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190 Plays9 months ago
Neil, Morgan, and Phil start a mini-series looking at an early 2024 roundup of online education with a view on products. Specifically, how should we view the multiple reports about microcredentials and noncredit offerings as a key strategy for online education moving forward, and are efforts from commercial providers like Coursera threats or enablers for higher education institutions? Clearly the uptake of microcredentials is slow, but is it e-portfolio in nature or a megatrend?
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Transcript
Welcome and Listener Feedback
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. And we're just discussing how we're getting a lot of great personal messages through LinkedIn DMs, through emails, through talking to people at conferences. So it's great to hear listeners commenting on the show and giving us some feedback on what's happening.
00:00:30
Speaker
Even though that does set expectations, we got to keep this going. So we appreciate the pressure you're putting on us, all of our listeners.
2024 Online Education Roundup Introduction
00:00:39
Speaker
So today, we're going to get in. We started talking about an early 2024 online education roundup of what's happening. So what we actually thought we'd say is, as we get into this year, let's do a couple of episodes on that topic, sort of resetting ourselves. Where are we and where do we see things going?
00:00:59
Speaker
And today what we're going to talk about is more on the product side, which inevitably gets back to topics like micro-credentials and looking at some of the reports from some of the providers and what that tells us. So we're going to cover that now. Our next episode, we want to take a little bit of a deeper dive into enrollment trends and in particular addressing that question that we've raised about
00:01:23
Speaker
What's happening with Online Ed?
Future Episode Planning
00:01:26
Speaker
Are we past the pandemic and things are really taking off again? Or are we seeing a continued decline? So what's happening in enrollment? And to be quite honest, if the three of us like those conversations, we might add a third or fourth episode on the same talk. Well, so we'll see how things are going. Great to see you all. And hopefully, Neil, you and Morgan, you guys are
00:01:49
Speaker
surviving the winter and getting ready to start thinking about warmer weather again.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, we are. Yeah, I think we've probably both been following the cricket in India. So maybe that helps in terms of observing a bit of sun. I know that's not your specialist subject, Phil, but we were talking a little bit about the cricket in India.
Weather and International Updates
00:02:08
Speaker
But, you know, maybe that's our little oasis. So you get your sunshine through watching videos of cricket. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And often, often they look very, very hot. So it makes you sort of happy to to go outside in a in a nice cool environment.
00:02:27
Speaker
Well, here in the Phoenix Scottsdale area, where typically we'd be in the 70s at this point, we're having this rainy cold spell. So we understand all the people complaining about the cold winter since we have temperatures down in the 50s this week, but we'll survive. I appreciate the concern.
00:02:47
Speaker
that we have.
FAFSA Form Rollout Issues
00:02:48
Speaker
But let's, before we get to our main topic, let's sort of highlight some of the news of what's going on. And we'll start with in the U.S., what continues to be what I think one of the biggest stories is the disaster of a rollout of the FAFSA form. And this week, I guess, to add to the saga of what we're seeing is now schools, we're seeing how schools are starting to react to not having financial aid information.
00:03:17
Speaker
until like three to six months later than they expect to have it. Basically, schools are delaying their deadlines of where students need to commit, but I'm seeing increasingly stories saying the students that are going to be hurt by this most are going to be low-income students, the people that were trying to help out with a lot of this work.
00:03:40
Speaker
So to me, it's an ongoing disaster. We're starting to see the impact on schools. And this ties into our series. I think this is another factor that longer term is impacting enrollments. I could see this materially impacting enrollments going on. So that to me is the biggest story. And Morgan, I don't know if you've been tracking this one within the past week.
00:04:06
Speaker
Not tracking it closely, I saw that the Department of Education had released some sort of kit to help people adjust, but without actually addressing any of the core concerns. It's here, it's probably a bottle of aspirin in it.
00:04:20
Speaker
A fifth of scotch, but... Yeah. Well, that would be useful. I think it is a kit, but they're also offering staff to help colleges. But I mean, the fundamental issue is students can't fill out the form, find out what their financial aid is, and send that data to school so they can process applications. So other than the scotch, I don't know how any of that really helps them. It's just, it's a PR effort.
00:04:45
Speaker
I've heard from law schools at the other end of the spectrum, but they're just in a world of hurt about it, that the impact is just ginormous and it's not even something that can be solved next year, presumably when they have FAFSA that works. It's going to keep working through the system for however many years those students in the cohort are working their way through. So yeah, it's a toughie. Yeah.
00:05:14
Speaker
So we're definitely tracking that here. It's going to have, I think, a short-term impact on enrollment, as you're saying, in different areas. But quite honestly, in this world of questioning college and the value of college, I think it puts another dent in the public's perception. And Phil, has there been much
00:05:36
Speaker
extrapolation to that level around FAFSA and you know this is another you know blow to higher education and you know that we're offering such a bad experience for people that really need that kind of support. Like has it kind of as a narrative risen to this is another kind of death knell for universities kind of
00:05:55
Speaker
Just on this podcast that I've seen. Okay, over here. Well, I mean, that's our MO, isn't it, probably? It is. Well, I mean, yeah. We need to look at implications. No, I haven't seen that. Right now, there is across-the-board fury about what's going on.
00:06:13
Speaker
There's people saying get your act together. You've had three years. There's political fury and there's definitely a lot of coverage of the immediate topic, which is what's happening this year and this cohort of students. I haven't seen any real discussion and I joke. I'm only partially joking outside of here that saying this has got broader implication. I haven't seen it. No, I haven't either.
Journalism and International Admissions Controversy
00:06:42
Speaker
So what about over in the UK, like what are the main topics, discussions that you're hearing in the community right now from a news perspective? Yeah, I mean, there's probably one big story and then one story that kind of caught my interest that's maybe not as big, but I guess one of the big stories was an expose or a supposed expose from one of the newspapers over here that was kind of labeled cash for courses. And it was basically looking at
00:07:11
Speaker
international kind of foundation years and so the the expose was supposed to be that international students were able to get into university with lower grades essentially. This is kind of simplifying a little bit lower grades than students from the UK but they conflated two different access routes for international students so one was at international year one
00:07:37
Speaker
an international foundation year so they kind of missed the mark really but that kind of caused a bit of a storm in the UK and there's subsequently there's been an investigation announced but there's lots of uproar and controversy around the kind of quality of journalism and the fact that they conflated two different areas and therefore there's a degree in which the kind of reporting was slightly invalid so that caused the big storm
00:08:06
Speaker
here and that's kind of playing out still a little bit and and probably aligns with kind of bigger narratives around International students then propping up the sector For some people they perceive that as being something that might exclude UK based students for accessing higher education, but there's a whole bunch of nuance that's often missing in that kind of debate So that's that's been kicking around
00:08:33
Speaker
So you're saying there's a lot of talk around that surface of the story, but then on the journalistic coverage of the story, is that journalistic angle? Is that outside of the Neil Mosley household? Is that a big topic or in other words, how big is that the the journalism got it wrong?
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah I mean that's kind of a that's front and center for universities responses and a lot of people's responses saying guys you're talking about foundation years as if they're international year one you've completely missed you know the the point here this is not you know you you've kind of not really understood this kind of route into university and you've made certain assumptions that
00:09:13
Speaker
this is about getting into year one or year two of a degree when it's actually a foundation year which you know isn't a common isn't an uncommon thing so there's a lot of talk around the kind of quality of journalism and the fact that they just missed the mark on it and also i think there's a
00:09:29
Speaker
There's an element of it in which I think people have been saying that it feels slightly motivated by this kind of middle class outrage that my children didn't get into their preferred, you know, big brand university. But look, these international students are getting through on lower grades because universities are treating them as a cash cow. And
00:09:53
Speaker
The journalism is kind of central to the issues with the story because they misunderstood. Just wait until the British middle classes meet American athletes and legacy admits.
00:10:10
Speaker
They'll form a union. Yeah. Yeah.
Generative AI in Education
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a bit of middle class outrage that's kind of going on behind it. And yeah, I mean, so that's kind of dominated a lot of the headlines over here. I mean, the other thing that kind of was interesting for me is there's a study from the Higher Education Policy Institute on students' use of generative AI.
00:10:33
Speaker
And obviously that's been a huge challenge. Cheaters. Yeah, cheaters. Yeah, for a long time. And I guess it just reinforced, I suppose, a lot of stuff that many people had been saying and to a certain extent was known in that a lot of students are using generative AI, then they're not necessarily using it to cheat.
00:10:55
Speaker
And actually they're quite reluctant to do so and there was very small percentage of students that said, you know, I just grabbed something from something like chat GPT and just pasted it straight into my assignment. So, you know, it's just kind of for those that are quite knee jerky about it. I think it just gave a pretty balanced.
00:11:16
Speaker
view that there's not vast numbers of students out there seeking to gain an unfair advantage through these tools, but they are using them in a way that perhaps they're not always encouraged to. But I think that was interesting. Of the interesting aspect of it was the kind of potential for it to exacerbate digital divide. So I think
00:11:41
Speaker
more wealthy students were using it more commonly, which I think, again, there's certainly an element of the kind of Matthew effect of generative AI, the rich get richer with these kind of tools and having access to them. So in one sense, I didn't feel like the findings were presented kind of a new revelatory kind of insight into things, but I think they just confirmed things in a helpful way that if you're of the disposition that you think
00:12:11
Speaker
you're desperately worried that every student out there is suddenly cheating on their assignment, then I think this should allay some of those fears. Well, I'll give you credit, you representing an entire region. This is two weeks in a row that we've talked about reports coming out of the UK that are very student experience centric.
00:12:34
Speaker
which kudos to you guys. So I would like you to accept the applaud for that. I will accept
OPM Usage Findings in North America
00:12:41
Speaker
it on behalf of the United Kingdom. Thank you, Phil. Well, speaking of conflation, however, Morgan, you wrote a post yesterday that's gotten already getting some interest. And I haven't told you yet. I'm actually thinking that we should do a follow up on that. But tell us about your post on the extent of OPM usage.
00:13:02
Speaker
What motivated you to write it and what it said? I've been thinking of a follow-up to say more. I was sort of prompted to write it by two things. One, we got a couple of questions from readers about how widespread is the use of OPMs by higher education institutions wanting to go online?
00:13:25
Speaker
Is everybody doing it? What is the scale of that? And also, in some of the things I was reading, there was a sort of conflation of online learning with either for-profit schools or with OPM-led schools, as though that was
00:13:39
Speaker
you know, a hundred percent of online was either for profit or a school working with an OPM. And my sense of that it was, that was different. So Monday I spent much of the day and into the evening digging through the data and you know, the data is complex and in part incomplete because it's, it leads and it lags. But essentially we found that, you know, around about, uh, 10 to 15% of schools in North America use an OPM.
00:14:05
Speaker
to offer a full credit program. So something that is tuition assistance eligible in some way. So it's a minority. And of those, I also looked at what sort of funding model, what sort of business model they used and about 80% were revenue share, about 13, 14% were fee for service. And then about another 6% had multiple deals, one of which was revenue share and one of which was,
00:14:34
Speaker
fee for service. Something I also want to look at is, you know, I think private schools are more heavily represented in that group of schools that do use. So I want to sort of look at the kinds of schools and some of those questions. But what were you thinking as a follow-up? Well, you know, the question is, when you talk OPM usage in particular, are we talking at the institution level? Like what percentage of institutions have some sort of OPM arrangement?
00:15:02
Speaker
versus program, which is really how the deals are signed for the most part. Yes, you know, the online program of blah, blah, blah. What percentage of those, which I just don't know of any realistic way to get the denominator of that data. We don't have a clear idea of how many online programs are in the first place. So how would you compare it? And then the third way is, well, look at total enrollment. How many students are in programs powered by OPMs compared to other?
00:15:31
Speaker
And it's that third one that I've had, one reader in particular, one subscriber in particular is asked about that, but I've had a couple of people reference it, that that would be another interesting measure. What percentage of students?
00:15:44
Speaker
partially because of the situation of OPM programs are built for scale. So does that mean that, yeah, they might be a minority of programs, but they enroll so many students that it's got a much bigger impact than we expect? So that's one way to look at that.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, that would be an interesting question because something I've been struck by over the last few months as sort of Pearson got sold and the unbundling of that sort of situation was looking at how many of those programs were not actually productive in the sense of really doing well. So I think the goal is scale. The execution was less frequently
00:16:27
Speaker
doesn't always come across. Yeah. The other thing is it's bimodal. So if you look at like the very small programs tend to not use OPMs and it's a lot of do it yourself. This department did an online program and they're not trying to get too big. So you have on this one side, the smaller programs, but then on the other side you have North, you have Southern New Hampshire, Western governors, the really big providers. They also don't use OPM. So it's almost like OPMs are in the middle.
00:16:57
Speaker
in terms of enrollment. But as we do some real-time planning, that's the follow-up post I'm thinking about. But something I would encourage just to take this opportunity for people to give us questions like that, so that it's interesting for us to hear what people want us to look at. We won't always do it because we can't or whatever, but send us questions. It's also throwing red meat to us to get us distracted. Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
Neil, do you have any numbers from the UK? Because I know that you do. You certainly do stuff looking at LMS usage, but you also look at OPM type of partnership. But I don't think I've seen you do it as a percentage. Have you done that yet?
00:17:41
Speaker
Well, I mean, last week I think you were testing me on whether I'd read your content. So I'm going to test you on whether you've read my content. I haven't done anything really extensive on it, but I did some research last year around postgraduate programs and postgraduate student numbers. And I think I found that there were, I think there were a number of university who'd grown student numbers by a thousand in the last year.
00:18:07
Speaker
I don't know how many years, maybe five years. So not huge, maybe in terms of US terms, but kind of slightly bigger quota over here. And I think there was around 60% to 70% of those universities had grown those numbers, had some kind of partnership, mainly in OPM. So you can infer from that that those that are growing
00:18:31
Speaker
the most significantly are with OPMs. And then in terms of courses, I think the research wasn't perfect. It's not easy to get the exact numbers. And it's always just a snapshot. But I think around 10% of all online postgraduate programs were run through OPM partnerships with a greater proportion of business and MBAs.
00:18:56
Speaker
I read that. I did not remember the percentage. So I have failed your pop quiz. I did not remember those numbers. It was not front and center. It was kind of in the midst of kind of broader research. But yeah, I did a little bit around that. It'd be interesting to update that and see how that's changed. Wait, wait. But going back to it, for postgraduate programs, 10% are using a partner.
00:19:22
Speaker
Yes, based on old research, that I think is a snapshot. I wouldn't want to say it's an authoritative, everything's covered, but I'm pretty confident that that's a good rule of thumb. Not too far off with what Morgan reported, for what it's worth. No.
00:19:40
Speaker
And maybe I'll, I'll, I'll break it down. Although again, that's red meat for me. I'll disappear into the data and slowly comb through it manually. Yeah. I feel like we're sort of, we're, we're kind of basically baiting listeners to give us questions that we want to find out. Yeah. Well, we'll see how that goes, but we do appreciate the interaction, but we, we might have to learn how to say no, that that might be the lesson here.
00:20:07
Speaker
But given where we are, it's good to hear or talk about the news of the day and sort of updates, but let's move into our main topic. And like I said, we're going to do a series looking at a roundup of where are we with online ed early in the year.
Micro-Credentials Uptake and Challenges
00:20:23
Speaker
But let me turn it over to Neil as we start looking at a sort of more of the product, the micro credential side and where we are.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, thanks Phil. I think one of the things that really got me thinking was looking through Coursera's 2023 results and obviously a business like Coursera has
00:20:46
Speaker
segments in a different way than if you saw a higher education sort of annual report from a university or something. You've got their consumer and their enterprise and their kind of degrees. And just kind of, you know, without kind of going into details of their report, the thing that I took away from that the most or that made me think the most was around their kind of certificates, professional certificates.
00:21:10
Speaker
And it felt to me that was really becoming a really central component of their strategy, the way in which it brings people in, the way in which it kind of influences
00:21:25
Speaker
you know, what degrees they work on and the relationship between those things. And so it kind of just made me think really about the professional certificates, the kind of micro-credentials space. And there's been other things that's kind of, that have come out, I think, Upsia have had a number of different reports, haven't they, around.
00:21:44
Speaker
whether micro credentials are a priority for universities and then I think there was one recently that was really around kind of an employer focus and I think there was a sense in which actually the employers were moving forward with private partnerships to address their need for things like certificates and micro credentials and maybe universities were lagging behind or declining in terms of that side of things. So I'm just really interested in
00:22:12
Speaker
those particular types of offerings from a strategic perspective for institutions, but also just in terms of observing what we're seeing. So I guess I'm just interested in terms of what you guys are seeing around microcredentials, professional certificates in and around universities. Does what some of the Upsia reports have kind of highlighted chime with what you're seeing or what you're not seeing over in the US
00:22:42
Speaker
Well, I'm seeing a lot of news stories recently in research reports, which is interesting. I think a lot of people are asking this question. So there was upset, of course, Coursera's results. But I think I just saw within the past week a study asking K-12 students.
00:23:00
Speaker
Are they interested in getting certificates that might not be degree granting certificates? And I think the theme there was there's demand, but they're so unsure of what the value is. There's demand and interest, particularly because of the shorter
00:23:20
Speaker
program length, hey, I can get value in a shorter time than two or four years of a thing, but I don't know if it's valuable. So there was a new report that came out there. So I'm just seeing a consistent set of reports. The fame I see overall is there's a lot of interest, both from students, schools, technology vendors, but the uptake is slow. It's just not launching yet. That's sort of the consistent
00:23:49
Speaker
theme that I'm seeing right now and I will highlight in the Coursera report like they had what they called scaled pathways which is essentially micro credentials that can lead to a degree and they talked to investors about that they're launching those and how important it is to their strategy but at the same time
00:24:09
Speaker
Like they were talking about an and for degrees, we're focusing on proving out our pathway degree strategy, including sourcing and ramping new programs in the very early stages. While we work to drive scale pathways for faster growth, they're looking for about 10% growth. But part of the message there is it's a core part of their strategy, but it's not growing as fast as they'd like yet. And that sort of captures the theme of what I'm hearing.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sort of seeing a lot of interest as well, but lots of problems also in sort of underperforming that people aren't always willing to talk about. You know, so they're putting things out there and demand is not quite where they wanted to be in profitability or, you know, at least being able to break even. And there was a bit of that in the Inside How I Read report on one of those, on those Upsear reports as well, you know, in terms of they often have as much cost almost as a
00:25:04
Speaker
as a regular course and marketing and things like that. But sometimes the demand isn't there. And I think there's just a lot of confusion. One about how to go about
00:25:15
Speaker
thinking about what the market wants. I mentioned in one of my posts about an interesting interview I listened to in a podcast of somebody who'd run some of these at one institution where they started with the faculty, what are you good at? Let's build a micro credential around that. And that proved to be the wrong approach. What actually worked better was to go to the corporations and do that, but also just confusion around the technology to use them, the policy changes, all of those sorts of things.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah that's interesting. I think it's just a really interesting area to me and it's something I've kind of been looking into a little bit in terms of the UK over here and I think a lot of things that you've said I would kind of echo in terms of perspective over here. I mean one of the things that's interesting to me having done a little bit of research on some universities in the UK is how
00:26:07
Speaker
in some instances, kind of their kind of existing CPD, standalone modules, continuing professional development kind of offerings have essentially been put under a micro credentials banner. But actually, it's just a change in name. So when you look at a whole bunch of universities over here, they have that other
00:26:30
Speaker
that other realm. It's not undergraduates. It's not post-graduates. It's kind of other stuff. It might be adult education, continued professional development. And in some instances, that provision has been rebadged as micro-credentials, but actually nothing materially has changed. There might be instances in which
00:26:52
Speaker
modules have been kind of decoupled from particular programs but when you kind of investigate it kind of has been has been rebadged and I think you know some of the things that you mentioned around perceived demand that was certainly something that came up here when we had a trial of short courses
00:27:13
Speaker
But also, I think what I'm also kind of interested in is around the kind of the company angle because you know to go back to the Coursera report, they're so strongly linked with industry partnerships.
00:27:27
Speaker
And I just wonder how well-equipped universities are to identify those kinds of opportunities and to identify the sorts of subject areas where there might be a demand. And I just wondered if you had any examples of universities or colleges that you feel like are kind of getting that right
00:27:52
Speaker
I do know that in California, the community colleges, they put a lot of money into local industry partnerships and defining different programs and pathways to meet local job demand needs. And it's not just
00:28:10
Speaker
a little bit of funding here or there. They really do work this out. So I've seen that happen. That certainly, though, doesn't fit within the micro-credential, let's stack things together and end up with a degree. It's really, they're doing a good job of working with industry partners and understanding their needs. That's not the same thing as let's rethink how we provision it. But, you know, I think they're isolated pockets. University of Washington. Yeah.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, at least my sense is that they're doing a lot there. They have a lot of boards with industry partners on at the program level, so that it's really focused on what it should be covering and that sort of thing. But that's one that I know about.
00:28:56
Speaker
No, the up-seer report was interesting around that kind of engagement with employers because I think one of the stats that they had was kind of 45% of employers, you know, I think the narrative was that employers are interested and their employees are interested, but one of the headline stats was, look, 45% have never been approached by a higher education institution around it.
00:29:20
Speaker
There was a consistent message in that study, which I think is value. I think everybody should read who's interested in this subject, whether you call it micro credentials or not.
00:29:30
Speaker
And I know that there was a low response rate to save myself some grief there, but it went a lot into, as you said, industry perceptions. They haven't been approached by a school or they're saying there's not a, it's even simple things. Like when I work with a school on this, there's not even a point person. They can't turn it around and be responsive to our needs.
00:29:55
Speaker
And that, to me, sort of gets to, and I think this is where you're going, at least partially, Neil, it's sort of like a university led micro-credential approach versus a Coursera led approach. And the Upsia report seemed to be a thing saying, hey, we'd love to work with colleges and universities, but my gosh, they can't get out of their own way or they can't get the basics right. And that's a barrier.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the interesting challenge for me because I guess I think about it as well in relation to some of the stuff we talked about before around the kind of financial challenges that universities face. And so, you know, industry certificates, microcredentials is, I guess, one route for them to go down in terms of developing their portfolios and seeking to kind of improve their revenue
00:30:50
Speaker
through a different type of offering. But what I see is really them doubling down on the kind of existing
00:30:59
Speaker
things in terms of degrees really. So I think there's an interesting tension between the potential opportunity, but maybe the heightened sense of risk or viability of kind of going down this route really. But I don't see many outside of kind of the bigger brand universities, if I can put it like that.
00:31:23
Speaker
kind of really looking to kind of grow these kinds of offerings. And it sounds like you're seeing a similar thing.
Micro-Credentials: Trend or Shift?
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah. The big question for me is, is this the e-portfolios of the 2020s, which is tons of hype and stuff, but it just really never goes anywhere other than a few isolated interesting cases, but it didn't transform a single thing.
00:31:48
Speaker
Or is this something like, is this a mega trend? This is going to happen. We're going to break down the degree. There are going to be multiple pathways. It's going to be more tied to industry. But while people think it'll take three to five years, it's going to take 10 to 20. So is this mega trend or ePortfolio? It's one of the biggest questions I have.
00:32:13
Speaker
I remember back in the day, Darren Cambridge, who had researched ePortfolios, I'm not sure if he did that, but in one conversation I had with him, he was threatening to title his book about ePortfolios, go big or go home. And I think the answer was they went home. But it seems like they're coming back now a little bit, at least sort of I'm hearing more about ePortfolios like the way that EduFrame is doing the logic trying, is doing it.
00:32:43
Speaker
I think it's more long-term than ePortfolios. I think it's got more staying power. Maybe that's just because I wanted to have more staying power, but I think there's even another complication, and it goes back to
00:32:57
Speaker
One of the books I'm going to write one day or one of the big posts, long form posts I'm going to do one day is about computer science education, because over the years I've spoken to thousands of students who are computer science students. And to a person, they are completely unhappy with the kind of instruction they get in higher education. And there seems to be this problem with a lot of academic disciplines in teaching very practical skills.
00:33:24
Speaker
you know, I think it sort of comes from that. And I think that's gonna be one of the sticking points also for micro-credentials. All right, Neil, let's get you on the record. E-portfolio or megatrend? I'm not gonna go with E-portfolio. So I guess that means megatrend. Well, it might not be, maybe the question is wrong. It might not be a binary. Well, I mean, I think, I'm just thinking about in terms of university activity, and I think it's kind of,
00:33:54
Speaker
I kind of think about it in a couple of different ways. There's the way in which micro-credentials stem from a disaggregation of degrees. And then there's the kind of what I describe as the other educational activity. And I kind of talked about before in terms of continuing ed. I could certainly put MOOCs into that.
00:34:18
Speaker
area and so I kind of think where where our university is going to where's micro credential is going to stem from in terms of universities is it is it from universities becoming more serious about trying to reach students through that kind of other bracket of what they do and joining that up a little bit more with the kind of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees or is it going to be around the disaggregation of
00:34:47
Speaker
of components. And I'm not sure what the answer is there, but it seems like in terms of what universities are prioritizing, it's still degrees of undergraduate and postgraduate variety. And there's not a big increase in strategic importance of the types of audience that you get through CPD, continuing education, although
00:35:11
Speaker
One of the interesting things that I think has happened post-pandemic in that other kind of realm is there are more, you know, those have gone online more, the kind of adult education, continuing education thing that might have involved you coming into the university on an evening. I think I've seen a lot of examples of that kind of then being run through synchronous teaching and learning through Zoom.
00:35:39
Speaker
That's the big question for me. Where is it going to come from? And in a climate where there's a little bit of uncertainty and a sense of risk about it, who's going to be willing to stick their neck out and kind of make a bet on that? Well, for me to go on the record, I would say it's a megatrend
00:35:58
Speaker
not big fans of the e-portfolio hype of 15 years ago, not necessarily its usage in isolated cases. But I think the definition of it is crucial. One of the things I do in keynotes and maybe people just put up with it or in workshops is I quote Virginia Sautier, who is a famous family therapist, and she dealt with family dynamics. But some of her work has been applied to technology.
00:36:27
Speaker
One of the things I've talked about is you get the disrupting element, which sort of breaks down the status quo. Then you tend to have these periods of chaos and then eventually there comes an aha moment or this idea is working and adds value and then things take off.
00:36:48
Speaker
And one of the key insights is those two things are different. The foreign element that breaks down the previous status quo is not necessarily and actually seldom is the new idea that actually gets adopted at scale. My view is that we're in that chaotic period in this whole topic of non-credit and micro-credentials.
00:37:12
Speaker
that the status quo is breaking down. We can't go back to degrees only. There's just too much demand and need. And that doesn't mean degrees are going away, but degrees is the main and only outcome. I think that status quo is breaking down. What we just don't know is what's going to be the transformative idea or set of ideas that will take it to the next level. And they might not even be called micro credentials.
00:37:41
Speaker
But the whole idea of disaggregating degrees, breaking them down, providing different pathways that you could choose to go into degrees, or you could get value on your own, and that those are much more tightly combined with industry needs, I think that's what I think is a mega trend. That concept is not going to go away.
Coursera's Impact on Higher Education
00:38:07
Speaker
The things breaking down the status quo are not necessarily the things that are going to work in the long term. Yeah. My follow up question to that would be, do they present a threat? So going back to the Coursera report, obviously their certificates with Google have done quite well. Google brings the prestige, and there's a kind of instrumental outcome potentially.
00:38:32
Speaker
then linking it with the Upsear Report, which kind of you could interpret as saying, come on universities, the private sector is moving on this, but you're not. Is this a threat? I mean, I'm interested to know what you think, Morgan. I'm going to throw it to you because you are shaking your head. I knew that was a mistake the minute, like, my head was moving. It's like, oh, no, no, they're going to pounce on me. And partly, it's because I've taken a couple of the Google
00:38:57
Speaker
Google certificates and I would get enormously frustrated by some of the design choices there. I think it is a bit of a threat and it's one to take seriously because I think higher ed has some enormous pockets of awesomeness but they also hide it behind a lot of crazy bureaucracy and barriers and things like that and I think speed and effectiveness and value are sort of high in demand right now.
00:39:25
Speaker
at the same time as higher ed brand is taking a bit of beating in many situations. So I think there's a threat. I have a, this is not as clear cut as the regulatory environment that we've talked about a lot, but I was at a small summit this week, and one of the panelists had a great quote, and maybe he's used it before, but he basically said, let's admit it, higher ed has a suicidal impulse.
00:39:51
Speaker
And what we need to do is we need to tell people death is not the only choice, people. We can actually choose to try something else. So I do view it as a threat, but in a best case scenario, it's the threat that helps push colleges and universities to be more aggressive towards what they do. So let me put it another way.
00:40:17
Speaker
to the extent that Coursera is more successful in these scaled pathways and starting to really prove out that's increasing their enrollment and that they can tie it to industry or somebody like Coursera, to the extent they're successful, that
00:40:35
Speaker
would be the thing that would help higher education get even more serious about investing in the space. Not viewing it as a short-term cash cow, but investing and going big instead of going home. Yeah, one thing with the Coursera
00:40:53
Speaker
Certificates also is the kind of entry level nature of it. And I think that's another component of it. Obviously we talk about the fact that they're shorter offerings and they're more industry focused, a bit more instrumental. But I think another interesting component of it is that you can, you know, they're an on ramp.
00:41:11
Speaker
to something else in terms of academic study without you necessarily having the qualifications. And so that's another interesting area for universities, I think. There's been some talk in the UK around certain universities lowering admission standards for international students. And although that's not quite the same thing, tying it back to the sort of financial troubles that universities face
00:41:41
Speaker
there's also something around these offerings presenting a pathway to those that they might not ordinarily reach in terms of thinking about it as an opportunity. But I'm not sure that many people are thinking in those terms or that want to kind of face that kind of lowering of the bar maybe. Yeah, lowering of the bar, that's an interesting phrase to describe it.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably pretty loaded, and if it's described in that way, then they're certainly not going to want to consider it. I think about it for the episode title, so we can go a little bit clickbait. Yeah, yeah. Well, I suppose the point that I'm making is I think there's an access component of this, and on the financial commercial side of it, which is obviously just one component,
00:42:33
Speaker
if you kind of break down barriers for people to come to your institution that might not ordinarily come to your institution, then there's, you know, potential benefit there commercially as well. So again, I think it's not proven. And so that I don't think there's many universities willing to stick their neck out to make that move. But there's an interesting argument around access and opportunity to around this kind of thing, I think.
00:43:00
Speaker
I think the hesitation that I'm seeing from schools is the access argument is very easy for most schools outside of some elites and stuff to buy into, but only if that means they can make some money or break even on it. Schools are not good at investment.
00:43:23
Speaker
and long-term payoff. So if there's ever a way where there could be financial security to make that increase in access, it's that combination that I think is not there yet in most fields. In some fields, like licensed fields, teacher education, professional development, nursing, stuff like that. Real estate sellers. Yeah, there are certain areas where it does make sense, but for a broad movement, it's going to be that combination of access and
00:43:52
Speaker
you're not, it's not requiring a five to 10 year investment.
Episode Wrap-Up and Next Installment Preview
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I think we've concluded that microcredentials are not the next e-portfolio. And if anybody wants to prove us wrong, you'll have to come back in 2029 or 2030 and at that point we will, if we're wrong, we will admit it on the podcast at that point.
00:44:22
Speaker
Well, that's good. So the next episode, as I said, we want to sort of say, where are we? And clearly part of what we're saying here is there's a lot of a lot of what's happening this year is trying to figure out questions like this. What is the product, the offering, whether it's by colleges, universities or the technology providers and who follows whom. Next week, we're going to do a deeper dive into the online enrollment and
00:44:49
Speaker
what is the student demand behind that and, you know, post pandemic. So I know that we've touched on that subject, but we want to just take a deeper dive and see where we are next week in the series. But it's great seeing you guys. And thank you for joining us. And I guess the other thing for today is send us your feedback, listeners, if there are additional questions you have and subscribe to the podcast.
00:45:13
Speaker
And if it were YouTube, I would point to the bell, hit the bell and subscribe to the podcast. But yes, you were right. Subscribe to the podcast.