking at enrollment growth in community colleges where essentially you're saying, hey, it's much bigger than I initially thought about that. And actually, could you just give a quick synopsis of your two posts about the community college growth and online enrollment? Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I was struck when I read Phil's post about the
00:30:53
Speaker
you know, the, the general rise in online enrollment, I was struck by the appearance there are a couple of two year schools, and I perhaps shouldn't have been because I used to work in California, but filled it a great sort of time lapse of the growth in online, you know, shooting up in for these two year schools, shooting up a bit during the pandemic, but then really some of them continuing to grow.
00:31:14
Speaker
post pandemic and and it certainly seems to be a growth area and California is a bit of an outlier you know there are a bunch of schools that have been doing two-year schools that have been doing online for a while like Northern Virginia Community College some of those some of the institutions in in Texas but but California in particular if you look at the top 100 two-year schools in terms of online enrollment 50 of them are in California so we see a and and you know it's it's due to a bunch of different
00:31:43
Speaker
initiatives that they had like the online education initiative and some other sorts of sorts of things there. But certainly it's an area that we're seeing. So and I want to explore that further in some posts in the future. I also wrote another thing about how maybe online is the new international, you know, in terms of
00:32:03
Speaker
a lot of schools use international students to shore up their enrollment numbers. And I'm sort of seeing something like that with some institutions starting to get to very high proportion of online or online is growing at a much
00:32:20
Speaker
shopper rate in a very dramatic fashion. The two that I pointed at were Oregon State and Arizona State and did a bit of a deep dive into Arizona State's enrollment numbers and state funding. And they really had to grow online in order to, to make up for that. That was, you know, I can't prove that, but I correlation is certainly persuasive there.
00:32:45
Speaker
And then Neil has been writing a lot about online growth from the supply and demand side in terms of the UK as well.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, actually, my analysis, I suppose, wasn't actually based on particularly recent data. But I was just conscious that I spent a lot of time. And I think it's inevitable, really, in online education that you sometimes tend to spend a bit more time on the graduate-postgraduate space. That seems to be where things happen a little bit more. But I was conscious that I hadn't really spoken much around online undergraduate.
00:33:22
Speaker
education in the UK and we have the Higher Education Statistics Agency which tends to release stuff kind of towards the end of January. So I can't claim to be jumping on the back of a recent announcement but I think it's a useful benchmark for how things have developed. So you know I think the general picture here in the UK is steady growth
00:33:44
Speaker
in that area that area is certainly not similar to what you're describing Morgan in terms of growing international student body around you know maybe cross subsidizing income but certainly that's what's happening in
00:34:00
Speaker
postgraduate education, whether that's online or on campus in the UK, there's a big drive and a big need for international students to pick up the shortfalls that universities are getting from undergraduates and other parts of their operation.
00:34:18
Speaker
Just a quick question there. I mean, one of the things that's being floated now, or I don't know if it's been passed, but limiting the number of dependents that international students can bring with them to the UK, you know, that's gonna, there's no way in my mind that that's not gonna cause a reduction in the number of international students, more pressure on institutions there. Do you think it's gonna cause an uptick in terms of that online as well?
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think there's potential for that to happen. I'm not sure how quickly we'll see that. I mean, I've certainly heard of universities in the UK who have struggled around international numbers and meeting targets in the kind of academic year just gone. And the dependence kind of ruling is definitely going to have an impact.
00:35:11
Speaker
You know, unfortunately in the UK, political climate, you know, immigration is such a hot topic and it's a shame that students in higher education get lumped into that. And maybe they're an easy target if you're looking to kind of reduce numbers that don't look so good for you politically. And obviously we have an election coming up just as you guys have. But yeah, I think,
00:35:38
Speaker
It may tip the balance for those considering online education, but there are plenty that are considering online education for an international market, just purely on the basis of financial considerations, irrespective of what's happening around the dependence side of things. And I found it interesting, both of your points of coverage, if you will,
00:36:02
Speaker
are looking at online education out of the sweet spot of graduate school and higher tuition revenue programs. And it's not just that, it's the fact that online education
00:36:17
Speaker
is very well understood. It takes a greater degree of student discipline, time management, to succeed in an online program. It's more difficult for students who don't have their life together, don't have clear career goals, might not have the right study environment. So the more that students don't have their whole discipline,
00:36:43
Speaker
of taking an academic program together, the more difficult online is. The revenue and that, I think, are two of the main reasons the sweet spot has been in graduate schools in particular. Well, what you're talking about, Neil, is undergraduate in the UK. And then, Morgan, you're saying not just undergraduate, but even two-year schools, community colleges, where you have big support problems, that's growing and it's significant.
00:37:13
Speaker
it's really pointing to online education, you know, becoming more pervasive outside of its sweet spot. And I did notice there was a lot of interest in your post. Yeah, no, absolutely. The other thing, and this is sort of somewhat in my usual fashion coming a little bit from left field, but I want to glom on to something that you said right at the beginning in terms of
00:37:37
Speaker
you know, this growing proportion of students who take both online and on campus. And I had an intriguing conversation with, I was doing an interview and it was with an institution that had ended a relationship with an OPM. And I sort of was trying to get at some of why they did that. And the reason that they gave me was intriguing. I don't think it's the whole story, but it was intriguing that they said,
00:38:03
Speaker
You know, working with OPM didn't match how their students behaved anymore because they found students cycling in between online and on campus. And so that was in part what they were doing. And I think that, you know, that's another interesting angle as well to the story. You know, you've got more of these different kinds of institutions doing things and causing a structural change plus the way that students are just behaving is different.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah, and just to call out, I think part of what they're describing is because OPM providers tend to rely on tuition revenue share, well, then you need to identify, well, which student's tuition counts towards my revenue? Well, if a student's taking on campus and online, or if they're moving around, that becomes, it clouds that whole ability to simply identify who should get what revenue on the OPM and the school side.
00:39:03
Speaker
And to me, it's fascinating because, when was it? So it was 15 years ago. I started, I worked with DeVry University as a consultant. And 15 years ago, they started a big ERP, new student information system, new CRM.
00:39:22
Speaker
And the real strategic driving factor, DeVry, for people who don't know, a for-profit university system, 15 years ago, they were much larger than they are today. But the whole motivation they had for spending this money in a four and a half year project was what you just described, Morgan. It was
00:39:42
Speaker
it shouldn't be a DeVry online student, or it shouldn't be a DeVry campus student, or it shouldn't just be a DeVry Illinois campus versus a Wisconsin campus. It should be one student going to DeVry. And so the idea was, if they call up
00:40:00
Speaker
to get an advisor and get support. That advisor needs to see the whole experience. And if they wanted to mix and match some online courses, some on campus at multiple locations, everything seamlessly comes together. All the support is provided.
00:40:17
Speaker
So the for-profits get a bad name in the US media, at the very least. But it's interesting to me that, yeah, I saw that 15 years ago, and that was a major approach, particularly for the for-profits. Well, now what we're seeing is a lot of the nonprofit institutions are
00:40:38
Speaker
getting that same religion that they're doing. And that's what I think you're hearing about. So I'm not saying, hey, we know everything because of the for-profits, but there is sort of a following nature of this discussion. Yeah, and I think it's interesting to think about that kind of variety in terms of reporting. Because I've been thinking about this recently in terms of the way that we think about
00:41:05
Speaker
Classifying higher education experiences the whole full-time part-time distance or on campus, you know, it feels to me as though those things are being increasingly challenged. There was a survey here in the UK that said, you know, I think it was close to 90% of
00:41:26
Speaker
undergraduate students who are studying full-time on campus had online teaching of some degree or other but that's not really reflected in the statistics so you know i think there's a challenge there for the kind of agencies that are reporting on stuff as well you know i suppose it's i speak quite selfishly in that it would be quite good to have metrics on those kinds of things but i think i think it's interesting from that angle and i think it's interesting to your point phil around
00:41:51
Speaker
how institutions might transform and how that might impact on some of this stuff because you know big thing in the UK certainly is
00:42:00
Speaker
trying to change models so that learning is more flexible, and that kind of equates to lots of different things, but it certainly equates to this idea that you might do a course online, and then you might do a course on campus. So it'd be interesting, as universities maybe go deeper in that direction, what that might mean for, I guess, OPMs, but also a kind of range of different things.
00:42:26
Speaker
And Morgan, you have noticed in your newsletter, but also in different things, you're sprinkling little anecdotes from your visit to Berlin with OEB, which I joked was sort of your online expense report. But you were also telling me about like even the difference that you're hearing between the UK and the rest of Europe in terms of purely online.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, certainly much more purely online in the UK than the rest of Europe. Most of the rest of Europe is just getting to blended learning or hybrid learning as they're talking about it. Apart from, especially private business schools, they're much more ahead of the curve there. So you're seeing it not only in terms of online learning, but also in terms of just things like
00:43:14
Speaker
consumption of other edtech things like LMSs and all VLEs and those sorts of things. So
00:43:22
Speaker
It all comes back to the LMS. That's the way to go. It's where we started, Phil, and where we land up every time. So here's a big question as we sort of wrap up for this week. I mean, in particular, what we're seeing is we all describe that there is growth in online and we're out of the pandemic. So it's not the nature of during the pandemic, everybody had to rush online for emergency teaching.
00:43:51
Speaker
But it's also not the MOOC 2010's view of everything changes. Everybody's going online and traditional schools are all going to go away. So it's not that hype level. It's not the pandemic level.
00:44:08
Speaker
But I think we're describing structural, slow, but structural changes to online education. And U2 in particular really highlighted, and it's not just in the sweet spots. It's getting into undergraduate programs. It's getting into community colleges. So I just want to check, are we all seeing
00:44:29
Speaker
structural online enrollment growth, certainly in the US and in the UK and potentially elsewhere, that's no longer pandemic driven, but it's structural and we will continue to see it. Am I overstating the case by summarizing it that way?
00:44:47
Speaker
I guess the way I described it particularly thinking about the graduate market is kind of modest growth but I mean it's interesting you know you mentioned about the kind of pandemic I really feel like and maybe this is just my cop-out but I really feel like that the next year's data set is going to be really interesting because I think then we've got a good set either side of the spike of the pandemic
00:45:12
Speaker
to properly analyze the trends. But I certainly think there is modest growth for online undergraduate in the UK.
00:45:23
Speaker
And there are reports out there about a perception, particularly amongst the most disadvantage of just the affordability of the on-campus experience. I know it's kind of talked about a lot in terms of the cost of coming and studying on campus. So I guess the onus there maybe is on those providers who are doing online degrees that might mitigate some of that affordability challenge to kind of reach those people.
00:45:53
Speaker
But yeah, I think, you know, there is certainly modest incremental steady year on year growth in the past, you know, four years or so. But I think yeah, I do think this time round when we get the UK data is going to be really fascinating.
00:46:09
Speaker
Well, you're leaving me hanging a little bit there. I mean, I'm going on record about two U's going to have a financial event over the next 12 months that will change the way it looks. And you're holding out on the data. Phil, this is a cliffhanger for January's or February's episodes. Okay. I like that approach. All right, Morgan, what's your view on what's structural, what's pandemic related, or how should we view this?
00:46:36
Speaker
I think we've got a slow structural thing going. And I think hybrid is in some ways the thin end of that wedge driving some of that. So that's something I'm going to watch quite a lot. It's like the
00:46:49
Speaker
the gateway drug in terms of online learning. So I really want to watch some of that. And even though I am notoriously anti Hyflex, sorry, Kevin, who's our colleague who really loves Hyflex. I think of Hyflex, my typical line. The food writer, M.F.K. Fisher, was engaged by the government to write an austerity cookbook during World War Two. And she had one recipe
00:47:19
Speaker
for a souffle that involved puffed wheat but no eggs and at the end of the recipe she said this will serve four people however only make it if you hate three of them and hope never to see them again and i think of hyflex in the same sort of way
00:47:34
Speaker
Like it got us through the pandemic, but only do it if you, etc. So, but I think it is within end of the wedge and I think there is slow but steady structural change. There are a couple of things that I'm watching, just even at one institution level, St. Cloud State here in the US, you know, which has got big enrollment problems.
00:47:54
Speaker
who started work with the OPM, they got told to slow down, their president just stepped down. So, you know, watching those kinds of things unfold. But over the next few months, I think it's going to be a critical thing.
00:48:07
Speaker
Well, we'll treat this somewhat as a cliffhanger, although I think we're all saying there's a very slow but structural nature of online enrollments and the nature of it is changing, particularly the mix and match nature and not just the pure separation that we've seen in past attempts between on campus and online.
00:48:28
Speaker
Well, in any case, this has been a full week and a fascinating conversation. This is proof that maybe we shouldn't take a week off in between. There's too much news that gets built up or maybe the news is going to slow down. I'm not sure, but it's been a great talking with you all and we will talk to you next week.