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The more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be
204 Plays4 months ago
Title reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0IK_R3hHLA
In our latest podcast episode, we dive deep into the world of online education across continents. We compare Welsh and English higher education funding, unravel FAFSA's ongoing issues, and discuss the diverse landscape of distance learning from Europe to South Africa, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. Discover how platforms like Moodle support millions of students in China and the mobile-centric approach of African Leadership University. We tackle the rise of generative AI in education, the market shifts caused by companies like Chegg, and the future of digital learning platforms globally. Join us as we navigate these educational transformations and explore the diverse perspectives shaping online learning worldwide. Tune in to stay ahead in the education revolution!
00:00 Global trends in online education explored briefly.
04:58 Chegg offers learning and cheating opportunities.
07:14 Politics dominates higher education press, student survey findings.
11:03 US struggling with FafSA issues, seeking help.
16:28 Varied national distance education institutions across Europe.
18:08 Neil's insights align with global online education.
21:42 Private universities drive increase in online students.
25:27 Online learning growing, driven by OPM's.
28:22 Private and non-open universities driving online growth.
31:32 Data challenges, digital transformation, multiple interpretations.
35:46 Contrasting national run and emerging private universities.
39:02 Government-driven platforms, micro credentials, student retention challenges.
41:24 Digital transformation in education post-COVID-19.
44:39 Spoke at universities and plans for future.
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Transcript
Introduction to Online Education Discussion
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. Here with my colleagues, Glenda Morgan and Neil Mosley. And as we get deep into the dog days of summer, and a lot of activity is going to be coming up for us, particularly around LMS users conferences and other conferences in July. But today what we wanted to do is take a step back. We've taught we've set up the show is across the Atlantic and mostly US, UK, online and hybrid education issues. But today what we're we're going to get into is sort of a description of what's happening more broadly with um online education across the globe.
00:00:51
Speaker
And we get this question even from a consulting basis, like, okay, how do we understand what's happening in other regions? Are they going to become closer to the what U.S. does or different developments? And so that's something that we want to explore today as more of a broad geographic view of online education. So think of this as Alex Usher, but focus on online today.
Impact of Generative AI on EdTech
00:01:16
Speaker
So before we get to that, let's talk about the news and I'll start out with, I'll let you guys choose if this is a depressing or encouraging, but one of the pieces of news over here is that Chegg made a big move ah laying off 23% of their staff. And that was sort of significant, not just that it's yet another EdTech layoff,
00:01:41
Speaker
But it also gets partially to the issue where they came out of the gate when generative AI was becoming a thing of saying, no, no, no, no, this doesn't threaten us. Generative AI helps us. And this is actually good news. Yet the market's not buying that argument. And it's been constantly, their stock value has been going down. and People are basically saying you can't just declare AI is not a threat. You actually have to have a strategy or accept reality. So I think, partially, it's an acknowledgment generative AI truly is affecting their business in a significant way.
00:02:20
Speaker
And this might not be the key to our topics here, but their stock value popped up like 20% after they laid off a huge number of employees. I think that one's sort of relevant partially because that's so much of that's happening in the ad tech market. There's such a drive for layoffs and we're seeing layoffs everywhere. Terrible for employees and for the space we work in, but financially it helps the companies. So that's one of the pieces of news. I'll let you guys decide if that's good or bad news, depending on your view of Chegg. I think there's certain edtech companies where that garner more schadenfreude than others. I think probably Chegg, Course Hero, perhaps Turnitin are a trio of those for whom people may not feel may not grieve bad news as much as they might do.
00:03:16
Speaker
I mean I think it's still interesting because I think in a way actually all of the things that's happening with generative AI actually make me more interested in what companies are doing direct to students and I still have a feeling that Although I understand shareholder sentiment around AI and Chegg, I still feel like there's, and maybe this is a misplaced optimism, but I still feel like there's a space for a company to orchestrate the use of generative AI direct to students to help them. So it'd be interesting to see, you know, obviously layoffs of have got the attention, but it seems like a whole
00:03:58
Speaker
revising of their strategy or refreshing of their strategy. So I'm, yeah, i'm I'm interested to see what comes of it. Countering that though, I noticed that GPT zero got a $10 million dollars investment this week. So, you know, it's, it's, it's more power on the, you know, probably soon to be acquired by turn it in. ah Probably. yeah Boy, there, there goes the podcast sponsorship
Chegg's Strategy and Market Position
00:04:25
Speaker
opportunities. I'd like to point that out. but On the CHEG thing, you know your part of it depends on, are you talking a strategy on paper or in reality? That's one of my views about CHEG. They deny how deeply it's used just simply for cheating. And if you believe that argument, and if you believe what they really provide, you're right. It gets to direct to student services. It helps them out.
00:04:55
Speaker
And therefore, AI can really be an interesting play there. That's essentially what they're arguing. But at the same time, yeah it does both. CHEG does provide true direct to student learning opportunities, but it also has a huge part of their business that's very much based on cheating, and they won't accept that. So I think that's part of the issue here is what they say on paper is very interesting. And I think there's a lot of people essentially say we're just not buying it. And if it's cheating, well, you can do it much cheaper and easier with ah chat GPT than you can't can with your company. I know that's oversimplifying, but I think that's part of what's happening in the market. Yeah, there's maybe a market for a product called cheat GPT, I think maybe. yeah
00:05:42
Speaker
yeah I'm gonna trade like that. yeah Yeah. I think I think there is a deeper problem at the risk of having the the get
Regional Approaches to Online Education
00:05:51
Speaker
off my lawn sign pop up here. But earlier this year, I spent a lot of time looking at tutoring companies. And one of the things you hear consistently from actual tutors is that students just want the answer. They don't want to learn how to get there. And How you structure a direct-to-consumer offering, where we're actually giving you what you need rather than what you want, I think is a challenge. Boy, that's the that's a huge issue. i mean i don't And I don't think, ah to be fair, I don't think a tech company can solve that. That's a cultural issue that we're getting into there, but it's a great point.
00:06:30
Speaker
So I will say, since we don't do a video portion of this, as Morgan's talking about get off her lawn, it's right in front of her welcome President Johnson sign. She's got a brand going. Yeah, that was there was a sign held up by a member of the AFL-CIO in 1967 or something when President Johnson came to visit Madison that my friend Josh Morrill bought me in an estate sale. Okay, Neil, well, not besides the election. I know you guys are having a lot of election news and theer the Tories seem to be just really poised to set new standards for themselves, but beyond the politics, what's happening news-wise over on your side?
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah I mean the politics side of stuff is dominating a lot of the higher education press as you might imagine with manifestos coming out and people kind of commenting on what that might mean for higher education. I guess one of the things that was interesting ah recently and there's not been tons of news here, it was actually something that Morgan also picked up on in the newsletter which was the advance ah hache and happy student academic experience survey. So it's a survey of over 10,000 students, undergraduates in the UK. I just came up with some interesting findings. Students seem to be feeling more that their university experience is kind of offering good value for money.
00:07:53
Speaker
It further confirmed the numbers of students that are have having to work significantly now alongside their study studies because of cost of living pressures over here. It also highlighted the the amount of students using AI in their studies. So I think 62% of the students said that they were using AI in in their studies ah in a way that their university would kind of allow. But the flip side of that was that there was a potentially kind of socioeconomic gap there. So you kind of had yeah people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds more likely to use it than those of Hawaii. So I think that mike Morgan had more to say on on this in the newsletter, but it was just an interesting survey.
00:08:37
Speaker
not not necessarily not for online students, but just in general, like getting a flavor of getting the temperature check of what undergraduate students are thinking about the experience of what we're going through at the moment. So that that was an interesting one to come out and and generally a good a good thing that we have, I think. I heard an interesting comment that you may have some thoughts about that that, you know, all of the parties have been a little bit reticent in terms of what they're actually proposing for higher rate in the manifestos and things like that. And part higher ed is just so so long down the list of things that they have to focus on. But somebody made the comment, which which which was interesting to me in that, you know, you've had a Labour government for a while, essentially in, in Wales, and given the sort of devolution of, of higher ed kinds of policies, what you what we've seen in Wales over the last few years, it may be an interesting
00:09:31
Speaker
insight into what may be coming in the future. Would you agree with that? And what do you think that that sort of points to as a as a resident of Cardiff, even if not a Welshman?
Political Influence on UK Education Policies
00:09:42
Speaker
Thanks for finding that out. I am ah I am the kind of yeah, the Cardiff equivalent of an Englishman in New York. But yeah, I'm not sure how much differentiation there is between Welsh higher education and English higher education. Like one of the common, to veer off topic, one of the common um lines from the Conservative Party around the Welsh-English divide is look at how bad the Welsh NHS is run in comparison to the English NHS. And then this gives you a sense of what the Labour government will do. so
00:10:19
Speaker
Like in Wales, we have the same pressures around higher education and funding and all those kinds of things. And whilst there are policy differentiations within Wales versus England in lots of different areas, I'm not sure that it tells you anything because I don't see something that's so hugely differentiated to make that kind of judgment. I think you know the funding challenges are just the same if not even more in Wales than they are in England. So I think whilst people might use the National Health Service as a marker of the difference between parties ruling in different parts of the UK, I'm not sure that the same can be said of higher education.
00:11:04
Speaker
Well, the other thing that we've been looking at in the US, I mean, talk about ongoing issues, but the whole FAFSA fiasco. And we're getting to crunch time because we're going to be finding out actual enrollment projections, you know, within a month or two as schools start being able to report which students are actually showing up. While this is happening, the Department of Education, they brought in the head of the College Board, which administers the AP and standardized tests. They do other things. But to oversee next year's FAFSA form,
00:11:45
Speaker
which on one hand, I took it initially positively because it's an acknowledgement of, hey, we need some outside help to make sure next year is not as bad as this year. The downside of that is, first of all, it sort of confirms what Morgan initially pointed out, which is, hey, we're talking about this year, but next year could have some major problems as well. This is a sign that they know it. But then there's also, Morgan shared with me some commentary that it was saying, hey, look at the choice of who they're using to help out and that College Board is not known for transparency and for, you know, dealing with implementation issues in a transparent manner, yet that's exactly what's needed. So I started out on looking that as good news,
00:12:38
Speaker
But the deeper I think about it, the less ah positive I am. But it is news worth considering that's happening over here. And Morgan, I think you started out with a negative view from the beginning, correct?
Global Perspectives on Online Education
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, in in in part because of some of what I'd read about the College Board and and things like that, I didn't realize the extent of the ah conflict of interest, which I don't think is that huge, because I mean, they're their funding form is much smaller than FAFSA. But Yeah, I was I was less optimistic. And and you know, they've they've they've shut down the public comment period for next year. So this is really a bad sign that they're not interested in listening to people. And you know, one of the most powerful things for me of the whole fast s su Fiasco
00:13:21
Speaker
is the terrible communications around it. I mean, it's one thing to have so yeah rolling out a large computerized system and updating giant systems is very difficult, but you can at least communicate about it well. And that's what they seem to have really goofed up. And it's triggering me because I used to do a lot more of this, like project recovery, big IT systems. How do you get them fixed? And this is, it's not just they're not communicating well. It's such a common pattern of projects where things are a lot worse behind the scenes than we're even acknowledging.
00:13:58
Speaker
And, you know, Fred Brooks wrote the Mythical Man Month. And there's so many studies and it's so much experience on what troubled IT t projects look like. And there are just so many warning signs here that this is, that we're not seeing all of the problems. And one final piece that was overlooked, it didn't really get covered beyond the Chronicle of Higher Education. is ah the Department of Ed just came back and said, you can know this was on two days ago as of this recording, saying, we had promised that schools would be able to do batch updates to the FAFSA information, corrections to student things, which is required to give financial aid when data was wrong. That's now not going to be ready until the first half of August.
00:14:47
Speaker
which is also when a lot of colleges and universities start having students showing up on campus. And this, here we are getting this major update news in the second half of June. It's just, there are so many signs saying we're not through this problem and it's going to be hitting us next year as well. So more fodder for the podcast, even if Neil's going to get tired of hearing us talk about it. i I mean, I just can consistently think, why are they not picking up a phone to Phil Hill? like That's why I think. I could give you many answers to that question. And say what you like about our coverage of the issue. At least we pronounce it right, because the other day I listened to a podcast where they spent 45 minutes talking about FESFA.
00:15:34
Speaker
oh That's right. Get the details right. Get the details right. Okay, well, let's jump into our main topic, which Morgan is going to lead us to, the world of online education. Take it away. Yes, well, we we call ourselves online education across the Atlantic, and today we're going to cross more more oceans, the Pacific can and the Indian and and and all these different kinds of things. And we've sort of divvied it up into different regions. Phil's going to talk about the Americas writ large, right, and
00:16:08
Speaker
Neil's going to take on Europe and those kinds of things. I'm going to talk about the Atlantic, but what I first wanted to do, because I came away with some surprises. So I'd love to hear how ah the two of you, what surprised you as you were sort of looking at some of these issues of, of online, online learning in different locales to what we're used to. Yeah. I mean, I i think one of the really interesting things that I had a degree of appreciation for in Europe, but not probably as full an appreciation as I should have done was just the array of nationally run and set up distance institutions across different countries. Obviously, in the UK, we have the Open University, which was kind of initiated by the Labour government back in the kind of late 60s.
00:16:54
Speaker
I hadn't appreciated how similar institutions were scattered across Europe, so you have National Centre for Distance Education in France, obviously that's not the... I'm veering away from anything that involves me having to, you know, pronunciate things badly, but they they date their origins back to 1939 when they were doing correspondence courses kind of post-war, so, you know, there's similar institutions in Spain and Turkey and and I think I was really fascinating for me to appreciate that actually Europe had that tradition really of of those kind of national institutions that set up in decades gone by and didnt you know there's some I think the date back to the 1980s and 90s so they're not all ah you know really far back but that presents an interesting picture I think for online education in Europe.
00:17:51
Speaker
And not not in Europe, but I actually cut my teeth and in one similar sort of institution in South Africa. I taught my first ever teaching job in 1988, was at the University of South Africa, which at that point was 125,000 students working remotely. Well, I thought we were supposed to be dividing things up, but unfortunately I'm A hundred percent agreeing with what Neil said is I've known about open universities, national open and distance learning type of initiatives. And the deeper I looked into it, it's just, it's surprising how much that
Role of National Open Universities
00:18:28
Speaker
defines online education across the globe. And quite often in very similar ways, not similar to the U S that's for sure, but in very similar ways.
00:18:39
Speaker
And I didn't follow directions well, so instead of the Americas, I basically did ah Latin America, South America, and I took Africa. Part of that is because I had a fascinating email exchange with ah Henty Wilson. who works at the University of South Africa. And I thought that was a great little cheating for the podcast. So she and I went back and forth on some topics about distance education. She was responding to a, to a recent newsletter, but same thing. It's there's so many national open and distance learning initiatives. You mentioned the University of South Africa, and I'll talk about that one a little bit more.
00:19:20
Speaker
a Nigerian open university, Colombia, just across the globe. It's not just that they exist and that so many of their numbers are in the, if not 50, hundreds of thousands or more. But how consistent it sort of seems is um that that is sort of the locus of online education and most of the globe. And you could almost, I guess here's another one that's not necessarily a surprise. How much of that is tied to Moodle but as the learning platform? Because I think they both co-developed, if you will.
00:19:58
Speaker
ah I saw much less of that in APEC, I must say. i saw much you know I did see some concentration in particular institutions, but much less of that influence of so national organizations like you got in South Africa. And I was surprised about that. There is an open university in China, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I was actually at a Moodle conference. Morgan gets to go and have the great...they tend to have some really good locations. Morgan's going on this year. But I was at a...I think it was the most recent global Moodle Moot Global, where they had just discovered the details about that Chinese Open University.
00:20:38
Speaker
And they had, because of their model, open source, they don't necessarily know who's using Moodle for what, but they said, hey, we've got two or three million students on the platform that we weren't even aware of. And it was the Open University in China. I think there's quite well-established networks for these universities as well. I do i have an involvement with the Centre for Online and Distance Education at the University of London, and you know they often have consulting projects with a range of quite often open universities and universities of that ilk. And I know that they've done work with the open university in China. that That's one example of networks, but there are
00:21:21
Speaker
there are other networks in Europe and kind of internationally that, you know, aren't necessarily represent that, you know, they wouldn't be the representative bodies for the likes of the Western governors say just plucking out an example, but they would be for the open university. So there is a There is an interesting dichotomy there, particularly as privates rise. And i you know to just take a bit of ah the Europe kind of findings, that was another interesting aspect where you've got the you got the big, like you were saying, Phil, in the hundreds of thousands of students, national government sometimes run.
00:22:00
Speaker
um legacy institutions but then you've got in other geographies you've got the kind of private university so i know in germany for instance when i was looking at that number of private university students i think is increasing across the board but you know their private institutions have really been one of the key drivers behind the increase in uh online students so i i think not always easy to navigate the stats for different national geographies that you're not that familiar with, but I know that I think the numbers of higher education students studying online have gone from sort of 6% in 2017, 2018 to 9% in Germany, 2022, 23, so it's an interesting increase and that proportion is around similar to the UK. We've got a bit more in terms of proportion, but I think private
00:22:51
Speaker
universities have been driving that growth in general but also the growth in online. And going sort of contrary to Phil's point about Moodle in a sense is that sort of some of where we're seeing adoption of more commercial LMSs is in those sort of private ones because they're doing more online and they they want something. Yeah, I'd seen that as well. I suspect that's going to be a theme. I mean, after we sort of go through more regional summaries, but exactly the national open universities historically, but then the emergence of private ones and how that's happening. I suspect that's going to be a little bit of a theme, but I'd love to hear more
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, ah but but perhaps talking of like regional summaries, perhaps we could just go into that and then drill down into some of the questions.
Online Education in Australia
00:23:39
Speaker
I can I can start a little bit I cheated a little bit in my homework. And I did the the drunk guy thing, you know, the drunk man looking for his keys, and he's looking under the light. because That's where the light was. It wasn't where he lost them necessarily. But I spent a lot of time looking at Australia, which is Why is it always a drunk man, not a drunk woman? I'm just curious about that. Okay, a drunk person. oh Sorry, I felt i oppressed, but go ahead. A person of the fabulous persuasion looking for their yaves under a light. You know, and and one thing I was struck by in Australia, you know, well, I was struck in in the APEC region generally by that there's much more than we thought, but much less data than we would like.
00:24:26
Speaker
you know, and so, and and and it's hard to parse some of the meanings there. So for example, ah one of the providers of um sort of non higher ed providers of trading recently put out a survey that said 75% of students prefer online, but I couldn't see the actual survey, you know, and they were talking about dual degrees, and it took me a while to figure out that what they're talking about there is students studying on campus, but also doing a certificate online at the same time, which is apparently a big trend in India there. So it's a really different sort of generalizations. In Australia, I was sort of struck by the variation across institutions, which which I had not expected. you know So you've got something like the University of New England,
00:25:13
Speaker
ah where where famously years ago, I was chatting to them about their LMS strategy. This is before I worked with Phil. And behind the person I was talking about, there was a giant picture of the squid diagram. I like them already. Yes, so they are. They are lovely people. um And we joked about it. ah But you know, ah ah around about 80% of their students are online, you know, so they're the closest to that two to one, you know, one of the big sort of institutions there, where some of the other institutions like a Monash or
00:25:44
Speaker
University of New South Wales. They're they're they're starting to grow on online, but it's growing very slowly. I think Monash went you know from 1400 to 2000 in the last two years. So it's from a very, very small percentage. I was also sort of struck there by the extent to which a lot of this has been driven by OPM is much more than I would have thought. You know, ah there's an intriguing data point from Andrew Norton, who researches online at, um or education generally at, at Australia National University, and he said there are 33 institutions in Australia
00:26:17
Speaker
with 14 OPMs, which I'm trying to track down and figure out which ones he's talking about. Maybe I'll write to him and ask because that's a lot. The other sort of interesting thing about Australia was I sort of knew about this because as it happens, my best friend from high school recently did an online degree in Australia, she went back to to university. And she lives in Geraldton, which is on the far west coast of Australia, five hours north of Perth. And she studied with the University of Southern Queensland because they have a regional centre.
00:26:51
Speaker
in Geraldton, so clear across the country. And there are 32 of these right now, from different institutions, that sort of drives a lot of adoption of online there. And you know, we see that a little bit in the US, you know, ah Arizona State has some stuff, Australia, I believe started building brick and mortar centers, but it's it's much more established. And it does, as my sample of one of my of my best friend and her daughter. So it's a sample of two, um you know, chose to to study with a university far away. Those are just some high level scatter shot kind of ideas. But what about you guys? What what were you seeing in your in your areas?
Online Education Trends in Africa and Latin America
00:27:29
Speaker
Well, I'll jump in and it sort of follows similar theme, but on the national and open universities, University of South Africa, we're talking 370,000 students roughly. They're also the oldest of of this ah of this establishment of the way they're doing it. It got created the online through a merger of two schools back in 2004, but it's obviously really grown and they're strung throughout Africa and even beyond. The National Open University of Nigeria, 160,000 online students, and it's the biggest institution in Nigeria. They also have a big part of what they're doing is many centers spread throughout the country. So not campuses like full face-to-face learning, but centers to help people give them a connection.
00:28:22
Speaker
If you look more over into South America and Central America, ah there are other examples. The you know ah University of Guadalajara, although that's not an open university ah fully, but it's um got 280,000 students and it's got 3,500 online higher ed. That brings up the other trend that Neil mentioned, but i I'm seeing more of, which is what are the role of private universities at non-open universities and driving the growth of online, but starting from much smaller bases? Because when you talk about these other schools, you tend to be talking about the
00:29:03
Speaker
you know, 10,000 online students or fewer quite often, and but that's where a lot of the growth tech de Monterey is a very well-known Mexican university, huge reach, but they're developing their online at a program by program basis, which seems a lot like what you see in the U S outside of the Southern New Hampshire's and Arizona States and Western governors. but they have some ah specific programs including usage of Coursera. So that's another theme that you see out there. When we say that MOOCs are driving a lot of growth or say OPMs are driving a lot of growth, there's also really MOOC-centric Coursera in particular growth of online. So if I would say it, I mean, those are sort of from a broad perspective where I'm seeing a lot of this happening,
00:30:00
Speaker
One of the things that's happening, and I think this gets to sort of the private university comment, and you talked about the networks, there's another interesting network. And I had actually done some help with one of these. Arizona State University, they have the University Design Institute. And the whole idea is to help other schools do digital transformation. And initially, one way to look at it is so many college and university executives came to ASU to do free tours and talk to people and figure out how to do it.
00:30:37
Speaker
And they were getting overwhelmed by the number of visits. And so what they created was this Institute of saying, OK, we're going to do this, but we're going to do it as a service. And let's put you through a training program and let's collect materials so we can help answer these questions. So ASU is doing some of this help of other universities, which if you look at them, then you can go see some of the others. And that's where I mentioned the University of Guadalajara. but there are some others that are working with that. And they also mentioned MITx. So MIT's work that was wrapped up with edX, but then as edX got sold to to you, MIT still has their own initiative of MITx. They're also involved in helping international schools stand up online education. And a final high level thing, it it agrees with you, Morgan, that
00:31:37
Speaker
It's hard to get good data and it's hard to get a good understanding as you try to dig deeper. It's very hard to separate online and digital and ed tech. Those terms tend to get used ah interchangeably. So it's digital transformation. Well, as you dig into it, well, how much of that is just classroom augmentation with digital tools? How much of it is hybrid? How much of it is online? But even more than in the US, and I believe in the UK, that digital transformation tends to be a key theme, but then that means multiple things to multiple people. So those are a few of the high-level observations that I've had about that.
00:32:28
Speaker
Oh, there's one final one that I'll let go. There's a UNICAF. It's a for-profit. It was started in 2012 with a focus in Africa. And they're they do this through partnerships with universities. So it's almost a net, they're pulling together. It's almost a marketplace to one way of looking at it. They're approaching 50,000 online students, mostly grad students, but in Africa. So that's another private for-profit approach ah that I saw out there. So there's ah there's my book report for the podcast.
00:33:07
Speaker
I'm going to jump in with with Europe.
European Education Models
00:33:09
Speaker
But before I do, UNICAF is an interesting one because UNICAF actually partners with a number of UK universities. So kind of scholarship led focusing on the African market. So you have a few universities that are engaged in that market. and And one of the fascinating things, and this is a boring data thing, is that because UNICAF are headquartered in Cyprus, in the data that we get, ah it shows a lot of students from Cyprus, but they're not actually from Cyprus, but they're going through UNICAF. so that's
00:33:40
Speaker
Everybody in Cyprus is learning online. Yeah, exactly. It's just remarkable the saturation of online education in Cyprus. But yeah, that's an interesting one. Just continuing on the African theme, I'm kicking myself because I'm sure I saw an example of a relatively new online university in Africa that looked like they were doing interesting things around. Is it African leadership university? Possibly. But one of the interesting things, and I think one of the interesting things that, you know, could be gleaned and learned from is the way in which they're using mobiles in a means a lot more mobile centric. I think that's fascinating. And I think ah certainly keen to learn more and find out more around those kinds of approaches. I know that we in the UK, we talk a lot about mobile first, but it's not quite the same, same thing, I don't think.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah, we've done some consulting with African groups and its and so ah any research and consulting, it's fascinating how they've almost skipped over the whole laptop and Wi-Fi world. and gone straight to mobile and are doing things at mobile that we haven't really even thought of. So it's sort of a leapfrogging to a degree. Yeah, I think there's a lot we can learn. But yeah, fascinating. Yeah, so I mean, Europe, I'm feeling very European at the moment anyway, because we have the European Football Championships on at the moment. I'm sure both of you have got your world charts.
00:35:06
Speaker
and you're recording the scores on a daily basis, just like we are in in our household. But yeah, I ah sort of adopted a similar-ish strategy to Morgan. I think there's around 50 countries in Europe, so I tend to focus my attention on the bigger countries like France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the likes. You know, like I said earlier, the the interesting thing is that the nationally run distance universities that you see in France and Germany and Spain. I think one of the biggest one is Andalou University in Turkey, where they had over two million, I think, students. I mean, big country, but really fascinating.
00:35:46
Speaker
And I think one of the things that's interesting for me is that dichotomy between national run distance universities and then emerging privates, because I don't think we have that in the same way in the UK. So we have a national you know established online distance university, but I don't think we have the privates in the same way and that I kind of saw in some of the other geographies. So, you know, one of the really interesting players that has come to my attention for other reasons in the UK is the IU University of Applied Sciences and in Germany because that's that's kind of really grown and has to has the look of a really modern
00:36:35
Speaker
university for online and so they have over 100,000 students. I think they're mainly studying online. I think they were set up in the late 90s. They have their own AI tutor called, I think, Cintia. So they're a really interesting example and and I know in Germany that online enrollments have been growing and private universities as I said earlier have kind of driven that but they are a really interesting example of a university and they actually yeah they recently acquired a ah smaller um higher education provider over here called the London Institute of Banking and Finance and it's been really interesting to observe their footprint on that small institution because in the space of next to no time
00:37:19
Speaker
They have, I think, around 20 online programs, ah all open open enrollment. So you can roll whenever you want, which is rare. It's still rare in the UK. So, yeah, I mean, there's there's general trends in terms of geographies, but it's also interesting to just pick out different players like that. And that was one institution that had had really and impressed me. I think in Italy is also a really interesting case because I think again, I came out of this exercise of a greater appreciation of UK higher education data, but there were some there was some data points. so I think in in Italy, I found some data that said that online only private universities enrollments went from 40,000 in 2012 to 220,000 in 2022.
00:38:11
Speaker
So they've obviously seen a leap over there. And there's a really interesting group of universities that I think set up in the early 2000s that they call telematic universities. So there's 11 concentrated on online delivery. So there's often there's obviously some really interesting things happening in in Italy around online education. And given I love Italy, if any of if there's any Italian listeners who are looking for consultancy, then you know please get in touch. so So I think that you know the themes for me were the national open universities growth, general growth signals across you know a lot of the major reasons, some of that being driven by private universities and then that kind of dichotomy between private and those kind of established institutions. I think there was kind of some other interesting developments. So you have FON, which is the national government run, government initiated MOOC platform in France.
00:39:09
Speaker
Another that so i think a really interesting example of that being driven by government. Another interesting thing a bit closer to home for me was Ireland, so not a national initiative as such, but it's been really interesting to observe that a group of their universities created a platform for micro-credentials in the recent years. So it's called microcreds.ie. A really interesting example of universities getting together and doing something and developing their own platform to deliver, I think, mostly online micro-credentials. So I found similar things to you guys in that it's really hard to get a sense of numbers and trends and data, but it was really interesting for picking out those kinds of things. And if I could just say one further thing on the
00:39:56
Speaker
the big open universities. There is an organisation called the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities and there's there've been a report published by them recently basically talking about the challenges of student retention for a lot of those universities. I don't get the sense, although I don't have any data that those challenges are necessarily being shared by the private. So that whole dichotomy between private growth, legacy institutions, and how they're performing in terms of enrollments and retention got me got me thinking. But yeah, it was great to learn more and to find out more. But those were some of the themes for me across Europe.
Future of Global Online Education
00:40:40
Speaker
i think I think Neil definitely wins the homework assignment prize this week. know Oh, he's the kid that you take out to the playground afterwards and teach him a lesson. yeah I won European note before we go on. You're talking about the football and that we must be watching it. Did you guys see the video of before the Albania Italy match and they were facing the fans were facing each other across the street and the Albanians were taking dried spaghetti and breaking it in half. And then the Italians were like crying and screaming. It was a really fun video.
00:41:17
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. That's a whole new, a whole new version of the Haka, the the the yeahlin pre rugby. it It was great. But this, I think there's a connection between what we're saying, which is the open universities and then the private or even the public. growing in this digital transformation. What I sense is that with COVID, it's told so many regions of the world, that situation, saying we can't just leave it to separated national open universities to do online.
00:41:53
Speaker
We've got to figure out how to transform our broader post-secondary sector on what to do. And so you see so much of this struggle and we've got to start thinking about online education and hybrid. within non-open universities. And so that challenge of figuring out what that means, I see that in so many areas and COVID is a trigger beyond ah for obviously so much of that. COVID affected obviously the US and the UK as well, but in a different way. We already have in the US broadly distributed online education
00:42:31
Speaker
It used to be concentrated in the for profits in the US, s but now it really has gone throughout the system over the past 14, 15 years. I sense a lot of the globe is doing somewhat of a similar process, but replace for profits with open universities and replace the timeframe of when they're starting to do the change. Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting thing is, you know, I kind of wrote about this because it is that idea of, you know You have these established universities for but for so long have been the soul, and almost the soul kind of players and the soul the place that you go for online. And what does it mean when ah suddenly you know a whole bunch of people are entering that market? And how quickly can institutions who are 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years old pivot
00:43:30
Speaker
and how well culturally are they set up to do that when they've been you know the legacy, sole dominant players for so long. I think that's just a fascinating thing to observe in coming the coming years. And i I had a bunch of questions actually about the trajectory of growth, you know, because I think we've got a couple of different models, but I think we should devote a whole section, a whole a whole podcast to that in the future, maybe to sort of tease some of those out, because we can get at some of the the drivers of of growth and the retardants of growth and and so on.
00:44:04
Speaker
Why don't we, ah so we're talking about doing our next recording in two weeks. Why don't we make that part two of this discussion and sort of go, what are the trajectories and where it's going from there? I think that'd be a great idea. Sounds good. Well, thank you. I've enjoyed this. I also, since I see a a newsletter poster to coming out of this discussion, I think there might be a race ah on who on who does this. I can cheat because we do the transcription, so I'll have the material ready for me fairly soon. I also think we have a date in the future, perhaps next year, at e-learning Africa for the three of us sometime. Oh yeah. i I did a talk once in South Africa at the University of Cape Town, but I also spoke to a group of vice chancellors across Africa. I never did leverage that into a secondary trip, but yeah, now's the time to do that.
00:44:56
Speaker
With that in mind, i enjoyed the conversation and it's a different style for us. I enjoyed the book report that each of us had to do and I learned a lot. So let's let's take it from here and our next episode we're going to follow, but look more at the trajectory moving forward and see where it goes. Thanks a lot.