Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Oh, but I'll take my time anywhere ... anywhere I roam
224 Plays9 months ago
Neil, Morgan, and Phil continue the mini-series looking at an early 2024 roundup of online education with a view on demand. What are enrollment signals telling us about what student want? What are the counter-arguments to what the three all seem to be seeing?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. And it's great to be here with Glenda Morgan and Neil Mosley again. And before we get to the news, Neil, I got to put you on the spot. Have you made any progress in getting them to change the Leeds Conference to where we can do a live podcast production in Leeds sometime this summer?
00:00:31
Speaker
You know what, I failed miserably. You've really put me on the spot there because I said I was going to contact them about that and see what was happening, but I haven't. My excuse is it's half term here, so that's kind of the break for schooling for a week. And I've been away. So that's my that's my excuse. But the short answer is no.
00:00:50
Speaker
Okay Then we'll redirect this towards Margaret Margaret if you listen to the podcast Here's some pressure to get the podcast rescheduled just for the benefit of myself and Morgan.
Weather Talk and Cultural Reflections
00:01:03
Speaker
I think that's what's important here Yeah, yeah, yeah cut out the lousy middleman and go direct is what I'd say But after a good time going on vacation other than being sick and
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so had a bit of a nasty cold and still got the remnants of that. But yeah, we went up to Yorkshire, which is where I'm from. So that was lovely to see, see family up there and have a bit of a change of scenery. So yeah, very nice. Not not particularly hot and sunny, but beautiful in its gray and rainy way. I think. Well, speaking of hot and sunny, how salt lake city treating you?
00:01:39
Speaker
Morgan. It's a lot like Yorkshire. Last summer when I was still living in Arizona in Tucson and the summer was awful. It was a summer from hell. It felt like somebody had opened the gates of hell and the heat was just pouring out.
00:01:53
Speaker
And I was staying by myself at the moment because my spouse was already in Salt Lake City. So I was watching a lot of British TV, which I do by myself. And I was watching a lot of British TV sit in Yorkshire as it happens. And I remember having this incredibly palpable sense of, oh, I want to be there because it was all rainy and cloudy. And it's set now in Salt Lake City. It's a long way of getting there in my usual fashion.
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, to commiserate with you guys, this weekend in Arizona or this past weekend was the W.M. Phoenix Open, which was really making the news this year for, it basically became the fire festival of golf tournaments, mud, drunks, sort of a disaster. And unfortunately, I had eight tickets over three days and we only used one of them. It just was such a wreck. But part of the reason, I mean, part of the reason was it just went over the top with drunks. But the other reason was it was so cold and rainy.
00:02:51
Speaker
So I think we all shared a nice cold and rainy time over the past week. I wonder if I'm having an influence on you, because it's a British past time to talk about the weather, but we've kind of begun the podcast talking about it. So I don't know whether this is something that happens in the US, but this is going to go down so well with British listeners, I think, talking about the weather at the start. Talk colonialism is what's happening here.
Mini-series on Online and Digital Education
00:03:18
Speaker
Hey, well, so today we're doing the second and sort of a mini-series that we did, that we started last week, where we wanted to talk about, let's take a step back and say, what's the state of online and digital education right now? What are we seeing? Let's sort of reset ourselves. Last week, we looked more at the product, what providers are offering, particularly around sub-degree micro credentials.
00:03:44
Speaker
Today, what we want to do is really explore in a deeper level the demand side, using enrollments as signals. Like what are we seeing on student demand and interest, particularly in online education? And what does that tell us about moving forward? So we're going to be exploring that. But before we do that, and maybe it is on the same topic, let's cover some of the news items.
Remote Teaching Challenges
00:04:11
Speaker
I don't know if you guys had looked at it, but IBM made the news twice in one day, one level because they're roughly 100 years old this week.
00:04:21
Speaker
and it was a celebration of IBM. On the same day, there was a story out of New York City where New York City, they missed the weather forecast. They had forecast a lot more snow. They ended up getting three inches of snow, but citywide, it was, okay, emergency remote teaching. So if you have this bad feeling about the old COVID test, here's another one, emergency remote teaching. 900,000 students were asked to go
00:04:51
Speaker
work on virtual classes during the storm. Well, first of all, the storm didn't really hit that hard. It wasn't a big issue. But second of all, there were tens of thousands of students who could not get into their classes. And we're talking K-12 here, students.
00:05:07
Speaker
who can't handle it the same way as colleges and universities. Essentially, the blame was a student authentication identity management system that IBM did for the city. Basically, IBM helped prevent, I think the estimate was 60,000 or 70,000 students in New York City from succeeding in remote learning. It was a disaster.
00:05:32
Speaker
It was interesting to me that it was IBM who was involved here. I mean, it used to be you never get fired for hiring IBM. I wonder if that's changed. But it's also interesting the fact that this emergency remote teaching reared its ugly head again and certainly didn't help the reputation of that as well. And I don't know if you guys had read any about that or if it's surprising to you what happened.
00:05:57
Speaker
No, I hadn't read, but it makes me think actually about some of
Impact of Online Learning on School Traditions
00:06:02
Speaker
the stories. And I think I listened to a podcast on this, which was actually about the idea that with online learning and virtual classrooms and all of those kinds of technologies,
00:06:13
Speaker
The snow day for school children is kind of going to be lost. So I hadn't really followed the story, but it was just kind of that. There's been a few pieces, I think, talking around that kind of idea and that kind of joy of missing school because of the weather. It's somehow now not so much an option because of what technology we have that's available.
00:06:40
Speaker
It was interesting. I saw some articles. I checked in Boston because I used to live north of Boston in Newburyport, and I was seeing what was happening there. And even more than New York City, they got almost no snow.
00:06:52
Speaker
And you had a lot of parents complaining in the Boston Herald basically saying, what happened to snow days? It was essentially where you're asking, why don't you just let the kids off and to go play in the snow? What's wrong here? Why are we even trying to do this? So you're not alone in that thought. Yeah, look, as an advocate for online learning, I'm also an advocate for snow days as well. I feel like we need to find a happy medium there somehow. Yeah.
00:07:19
Speaker
I'm just remembering the days long, long, long, long ago when I was in high school in Zimbabwe and we got the day off when Prince Charles got married. You don't get that anymore either. Yeah, that is true. First marriage. Yeah, could you be specific here?
00:07:39
Speaker
So another news story that's coming up and it's growing, and quite honestly, I'm curious to see if this translates across the Atlantic.
Textbook Models and Policy Changes
00:07:48
Speaker
Part of the purpose of the show is to get outside of the U.S. bubble. But the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education, look like they want to essentially shut down the inclusive access model where publishers
00:08:01
Speaker
provide more of an institutional purchasing for students to have their textbooks, and they have it from day one. That's the idea behind it. The problem with it is there's a transparency question like, are you actually letting students know about this new model? And are you giving them a chance to opt out and get their textbooks in another way, not just have it bundled in with their tuition bill? But what's actually coming out in the regulations are
00:08:30
Speaker
the discussions around it is not just let's just put some guardrails, but let's get rid of inclusive access. And it's huge. And part of the reason I bring this up is McGraw Hill just reporting that they had a 26 percent increase in their billings behind inclusive access over the past year. The point being, this is where most college textbook publishers are banking their business and they're getting tremendous growth.
00:09:01
Speaker
I was on X for Twitter, so I had to do a snarky comment. I think it's part of the user agreement. But I had said, this is why they're taking a sledgehammer to inclusive access. It's not really about transparency. It's about we can't let publishers get away with this. But I guess to start out with, Neil, does this story even translate outside of the US into purchasing model for textbooks and bundling with intuition? No, I don't think it really
00:09:31
Speaker
does in quite the same way really in terms of the kind of bundling. It's an interesting idea and I think I guess it's interesting around you know what you've spoken about before around the kind of political administrations tackling of outside agents shall we say or the kind of private sectorists I suppose but no it's hard to draw kind of comparison over here really around that kind of thing I suppose
00:09:57
Speaker
We where we might get kind of closest us around kind of maintenance loans and things like that But it doesn't quite work in the same way from what I understand Over there, but it yeah, it just sounds like more of a squeeze from of the private sector really in in the US I think is that your interpretation? I think that's my interpretation of why they're using a sledgehammer and
00:10:20
Speaker
instead of just putting up some guardrails to make improvements. But I don't think it's what created the whole issue, but the approach that's being taken, I think is very much gently stated, a squeeze on the private sector. There might be other terminology. But Morgan, are you surprised at all with how this story is developing and how much it's really a U.S. story? I mean, based on our N of 1, tried to get an international perspective this morning.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not surprised it's a US story because it just seems like the textbook situation is just different here compared to other kinds of places. It seems to be much less of an issue in other situations. So I'm not surprised it's a US story. You know, something that we've been tossing about is like, unfortunately, in some of the some of the sledgehammer, hammeriness that they've taken, they've also knocked out some unintentional things. So some places have
00:11:18
Speaker
open educational resources programs that have also gotten swept up in these. So they're trying to provide free or very, very low cost services to students in an all-encompassing way and gather a bit of money to do that because it's not without cost and these have gotten swept up in that.
00:11:38
Speaker
It's your typical unintended consequences thing. I think 2023 and 2024 in higher education in the US is not the year of living dangerously, it's the year of unintended consequences. Yes. I think for all of our listeners, you just heard a tease for an upcoming newsletter poster too. Yes. Actually, I know that's true. Well,
00:12:05
Speaker
I know you've been on vacation. Anything, any newsworthy things happening in education in the half term in the UK?
University Application Trends in the UK
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the biggest things probably was kind of announced today, which was just a decline in applications for kind of universities kind of third year in a row really for kind of undergraduates and a drop in the
00:12:29
Speaker
application rate for 18 year olds. So I think generally the demographic kind of predictions is that the 18 year old population is kind of growing. And so if there's a drop in the application rate, kind of a number of applications from the kind of base population for universities, and that's not a good indicator of demand for university places in the time when that arguably should be going up rather than going down.
00:12:54
Speaker
There's kind of year on year decreases in total number of applications and application rate. So there's kind of some anxiety really on the back of that around the demand for university here in UK and obviously given all of the financial troubles that are being experienced. So this kind of data comes on the back of we have a sort of a central university colleges and admissions service in which all the applications go through and there's a January deadline where the majority of applications are received.
00:13:22
Speaker
And so this is data that comes at the end of that cycle on how things have gone. So big headlines around, you know, questions around demand. There was a, I think, a decrease in kind of mature student applications.
00:13:38
Speaker
That sounds judgmental, by the way, but I'll go with it. That's the official terminology. I'm not riffing, so I just want to put that on record. A big decrease, I think it was over 50% decrease in applications from Nigeria.
00:14:00
Speaker
and some interesting things around subjects, so STEM doing well, medicine and kind of areas like nursing doing less well. So, a few little positive things, but mainly a bit worrying around the demand for UK higher education.
00:14:17
Speaker
going forward and lots of kind of discussion around factors for that cost of living but also you know one factor being the kind of government the almost kind of constant government doing down of higher education can hardly be good for the brand really.
00:14:34
Speaker
But hold on, Holden, you said something extraordinary in there. You said the end of January was the deadline for all these applications. This seems like an extraordinary situation. I think you should have a floating deadline that will happen sometime in April or May or maybe never. But we'll give you a one or two day notice whenever we change the deadlines. That's the other benefit. We're a big snarky about it. I'll pass it on to you, Cap.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, we're envious that you have a stable application process and application deadline. That's what I think we're trying to say. Maybe that's the good news. Well, it's just like last week I complimented the office for students and I was told I might be the only person complimenting them. But here's another compliment. Yeah, there you go. You know, all of the all of the higher education institutions are getting praise from over the Atlantic. I mean, you know, maybe they should set a base there and they get a little bit more love maybe.
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, speaking of Atlantic, one of our listeners wrote in to basically say that we're being too Atlantic-centric.
Online Learning Growth in Australia and India
00:15:41
Speaker
That's the wrong pond to look at. We should also consider what's happening in Australia. I guess that's a lake instead of a pond, given a lot bigger. But Morgan, I know you've started looking at some enrollment data in Australia.
00:15:56
Speaker
interesting things that you're seeing from that, from an initial view. And again, I realize this will probably come up in a post, but any light you can share from Australia?
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it does seem that that that online has been growing there. And just early this morning, I was taking an additional look. So there's some nice resources. So expect to see more from us adding to that. And then somewhat in our defense, also in part prompted by the the Australian comment over the weekend, I did take a look at some growth or
00:16:28
Speaker
An expansion of online offerings in India, actually, which for a long time has been sort of slow off the mark in that regard. And there's been a lot of legislation that's been confusing for institutions, but the Jaulal Nehru University is starting to offer online full credit programs, Coursera's Inc. 2 deals with IIT Ruki and Opigendal.
00:16:54
Speaker
the IIT rookie one is, and another one of the IITs as well, I think Hyderabad. And what's notable about those is that they're publics. But yeah, so certainly, it does look like there's growth in online in a number of different places, both like in Australia, which I think of as being to use that mature market, because of the distances involved, it's been doing online for a long time.
00:17:20
Speaker
but also in newer places like India. So I think there's a lot of interesting action. But look up for some more content in the newsletter.
00:17:29
Speaker
Well, with that segue, I'll treat it as into our main topic about what is the state of demand.
Shifts in Online Education Demand
00:17:36
Speaker
But I will point out, we love hearing from our listeners. We love hearing from you, and we do want to explore topics that are important to you, or you can interpret this as if we're very impressionable and little nudges get us scampering away when you tell us to look at different things.
00:17:53
Speaker
But with that, I'd like to turn it over to Morgan so we can get more of a deep dive into demand, particularly around online education and what we're seeing today. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Phil. And I think it's really interesting to look just specifically at the demand side, because there is often quite a bit of a distinction there. For example, I learned this week and I knew the number is high, but I learned this week that we have 850 online MBAs in the United States.
00:18:24
Speaker
And I wonder what the connection is between demand and supply. I knew that the supply was high. I didn't realize it was that high. But another thing also got me thinking and to think about.
00:18:34
Speaker
is the demand changing? Are we having different kinds of students interested in studying online? And again, I was reading another interesting piece that looked at the changing age demographics of students interested in going online, which is getting younger and younger and younger, you know, a lot more students in that 18
00:18:54
Speaker
to 24, 25 year old age category are now going online. Whereas before, I think there was a tendency to think of it to use the else phrase, the mature student or as we would, as we might call it the non-traditional post-traditional student, which is a phrase some folks are using. So are you guys seeing that as well, especially in the UK? And what do you think are some of the implications of that?
00:19:21
Speaker
yeah i mean it's always a challenge around that kind of information because those things aren't always tagged to well they aren't tagged to online education so it would be more of kind of anecdotal indicators on that kind of thing i would say that you know it wouldn't surprise me to see the the kind of age bracket go down in terms of online learning and you know there has been
00:19:49
Speaker
the growth in online students at undergraduate level in the UK has really been centred on the kind of domestic UK student. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that the age range is kind of getting lower or getting younger, but it may kind of hint at that. But in the UK there's not any really strong signals around what's happening in respect to that. I mean I think in terms of
00:20:18
Speaker
undergraduate and kind of postgraduate more generally there's maybe a kind of greater proportion for the official data that we have so up to 21-22 of kind of an older bracket of students so 25 to 29, 30 plus kind of great proportion increasing there and for postgraduate 25 to 29 is kind of where there's been kind of the biggest growth so we're kind of hamstrung a little bit in terms of the data to really know
00:20:48
Speaker
whether we're seeing kind of demographic shift around age. But, you know, my general feeling across all the work that I do and the people I speak to and the things that I observe is that, you know, I do think online is a lot more acceptable to a lot broader swathe of people. But, you know, obviously that doesn't necessarily mean that the kind of demographics in terms of age is getting younger or not. It's hard to know, hard to know really.
00:21:16
Speaker
And speaking of data, I mean, like, you know, we look at the IPEDS data system in the US and the National Student Clearinghouse tends to give much more updated current term enrollment. So in the spring, like in another two months, we'll get initial estimates of enrollment for spring of 2024, but they don't tend to break it out by modality, you know, online versus face-to-face.
00:21:43
Speaker
which means we're relying on data that's from 2022. It's at least a year, 12 to 18 months out of date. The signals, and I like the fact we're talking about signals that are more up to date, one are publicly traded companies.
00:21:56
Speaker
So recently we mentioned Coursera, they had their earnings and they are international. This is not all US, but in their degrees segment, I believe they said that their enrollment went up, I think it was eight to 10% increase from year over year. Grand Canyon education, which is an OPM provider for Grand Canyon University and several other schools, their online enrollment went up 10%.
00:22:25
Speaker
year over year. And then saw an article at Community College of Aurora in Colorado that their online enrollment is going up.
00:22:34
Speaker
I think we're getting a lot of data signals saying, at post-pandemic in 2022, it was sort of the pivot year into post-pandemic, that what we're seeing now is a really strong growth in online learning. And it's happening at the same time, like you mentioned, Neil, about the application data. Overall enrollment still looked troubling.
00:22:58
Speaker
But online enrollments, I'm seeing increased demand. And I, in my view, it's structural. A lot of the increase that we're seeing really are new students or new student types being interested in online learning. So I do think it's shifting. And when I hear, like you mentioned, that it's younger students, I think a part of what you're seeing is people just appreciate, and COVID had an enormous impact here,
00:23:24
Speaker
I like doing things from home. I like fitting school into my life as opposed to being forced to go on campus. So a very long-winded way to say all the signals I'm seeing or most of the signals I'm seeing are a material increase. And yes, I am seeing it to be not just what we used to think of online, but changes, age, undergraduate versus graduate. There's a lot of changes going on in my mind.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's economic factors as well, isn't there? There's been lots of stuff in the UK around undergraduate students having to work in a more substantial way than they have them previously. I think
00:24:10
Speaker
they may be an increase in kind of commuter students or students who are living at home but kind of commuting in to universities. So I think that's a factor as well and I think in terms of the kind of cost of living pressures I think often I find maybe the private providers or the private companies or the OPMs are a bit more sensitive around price than universities directly and therefore given that they can also usually spend a lot more on kind of marketing
00:24:38
Speaker
You know, I think that's also also a factor. I don't know that universities in the UK, based on the position that they're in, are going to move massively on price around online undergraduate degrees in the same way, really. So I think, you know, economics plays a part in all of this, too, in the kind of current situation that we certainly we find ourselves in the UK, for sure.
00:25:01
Speaker
You described very much what Grand Canyon CEO said on the conference call. That exact point about economics and about how that seems to be pushing more working students, but those towards lower priced options, the way he described that would be community colleges and schools like Grand Canyon. He obviously has a reason to push that, but he very much echoed your sentiment that economics at lower
00:25:29
Speaker
students looking for lower prices, a part of the increase they're seeing.
00:25:35
Speaker
And I, I was going to make a point and it's a tough one to make, but you know, I think we're also seeing a shift in the kind of students going, you know, or growth, at least in the number of perhaps less well-prepared students going online, which I think is part of that shift. It also raises a risk in the sense, you know, we, we get the word predatory flung around here, you know, a lot, but you know, I think it's, it's, it's part of that expansion and it'd be fun to try and figure out how to actually measure some of that.
00:26:05
Speaker
in terms of our different kinds of students going online now. But, you know, I think it's sort of part of that. My view on that general thing is rising demand, but that doesn't necessarily translate into, hey, it's going to be the glory days for the suppliers. I mean, part of it is there's rising demand, but you need even more student support services than you had before.
00:26:31
Speaker
So one doesn't equal the other necessarily. Yeah, I think that's a really important point because kind of tie this into what I was saying earlier around the kind of application data.
Student Support and Marketing Concerns
00:26:42
Speaker
There's a sense in which universities are going to have to really focus
00:26:47
Speaker
much more closely on kind of continuation and getting people through degrees if the kind of you know the demand is is kind of weaker and so there's that kind of going on in the wider sector but then there's also you know the aspect of online where you know there are there's a kind of perception that the challenges are kind of harder around that kind of thing so i think there's a convergence of a couple of things there that kind of demand universities have to be
00:27:12
Speaker
smarter and better around the way that they support students and I think you know my perception and my experience has been that student support generally is a bit too reactive in universities and I think be interesting to see I'm already seeing little signs of this for on campus but be interesting to see how that evolves into a more of a proactive
00:27:37
Speaker
kind of model. I was chatting to someone I know who was doing an online degree and they were talking about this kind of idea of student success coaches, which is really unfamiliar to them having worked in a university. But that kind of model and that kind of approach where it is a bit more proactive, I think potentially is just going to have to be more important, not just for online actually, but for on campus as well. It'd be interesting to see the shifts in that.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, the problem with a lot of asynchronous courses is it took its extreme form in the MOOC. But the problem with a lot of asynchronous courses is that they're modeled on the gym model, whereas what you need is more of a personal trainer or at least part of a personal trainer. When we're talking student support, particularly around online education, we've got to stick to the title of the podcast.
00:28:24
Speaker
It's not just academic support. So when we're saying student support, and in particular, Morgan, where you're saying, hey, it's attracting more and more students who need support, socio-economics, age, whatever the case may be, a lot of that support that's needed is just simply life support, financial support, the proactive checking, hey, we've noticed you haven't been on, you know, in your course lately, anything going on,
00:28:52
Speaker
So it's broad student support. And we've talked about that certainly in the U.S. forever, but I think right now it's coming down to almost a make or break. If you want to offer a successful program, you're going to get the opportunity for more and more students, but you better be prepared to support them.
00:29:13
Speaker
And I think that this gives us another shot. I remember years ago having a conversation with the president of Maricopa County Community Colleges, and he always used to say that his students were one flat tire away from dropping out. And now, if you're online, the flat tire doesn't matter so much, but there's still just a lot of things. So it gives us an opportunity to sort of address those life supports, those how to study,
00:29:39
Speaker
kinds of supports and those kinds of things, I think, which is key.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah. But if I just had to sum it up and I, let me ask us a question. Online demand in my mind and what I'm hearing from you guys and what we've seen anecdotally is, is absolutely increasing post pandemic. It is not a matter of, oh, people are sick of emergency remote, zoom university, and therefore it had its chance and it's going away. That's just not happening.
00:30:10
Speaker
And in my mind, it's also true that the demographics are changing. But let's test ourselves. Higher education is not a monolith. What are the contrary signals or what's the biggest counter argument to what the three of us are saying right now? If we're wrong, what's going to be the reason we're wrong about this increasing true demand from students for online? I can jump in there. But it was sort of a nebulous idea. And I had this conversation with a major
00:30:40
Speaker
person who was running an online unit. And we were sort of talking about there's a weird sort of backlash that's going on, both from a more conservative kind of perspective, but also from a more liberal kind of perspective, if you've got to put, but you know, it's linked to politics. So that's why those sort of two things come in there. It's like, oh, no, we must get back to college.
00:31:01
Speaker
you know, we must get back to campus, you know, in a way to get over that emergency remote teaching blip in history. So I think there's sort of like a weird way that those two political sides have come together about, you know, campus is the best thing and you need to go there for different reasons. So I think that's one, you know, it's countervailing the acceptance of online degrees, it's countervailing the growth and interest in the expansion. That would be one thing.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, to pick up on that, I'm not totally convinced by this, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. But I think it's just the idea of maybe backlash against technology sounds a bit strong. But I think that kind of idea has been on my mind a little bit around ed tech in general and around some of the topics that we discussed around innovation or lack thereof. And it's a sense in which
00:31:56
Speaker
I sometimes when I speak I kind of put up a quote from a Rob Reich I think a Stanford professor who was basically saying a few years ago that all of the advantages of a kind of digital life have been you know have kind of arrived and now we're just seeing the harms and so you know obviously it is this extreme kind of idea but that's one potential aspect of you know you were saying Phil
00:32:21
Speaker
post COVID, we like being at home, you know, we like that kind of flexibility. And so, you know, there's maybe a sense in which people may be evaluating that lifestyle in relation to online study, like that's potentially one thing that may
00:32:37
Speaker
that may be kind of an answer to your question but I'm struggling outside of that really because I see greater acceptance and I see the kind of signals pointing in the way that you describe Phil so yeah it feels slightly contrived to find something really but that was the one thought that I had really. Also I can't ignore the softball sitting out there, legislation.
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah. Well, so and I don't know if that's exactly what you're saying, but I mean, like predatory, there is the predatory argument. The reason we've seen this increase is because of all of this excess spending on marketing and we're tricking all of these poor little non-mature students. And in that case, I meant more descriptive because that's really the view.
00:33:23
Speaker
that students don't have agency. They're getting tricked into going into online. And so as 2U collapses, as the regulations are really targeting a lot of innovation and a lot of OPM activity, that what you're going to see is that cuts out the predatory activity and therefore the true demand will go down.
00:33:48
Speaker
I obviously don't believe that, but I do want to call it out. I don't know if that's a softball you're referring to, but it is essentially, I think, a lot of the argument behind the regulatory activity that's going on right now. So that's the biggest public argument against this rising demand that I'm aware of. I mean, the other thing that might cause us to be wrong in a kind of a way is if other providers get into the space much more.
00:34:15
Speaker
and start providing it in a different kind of a way. So non higher ed providers actually is like, okay, let's provide it to you in a way that sort of makes sense. But that wouldn't, that's, that wouldn't be deep demand. It just would be bad news for the suppliers, right?
00:34:31
Speaker
I think there's something in here, and maybe I'm taking us on a different direction, but there's something on here about perception of demand amongst the universities because I see a number of universities and have done for a number of years here in the UK who set particular targets either publicly or privately around the number of online students that they want to reach.
00:34:52
Speaker
And on some occasions, it feels quite unrealistic and when you basically you join them all up together, well, you know, how can X number of universities reach this level in the in the time that they've set themselves based on you looking at the market? You know, although he talks about demand increasing, I'm not seeing demand surging to that level to be able to say, look, the fields are ripe unto harvest kind of thing for online students, so to speak.
00:35:18
Speaker
We don't have that here. All our universities are very rational and reasonable and actually understated. Nobody says, oh, we want to we want to reach a million students with the MOOC core. Yeah. Well, even take the Project Kitty Hawk example that we've talked about. That's essentially started out as an internal OPM for let's get all the public universities in North Carolina.
00:35:44
Speaker
working together and we'll do our own internal OPM instead of paying a third party provider to do this. And the initial estimates were within a couple of years, 20 new programs, 100,000 new students.
00:36:02
Speaker
With that, it's not just that universities tend to overstate it. I think it's getting to that point you're saying there's so many doing it with unrealistic expectations. So in the Project Kitty Hawk case, there just was no way to meet what was promised in the legislature that made all the news on what was happening. Now, I believe that they're doing a pivot internally with Project Kitty Hawk and we're going to
00:36:30
Speaker
another hint for articles coming up, waiting for their public reporting that's happening at the end of this month. But even if they've internally changed their perspective and what's happening, and I think you'll see that in the news, that doesn't mean the legislature, that doesn't mean the news media outlets, it doesn't mean students are going to perceive it that way. They might perceive it as up online was a hype. People said it would grow, and this is maybe not a failure, but
00:36:59
Speaker
This is a disappointment. And so it's sort of that public sentiment that there's so much expectation of surging and unrealistic attitudes quite often is that the perception is going to be anti-online, even if what's really happening is a healthy but steady increase.
00:37:18
Speaker
something I'd like to dig into, though, also just in terms of, we'd be describing demand as going, and we tend to associate that, like historically, I think right now, the last burst, at least of, of demand around STEM subjects, you know, and very work oriented kinds of, of topics, do you think that will continue?
00:37:41
Speaker
I mean, I see it. Well, as you get more of a shift into undergraduate, it's not as specific in that case, right? With graduate, you do have programs, but a lot of undergraduate has just helped me get my coursework. And I think that naturally expands for dilutes the STEM participation in online education. So from that standpoint, I do think it's moving beyond there.
00:38:05
Speaker
And for those on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United States, you have to do all kinds of different topics in your, even if you're majoring in mathematics, you've got to do English and history and all these things as an undergrad, which you don't have to do in the UK.
00:38:19
Speaker
That's how we're so well rounded. Yeah. You just speak me to that. I took well rounded being well rounded literally. I now mostly resemble a ball, but it has nothing to do with my education.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I was just struck last week as I was going through OPM data about contracts and what subjects they were on. And there was a heck of a lot of non-STEM kinds of things there. So that was sort of interesting.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a bit more movement around the kind of programmes, but in terms of OPMs, it's still quite narrow really in terms of the number of programmes I think they'd look to get up to and the titles there. But I think I've spoken and done a bit of research around
00:39:08
Speaker
just like an increasing array of kind of subjects being taught online and that's not to say that there's real growth across all areas but it's just to say that there's kind of been more moves in areas that just haven't been associated and they're marginal but they're still they represent you know a bit wider spectrum of subjects being taught online but I still think the ones that are associated with online the most are the ones that you know are growing most rapidly
00:39:38
Speaker
I think there's sort of another supplier problem, higher education institutions for the most part, and for a degree certainly, that in the past, part of what people recommended is be strategic.
Strategic Program Offerings for Universities
00:39:50
Speaker
And we've given that advice ourselves. Figure out which programs make sense, where you can make it self-sustaining or grow. And it's almost like you can pick and choose. As I'm listening to us talk about it, part of the conversation is,
00:40:04
Speaker
The demand is growing, but it's messier, broader-based, and changing demographics.
00:40:12
Speaker
So some of this, you can't just pick and choose quite the same way that maybe you could five years ago. You need to jump in there and understand more of where the demand is. And quite often, that'll be in nebulous areas, increasing support. So again, a lot of this points to a lot of growth, but not necessarily easy for institutions on how to deal with the growth moving forward. Yeah. But I think some of the part of the strategic thing, Phil, is also
00:40:42
Speaker
universities not just pursuing the most common suite of say postgraduate master's programs and obviously obviously being cognizant of kind of developments in other areas that you talked about but also being cognizant of their strengths I think that's really important you know you see universities who maybe partner with an OPM put a bunch of programs in more typical areas that they're not necessarily that strongly associated with and I think as the
00:41:11
Speaker
as the space kind of proliferates you know that that difference that point of difference and i've certainly seen universities that have done this but you can also have to understand your own strengths in navigating demand and you know maybe growth across a more varied suite of subjects for online too as part of that strategic piece
00:41:33
Speaker
A few years ago, I used a slide in a presentation I was doing on online, the expansion of online and it was kids, eight year old kids playing soccer or football, you know, and they all crowd around the ball and then the ball shoots out then they all run and follow the ball and that sort of I was really proud of that slide because I think it sums up what a lot of institutions are doing in terms of they all crowd around data science and then
00:41:56
Speaker
business analytics and things like that, and they tend to offer the same kinds of things, as you said, the sort of same suite of things, and they need more variation. But a quick question, is international online still going to be a really small part of the demand? Or is it going to grow? And it seems like the Canadian, the Australian, and the British government seem to be doing their best to make it grow. But are they going to be successful in this?
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah I mean I think there's challenges there around things like pricing but I suppose as you know maybe middle classes grow in certain countries and I think that's going to be more viable and more appealing. I suppose the short answer is I think that that market is still going to be challenging for different reasons you know price sensitivity being one of those
00:42:45
Speaker
one of those things. But to your point, Morgan, given the government positions on international students actually coming to the host country, then universities are going to have to seek to find ways in which they can attract students online. And there has been, for international postgraduate online, there's been growth there in the UK. So there are
00:43:11
Speaker
are options there and there are universities in the UK who have kind of more of a franchise arrangements with online providers who can get into particular geographies. So there's one that kind of targets kind of students in Africa around online learning that some universities in the UK work with. So I think it's in the UK the domestic market for postgraduate and for undergraduate online has been the one that's
00:43:39
Speaker
Kind of grown more rapidly in recent years. I think there is there is scope but whether it will The extent to which it'll grow is going to be hard because of the you know, just the variety of different factors I would say in the US. It's some similar answer from my perspective in that
00:43:57
Speaker
I think there are opportunities. Morgan and I just both talked to somebody from Beacon Education recently, and they do that, but more on the Asian student population. And I think there are definitely opportunities. However, I don't think that's the driver of the online demand that we're talking about. Most of the driver of the online demand are domestic students. So it doesn't rule out the possibility of that really growing.
00:44:24
Speaker
outside, but that's not what's behind, maybe not the surge, but the growth that we're seeing. Yeah, and I was sort of thinking of international students coming and taking the same programs as domestic rather than those franchise programs which are growing. Yep. Well, aren't we hitting the time where normally Morgan will be holding up her watch or holding up a piece of paper at us? Yeah, just leaving the room, maybe. Yeah, I was wondering if she was coming back from that one.
00:44:52
Speaker
I've had it with you guys. It's time to ... Well, this is good. Yeah, and I enjoy quite ... Hopefully you guys excuse me for throwing that curve ball in there, but we're all agreeing so much on the growing demand for online and the changing demographics. I just wanted to think, let's come up with some contrary points of view. I didn't feel like our hearts were in them, but at least it was good to get them out on the table and talk about the contrary points of view.
00:45:21
Speaker
But thanks for the conversation. Thank you for all of our listeners. Keep sending us requests and we will continue to be insecure and respond to whatever you send us or a lot of what you send us. On to next week.