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Today on "Online Education Across the Atlantic," we dive into the world of online short courses and the trailblazing efforts by universities such as Southern New Hampshire and the University of Michigan . We critically examine the challenges UK institutions face, including financial stability and adapting to modern educational demands. Our discussion covers the transformative potential of AI in education and raises important questions about whether traditional universities can pivot to meet today's needs. We also touch on the importance of building courses around real-world skills and the growing market for executive and professional education. Stay tuned for more discussions on Online Education Across the Atlantic, and thanks for listening!
00:00 UK government reviewing post-graduation visa for international students.
04:07 Challenges facing higher education on both sides.
09:11 Attended events virtually, found them interesting. Impressed.
12:10 Mixed reception to AI, caution over positivity.
14:29 Influential designer Dieter Rams advocates understanding people.
19:23 Paul LeBlanc names Clayton Christensen, discusses AI & change.
20:32 Report highlights potential profitability of online courses.
25:32 Reflections on MOOCs, Michigan, Edinburgh, online courses.
29:42 Lack of integration hinders program optimization.
30:53 Debate on rationalization in university budgeting.
35:15 Focus on executive education in online courses.
38:25 Duolingo reference, alternative education's value.
40:10 Weak university assessments, improvement needed for all courses.
43:34 Institutions need to change for stability.
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Locations
00:00:00
Speaker
you
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic and here with my colleagues in various places. Neil, as always, in Cardiff and Morgan this time is coming to us from Bergen, Norway. So I hope you guys are both enjoying your European time relatively close to each other. And someday we got to get the two of you guys to meet each other physically. But no hugs.
00:00:32
Speaker
No hugs, but no hugs. We have rules.
Discussion on Online Short Courses
00:00:36
Speaker
Well, today, the big topic we're going to be exploring is really riffing or expanding on Neil's post this morning about online short courses. And it's a great post. I recommend you read it because part of what it's talking about is on a lot of the rationalization of courses and programs.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's too much of do programs exist or not versus should they be in a short course format versus degree. But I'll let Neil describe that and we're going to explain that, particularly from the lens of the health of colleges and universities. But looking forward to that discussion. But first, like to see what news has been going on, but let me turn it over to you, Neil.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think you made a mistake there, Phil. It should have been online education across the Atlantic and the North Sea. Oh, yes. Yes. You know, given that we're sort of tied to oceans, then, you know, we have to reference them properly based on where we are, maybe. Well, if we're US, it's the water east of us. It all gets grouped together. Absolutely.
Weather and UK University Finances
00:01:42
Speaker
Absolutely. But I hope the weather's lovely in Norway because this is the first
00:01:46
Speaker
day of the year where it feels like the sun is shining, it's a decent temperature and I'm actually, I mean it's good that it's a podcast because I'm actually wearing shorts for the first time in the year so in the UK it's lovely, I hope it's lovely in Norway as well.
00:02:01
Speaker
But I guess probably in terms of news over here, we, I guess, I guess in the US has been a big story about the kind of campus protests that starting to come to come to the kind of surface here as well. But you know, as you said, Phil, I'm kind of on board. I don't really want to go there around that kind of thing. But I think one of the one of the sort of slightly bigger stories in higher education over here is just
00:02:25
Speaker
a bit of a continuation of government policy potentially causing more problems for university finances so
00:02:32
Speaker
Over here the government have been reviewing the graduate visa route which is essentially the ability for international students to stay in the UK for a couple of years post graduation and obviously that's an appealing prospect if you're an international student and the government's reviewing you know whether that should continue or be amended in any way and I think I think in a few days they kind of report on that so you have the sector producing
00:02:59
Speaker
really good research, you know, espousing the kind of financial benefits of international students and the route. You've kind of got hardliners in kind of government circles who are, you know, really tie this to the need to reduce immigration and the kind of optics around that.
Impact of UK Graduate Visa Policies
00:03:16
Speaker
So that's been one of the things that's kind of dominated the higher education news cycle a bit over here. And I guess kind of related to that, just more stories about
00:03:27
Speaker
job cuts and financial trouble for universities, you know, all of that's kind of part of the same kind of bucket. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens in a few days time and what the recommendations are, because that could have a really, you know, even more serious impact on the finances of universities over here and what they do as a result and what you know, how they cut their cloth accordingly. So so, yeah, challenging news, as always.
00:03:56
Speaker
Because as international students are already down, I saw a piece about for the first quarter, they're already showing signs of decline. Yeah, that's right.
00:04:10
Speaker
I think we're in a similar position in terms of higher education on your side of the pond and our side of the pond isn't in great shape and there's kind of different reasons for that and I think for us it's more about less about demand and more about actually look the money that's coming in to fund what we do is challenging and if we can't get that through higher international fees
00:04:31
Speaker
then that's going to be really challenging. And just having conversations with people working in universities over here, you know, budgets are having to be revised and, you know, there's come some hard decisions. So, yeah, I mean, it's the government is not helping, not helping matters. But, you know, friend of the podcast that you sat across from at ASU GSB has also called for, has kind of called it really kind of self-defeating policy. So,
00:04:58
Speaker
Lord Joe Johnson is leading the charge on that over here and hopefully that will have some positive impact. But that's kind of really been what's happening over this side of the pond. Is there anything you guys have got kind of bubbling up that you want to kind of talk about?
00:05:15
Speaker
Well, I will help explain my Brave Sir Robin approach on the campus protest. It's sort of like regulations. Until two years ago, that's something that I avoided because it was sort of, you know, going too far away from Ed Tech and what's happening with enrollment.
00:05:34
Speaker
But at a certain point, you got to where you can't ignore it. It's driving what's happening. Well, to be honest, I think that's sort of happening on the campus protest level. So not ready to jump too deep into that right now, but got to make sure that Morgan and I talk to each other and find out if we're going to come to blows before we go into that coverage. Although I bet that some people are kind of happy about the campus protests on some level, just because it
00:06:00
Speaker
distracts from the FAFSA fiasco. Yes. Well, that probably is one of the news items is there's hearings on funding for the Department of Education. And a lot of these issues are coming together. So nominally, the Secretary of Education has been in congressional hearings to talk about next year's budget.
00:06:24
Speaker
But they're spending the majority of the time talking about the FAFSA fiasco and talking about the campus protest. And those
US Education Funding and Protests
00:06:34
Speaker
two things are
00:06:35
Speaker
really impacting the government funding of what's going to be happening next year for the Department of Education. One other thing I would mention and see what Morgan has heard, if anything, while she's on her great vacation, is news came out this morning that Bain, a private equity firm, is in talks to acquire Power School.
00:06:57
Speaker
and take them private. So the power school is much more obviously in the K-12 space. And one of the biggest players there consolidated where they have student information system, they acquired Schoology as an LMS and they have multiple solutions and are quite big in K-12 in the US and they've been expanding internationally lately, more in the Middle East.
00:07:22
Speaker
But that was probably the biggest news is that there are talks of an acquisition happening there, partially for what happens to Power School. But it's also interesting to see that even in this down market, there are investment companies looking to make some bigger bets. And so seeing that news is probably one of the main things I've heard this week besides the congressional hearings. Morgan, anything
Private Equity in Education Tech
00:07:47
Speaker
that you've been hearing?
00:07:49
Speaker
Just that how tight the market is, that it's difficult to get investment and it's difficult to get meetings. Also, if you're an edtech person looking to take meetings on campus, that's some of the view from Europe that I've gathered just from a couple of meetings that I've had. Good. Well, not good.
00:08:10
Speaker
It's a good insight. Yeah, it's not been a busy week. The past two weeks have not been busy in terms of news, even though they're ongoing long-term issues. Sounds like it's somewhere over there. But, Neil, I'm dying to hear more of your view once you got to see one of our U.S. exports to the U.K. this week, and seem to have some thoughts on that.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah,
Paul LeBlanc's UK Visit and Learning Modes
00:08:33
Speaker
that's right. So Paul LeBlanc visited the University of London. For those of you who don't know, University of London has a long history of distance and eventually online education. It's one of the two big online distance universities over here with the Open University. So Paul LeBlanc came and visited
00:08:53
Speaker
for a few days and he gave uh he was part of a panel last night talking about sort of a slightly contrived debate of online versus in person and then he spoke to a bunch of us today about about ai yeah i mean it's really it's really interesting i was only able to um dial into the events virtually rather than kind of be there in person but
00:09:16
Speaker
The first event was an interesting one. Anything that's framed as in-person versus online gets my back up immediately, because I think it's just not worthy of a discussion, even though it's probably a good attention-grabbing headline.
00:09:35
Speaker
I guess from my perspective, knowing a little bit about Southern New Hampshire, it was just really nice to hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak, of their approach, who they're serving, and the way in which they're serving them. And I think on reflection over the two events, Paul is one of those classic people who has memorized a whole bunch of stories
00:10:04
Speaker
And he's really got his pitch down. And I don't mean that pejoratively. And so he can draw on a pool of examples of different students and the way in which their models have supported them in difficult situations, or the way in which actually they've just designed their model around people's lives. And I think that was just really impressive for me to just hear that philosophy and some examples of that playing out. So that was really good.
00:10:31
Speaker
I was slightly frustrated with the panel because from the Brit side of things, I think there was some injudicious selection of who was on on that panel. So Amanda Spielman was on that panel. You know, she's been a chief inspector of schools. She's very much worked in the kind of school sector. And so I think she was taking the baton of defending in-person learning. But really, she doesn't have much experience of online education and higher education.
00:11:01
Speaker
And therefore, the things that she had to draw upon were her experiences of schools and online learning and remote learning and child and teenage mental health associated with devices. And so it felt like, although there were different viewpoints and different positions taken,
00:11:22
Speaker
you know someone said to me it didn't mesh because someone who was kind of working in online education in university over he said look i don't think i'm not arguing necessarily for online learning in schools i think people know some of the challenges around that kind of thing
00:11:37
Speaker
So some of that was a bit jarring and I think, you know, being based in the UK, being very much embedded in online education, I couldn't help but think, wouldn't it have been great to have any number of people really steeped and involved in online education, in higher education on that panel with him to kind of discuss all of this stuff. So maybe all those people were busy,
00:12:03
Speaker
trying to prove the Times Higher Education rankings that you had mentioned earlier. Sounds like a similar lament there. Yeah, yeah, similar lament, similar lament. But I think as well, I mean, that was one aspect of the events and the kind of his engagement over here. The other thing was around AI.
AI's Role in Education
00:12:21
Speaker
And I was really interested in that because I feel like and I respect that he's taken a position on AI.
00:12:28
Speaker
I'm not sure I share that position. He has a really strong view, I think, how transformational it's going to be, and to an extent, how positive it's going to be.
00:12:39
Speaker
I think the general reception to some of that over here in terms of these events was maybe just a bit more caution, a bit more challenge around some of the things that he's saying and common challenges were like, all of these things that you're describing that AI can do sounds very individualistic, sounds very much like people to a machine. It doesn't feel like it's very holistic. And that's a fair point. And I don't think that necessarily
00:13:05
Speaker
spoke exactly to what he was saying but you know I respect what he's doing and that he's taken a position and he's making a bet on on some of this and he kind of said that yeah it was interesting I think I don't think there's people in the UK talking about and designing higher education in that in the way that Southern New Hampshire have to all gone to the lengths that they have and I don't think there's people generally that have kind of
00:13:32
Speaker
that are invested in AI in the way that he is. So there was a definite difference, which was good, made it interesting, I think. Well, I don't know if it makes you feel better, but I consider the way Southern New Hampshire redesigned themselves.
00:13:51
Speaker
They're very unique over in the US as well, particularly in my mind, not their scale, but the way that they said, how do we fit into student lives, building on your phrase, and then saying, how do we build the organization around it? What do we need? And now let's do it. And I think they're quite unique within the US as well. I mean, they're only a handful of schools
00:14:14
Speaker
We see innovation. You see Arizona State University trying things. You see a lot of the same schools that we've talked about trying things. But Southern New Hampshire's design approach, I think, from my view, is quite unique.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah and I think you know one of my one of my great sort of go-tos is the German product designer Dieter Rams and I'm gonna I can't remember the exact quote but it has this brilliant quote about design that I'm gonna not do justice to but it's essentially like
00:14:45
Speaker
if you don't kind of understand people's lives in design or seek to understand people's lives in design that is the kind of only sin of design really. When Paul was talking that quote, even though I can't remember it very well, was ringing in the essence of that quote was ringing in my ears and I was thinking to myself because I've written about this in terms of things like blended learning in the UK
00:15:08
Speaker
You know, the most jarring things that I've seen in the last six months is evidence of an education model that just does not serve people in their lives. And I've
Blended Learning Challenges
00:15:20
Speaker
seen that through two different things over here. And so it was just so refreshing.
00:15:24
Speaker
to have someone explain and he's got all of the stories, you know, I guess classic really good communicator, you know, you're not just telling people what you do in a roundabout way, you can actually bring to life, you know, person X in this situation living this kind of life, you know, and that just brings that model to life really in terms of kind of hearing someone speak. So, you know, I hope
00:15:50
Speaker
I hope that's a bit of a kick up the backside for UK higher education if I'm completely blunt about it because you know I think there's a lot of stuff that we could learn in terms of the kind of philosophy and even just some of the practicalities you know Paul was talking about the advisor network and the idea that you know the advisors
00:16:09
Speaker
are the kind of key relationship for students throughout their studies. And that makes perfect sense in respect to how you skip from academic to academic. But I don't think that idea of advisors, even in online education over here, is really
00:16:27
Speaker
taken much of a grip outside of OPMs. So, you know, I hope some of those examples and just general philosophy will be something that people really take away and dwell on and do something about over here, I think, because I think we'd be better for it.
00:16:45
Speaker
Well, we'll send over some of our negative examples if you want to for the next go round, if it helps with the panel discussions. Look, I'd be more than happy to send some of our negative examples as well. We can do a trade.
00:17:00
Speaker
Well, before we get to the main topic, Morgan, I'm thinking about this more. What are your thoughts on are there other schools that you would put in the same league or in that same issue in terms of designing around how to fit in student lives, not just innovation, but really designing around lives that you would put in that category? I don't know that anybody really takes it at that sort of level.
00:17:28
Speaker
you know, there are bits and pieces of things, I think, that address that, you know, so UCF and the multiple modes of things, you know, and you can mix and match that kind of thing together, you know, with some governors and the dividing up of different functions within things in some ways, it's a, it's an efficiency play, but it's also got to do with
00:17:50
Speaker
how the work comes. So in some ways it relies, but I'm not sure that anybody really does it. And I think, you know, as, as Neil was talking, I was just thinking that, you know, Southern New Hampshire in a way had the, the space to do it because they were building from scratch and, and to an extent everybody builds from scratch because nobody has a sort of created online, but you know, in a way they were really building it up and, and had less.
00:18:16
Speaker
It feels that they had less baggage to deal with so they could, they could construct it. I don't know if I would call it from scratch, more from desperation. It was a small private school. They were essentially knew they were going nowhere. Yeah, but they didn't have, they didn't have a lot of stuff there before. So in a way it was a blanker slate than, than some of the other institutions.
00:18:41
Speaker
And that was some of my reflections, I guess, thinking about it because it's kind of that's it was great. But just thinking about how you would transform, say, a large Russell group university over here, you know, whether that would even be possible to kind of have anything desirable for people. I mean, you know, maybe that's a bad comparison.
00:19:02
Speaker
Well, maybe this is the second time where I mentioned Michael Horan that I might have to apologize to him, but aren't we getting into disruption theory at this point, saying, hey, for some of this level of changes, it needs to come from different organizations as opposed to transforming the primary market leaders, if you will.
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah, and Paul LeBlanc did name check Clayton Christensen a few times, actually, mainly in respect to AI, but just being realistic about how change is going to be generated and where it's going to come from. And having worked in universities and faced some of the challenges around change, irrespective of what you think about it,
00:19:47
Speaker
feels a compelling alternative to trying to kind of deal with things on the inside, that's for sure. But yeah, it's interesting. But it's probably, unless you guys have got more to say on the subject, probably leads us into
00:20:03
Speaker
what we're going to talk about today. So online
Online Courses and Financial Sustainability
00:20:06
Speaker
short courses have kind of been on my mind for a little while. And I guess a couple of things have stimulated my thoughts around that. The first one was a report that actually came out from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the consultancy firm. And it was really just on UK higher education financial sustainability. So it was fairly widely reported, but it was just around
00:20:31
Speaker
financial state of a sector but there's just a line that kind of jumped out at me in that report which which said basically the provision it was under um diversification of income streams but it said the provision of short study online courses can be a profitable revenue stream
00:20:46
Speaker
delivered virtually by universities. And that was interesting to me. And unfortunately, the report didn't actually provide any evidence or rationale behind that. So it was sort of slightly toothless in that sense. But it just made me think. And I guess, to a certain extent, I reflected a little bit on my experience working in universities and for a time managing online short courses and being frustrated around where we might go and what we might do on that kind of thing.
00:21:16
Speaker
but all of this felt like it was also lumped into the kind of state of the sector over here and you see when you read a lot of annual reports from the universities about portfolio rationalization which feels like it's a nice way of saying look we need to trim quite seriously here and if there's anything that's not kind of recruiting or popular or in demand then you know we're going to have to stop that program and you see we've seen things like departments being closed down and
00:21:45
Speaker
programs being cut over here as part of it so all of that lumped into my thinking of kind of what role do online short courses play in universities you know what what's the evidence for this being a potential revenue stream so i'm just interested you know what you guys think about
00:22:04
Speaker
online courses, online short courses as part of university's portfolio. Are they overlooked? Are they important? You know, what's their role as you see and what kind of have you seen over there in terms of neglect or emphasis or growth or, you know, whatever.
00:22:26
Speaker
Well, I just...one thing I would tie this to is I was at a panel at the University of Michigan recently, and they might be the quintessential school that has made money off of short courses, and in particular for MOOCs from their standpoint. I'm not sure there's any other school...well, if you exclude Harvard and MIT for selling edX to you and making that money. If you exclude that,
00:22:52
Speaker
I think Michigan is the most successful school in making MOOC-based short course revenue, which is really a revenue share back to the school. And they're using that to do a pretty dramatic investment in the campus. Now, a lot of that is studio-based.
00:23:08
Speaker
and you know very video heavy if you will on video production but it's quite interesting what they're doing. So they're an outlier but it was interesting to see it and see that yeah from a business health and revenue and enrollment standpoint I've seen it.
00:23:25
Speaker
The way I would characterize it is it's very separated. It's not strategic at the institution level. It feels like individual departments or programs make decisions that might say, hey, this belongs in an executive education short course. This belongs in a degree. But within a specific department is where I see some of that type of thinking. But I don't see it much at the institutional level.
00:23:55
Speaker
I've seen a little bit of that in some of the the SUNY schools, perhaps, you know, where they're, well, I'm not sure if it's coming from the but but certainly the way I see it from outside, it does look a little bit more like a an institutional level kind of decision, but it could be bubbling up from the departments. But certainly from the outside, it looks more like a sort of portfolio kind of thing. And certainly there was a sort of commitment centrally to do that. So
00:24:25
Speaker
I certainly do that. But I'm all about the portfolio management.
Universities and Outdated Practices
00:24:30
Speaker
Universities are just really bad at stopping things, let alone when you get into academic programs, which are like the third rail. I've been at two institutions where we try to get rid of overhead projectors. And anybody would think it was the end times. And there were good reasons for getting rid of them. But we were crushing small babies under steam rollers.
00:24:55
Speaker
There's a good visual for it. What a great metaphor. Sorry. Neil, I think your point is very well made that we don't see this in terms of portfolioism, where is it appropriate, and is this a way to deal with changing needs and finances?
00:25:19
Speaker
without necessarily going with we need to cut the entire program. You know, are there different formats? So I definitely see that on both sides as far as a real need. That's not done very well usually.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting reflecting on MOOCs because, you know, you mentioned about Michigan being an outlier and we have the odd outlier here as well. I think probably the University of Edinburgh is an outlier. They've done a lot of MOOCs and they're across and have been across, you know, the three kind of main anglophone platforms, edX, Coursera and FutureLearn. So, you know, they always speak of
00:26:00
Speaker
their mooks kind of washing their face, I think, is the expression that they sometimes use. So they kind of are outliers. But I think, like you say, it's interesting. My impression of Michigan has been
00:26:14
Speaker
And I may be wrong on this is that it strikes me that they've got the right leadership that can steer them through that market and take opportunities to that market. And I think one of my frustrations here in the UK was
00:26:33
Speaker
I just think MOOC, I think MOOC is a kind of a increasingly defunct category. And I think actually what we're talking about is online short courses where we talk about MOOCs now. And I think there was, for all the people that I used to work with and speak to across the UK, there was an inherent lack of strategy around that kind of thing, because it wasn't really seen as a kind of portfolio opportunity, if I can put it like that.
00:27:03
Speaker
Well, let's just get a quick note. Michigan, I sort of contrast with what you're describing with Paul LeBlanc at the leadership level. I mean, you know, they have a really good team, but it's a little bit more of being willing to take a risk early on. And as they recognize what was happening, what they did a particularly good job on is say, Hey, let's invest in, let's make this happen. Let's jump on this train and keep going as opposed to.
00:27:32
Speaker
a preordained, very comprehensive design of strategy ahead of time. It was more, this makes sense. Let's do it now. Let's build on it. Let's really double down. I think that's what they've done there.
00:27:45
Speaker
But you mentioned, you know, it's a good point to say there are different definitions of short courses. I mean, you've got MOOCs. We've already talked about MOOCs versus short courses. And then you have to ask, how does this relate to boot camps as well? So there's sort of as a fuzzy category within this space as well.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so complicated. I think anything that sits under a degree, I think I said in the post, is quite murky. And even when there are definitions, I think MOOC is probably the one that is fairly well-defined. But everything else is a bit more complicated. But I think I agree with Morgan. I think there's something around this area that also speaks to the more systemic issues of how
00:28:34
Speaker
universities think about their portfolio and portfolio design and you know in terms of in terms of MOOCs and online short course kind of initiatives it was very department led and you know you you just get a whole mishmash of different courses and you don't necessarily get the portfolio that's going to take advantage of what audience is out there but
00:28:56
Speaker
I just think I'm just interested in terms of subjects. So I mentioned about portfolio rationalization over here. And there are certain, you know, I feel like this is this is Morgan's territory in terms of subjects going away. But I guess one of the
00:29:13
Speaker
One of the subjects over here that gets a bit of a whack at the moment is foreign languages, but there are other areas. I'm just interested in whether you think universities can do more to not necessarily close down programs or cut the subjects that they cover, but just think about different ways in which those are going to be delivered. Online short courses potentially being one avenue, whether you think there's any legs in that.
00:29:42
Speaker
I think there absolutely is. And I don't see a lot of people doing that. It's more like, okay, there's this thing over here, and there's this thing over here, and they're not, they're totally unconnected, you know, so we've got program rationalization, in terms of cost cutting, and then we've got short courses as a way of doing money, you know, often too late, but they're not sort of thinking about it, oh, you know, perhaps we could offer this in a different year, we can offer some some different kinds of things. I just don't see that. But
00:30:11
Speaker
you know, it's possible it happens. And it'd be great to hear about it if anybody's listening and knows about that. But I don't, I don't sort of see that. I think, and I don't want to lose this point. But I think there's also an interesting tension. Because we're talking about portfolio rationalization, which sounds very like deliberative and slow and things like that. But in some ways, what Phil was talking about as a great approach was also this
00:30:34
Speaker
Let's try something and see if it works. And if it works, you know, maybe we'll tweak it or we'll throw it out or something like that. I think you need both of those things. And I see in some ways we're missing both of those things, but you need both of them and their attention with each other.
00:30:53
Speaker
One thing I would also look at, and particularly picking on, I think rationalization is one thing all three of us are talking about, like take the West Virginia case, which they took a lot of heat for the way that they're trying to rationalize or do their budget.
00:31:10
Speaker
And one of the things they were doing was, correct me if I'm wrong, but they were taking some departments such as I think in German and foreign languages were the example, but there are others where they're getting rid of that as a program. But what that meant is they said, no, we're still teaching individual courses and you can take it as a minor, but not as a major. So within the degree space, I would argue that West Virginia University did
00:31:40
Speaker
expand their rationalization, but they kept it within the degree space. It's a major-minor. Do you really have a program here or just individual courses that can lead to a minor? Look at all the pushback they got for just that. You're not a real R1 university. A real R1 university wouldn't embarrass themselves by not having German. Now,
00:32:04
Speaker
Imagine if they had taken the approach to say, and we're also taking some things that really don't even belong in the degree space. They belong in a short course space. Think of the heat they would have taken if they had broken through that barrier right there. Yeah, no. I mean, I think there's a weird like lack of willingness to discuss things that have to happen. And it just means that stuff gets kicked down, the can gets kicked down the road. Maybe I'm just
00:32:33
Speaker
Maybe I'm just harsh. Well, how much are we talking? And you're the one who brought this up now and you have the post. Are we talking about short courses intended to go after different student populations or are we also talking about different ways to reach the same population? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think in a way that maybe this is the cop-out answer, but I suppose both. I mean, I think the
00:33:02
Speaker
The same audience was very much coming from that subject area focus. I personally think there is legs there, but I think your example encapsulates some of the issues around reputation and how that influences
00:33:22
Speaker
things like portfolio and I guess if you're a department of modern foreign languages used to academic titles and offering degrees and suddenly you're offering short courses well that's you know that's that's a downgrade uh so there's kind of challenges around that kind of thing so I think the kind of same audience is more that kind of side of things I think the different audience I suppose is kind of wrapped up in
00:33:48
Speaker
continuing education and continuing professional development and in a way you know you could
00:33:53
Speaker
you could draw a comparison with some of the MOOC platforms or, you know, where if you're thinking about kind of Coursera segment, okay, universities put a lot of effort on the consumer segment, but what about the kind of enterprise or the kind of professional development or kind of company segment side of things? And those segments don't necessarily work perfectly, but I think it is more about how can online short courses reach a kind of professional audience?
00:34:20
Speaker
And, you know, in the UK, our data side of things is a bit challenging at that moment. But one of the returns that we get is we see what income universities have generated from continued education and continued professional development courses for individuals, for businesses, for non-commercial organizations. You get that data?
00:34:43
Speaker
We get that data. Yeah, we do. We do. So it's not really people don't really do much with it. But so that income on the whole has been growing. And so it's just an interesting thing in terms of a market. And so if you lump
00:35:01
Speaker
online short courses as a kind of product and that as an audience and a kind of market, you know, the question that I have is actually given where we're at at the moment, is there a greater opportunity for universities there?
00:35:15
Speaker
I think there's a lot of talk, particularly in the U.S., much more around the boot camp and the MOOC side of online short courses. And if
2U's Earnings Report and Trends
00:35:25
Speaker
you look at 2U's most recent earnings, and they show this frequently, but I'm just going off of their most recent earnings,
00:35:32
Speaker
where they break down their revenue and profitability per segment. Their alternative credential segments got all three, boot camps, executive education, open courses, which are roughly equal to their acquisition of trilogy, their acquisition of Get Smarter for short courses, which they call executive education mostly at this point, and then open courses, which was edX. And if you look at the revenue contribution of the three, the change over the past year,
00:36:03
Speaker
Bootcamps and open courses were negative. They actually decreased performance net revenue over the past year. But executive education and their online short courses from their Get Smarter acquisition actually increased by $11 million. I mentioned this to sort of back up the point of I think specifically the online short courses that are more on the executive education
00:36:31
Speaker
and are not necessarily MOOC and definitely not necessarily boot camps. That seems to be the space that seems to be the healthiest in terms of generating revenue and students and student completions within these short courses. So I think it's a rich space that's not discussed enough, if you will.
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah and that chimes to a certain extent with with some of the players that are kind of in the top five in terms of income from these activities. So London School of Economics has had a partnership with Get Smarter for quite a while and now has you know 10,000 students I think on their
00:37:08
Speaker
online certificate. So that has a, I don't think it has an exclusively exec ed focus, but it has an element of that. Similarly, Oxford and their business school have an exec ed focus and then London Business School is on there, which, you know, really just have that kind of focus. So, you know, no surprise perhaps in terms of brand that those, those are up there, but they're kind of playing in that pool as well. But it feels to me that it's interesting in terms of, you know, looking at
00:37:39
Speaker
to you and what they're doing. But I often kind of reflect on this space in terms of, I think someone described it as this kind of shadow education market. I look at all of the online courses that are being offered outside of higher education by a myriad of organizations and often ponder, should universities be playing in this pool? Does this pool equate to the things that universities could do? Is there a market opportunity there?
00:38:09
Speaker
And I wonder what you guys thought about all of those different platforms, you know, whether it's Skillshare or mass classes, kind of a different thing, right down to the kind of smaller individuals that are offering, offering these kinds of courses and whether, you know, that also points to some kind of demand. Well, the appropriate way to answer this would be to have Morgan give the answer in Spanish from her Duolingo days to see how successful that was. Okay.
00:38:37
Speaker
That's about it. But I think that a lot of the alternative providers, if you will, in that space is undefined. And a lot of times it gets down to, I forget how you phrased it, Morgan, but it was about fairly low quality and not a whole lot of time to learning. But to your question, Neil, about is there an opportunity for colleges and universities, I think the opportunity is for them to say,
00:39:05
Speaker
These are different. We're actually putting our name behind it and there is some real meat to this program and it is valuable. And when I say that, it's not like universities just need to declare it. I think there's a market demand for it.
00:39:21
Speaker
people naturally would prefer that colleges and universities get behind it. So I think there's an opportunity there, particularly in terms of there's a demand. Users would prefer it if schools can get out of their own way and provide these options and provide an inherent quality behind this, or at least quality certification. So I think there's an opportunity. But it has to be tied to
00:39:48
Speaker
actual skills, I think. So if they want the university, they want the skills, that combo would be powerful, I think. That might be a theme across a lot of our conversations, what you just said, is the real need for the combination of universities and all that encompasses and skills. That's where the demand is.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah and I think you know we've probably discussed this before but when universities are kind of putting up courses that you know their assessments around the demand of programs I think can be can be pretty weak sometimes and I think that is an area of capability across the board you know just talking in aggregate that would be better you know could be a lot better whether we're talking about degrees or or short courses or whatever we're talking about really
00:40:37
Speaker
But I think it's interesting just kind of expand it a little bit in terms of the online short courses because I guess in my mind there's that kind of benchmark of the MOOC and all of the kind of videos and the kind of media. But I also did some research because I was working with a client in
00:40:57
Speaker
music education and I did some research I actually kind of spanned the US as well and it was interesting looking at kind of music schools because I think one of the things that I found was that there were short courses that had pre-pandemic essentially been you come to the school for an hour
00:41:15
Speaker
in person over a course of six weeks or whatever. And it was interesting to see how the number of those that had been retained as online short courses and essentially they're just a synchronous hour for six weeks.
00:41:32
Speaker
So I also wonder whether there's, and you can debate how desirable that is as a model, I guess it's dependent on a range of different factors, but there's also a sense in which, is this an area of low-hanging fruit for universities as well in terms of a shorter course having a synchronous versus an asynchronous model?
00:41:53
Speaker
Well, to me, I think there's opportunity in a lot of the things we're talking about, but you're bringing up yet another area that it's hard for universities to get out of their own way.
Post-COVID Educational Adaptations
00:42:05
Speaker
and universities have sort of solidified, maybe more on the US side than the UK side, solidified this, it's got to be either or, as opposed to, again, it's a portfolio approach. What's the right mix for where this opportunity is? And you mentioned, indirectly, COVID.
00:42:23
Speaker
COVID really moved some things online, yet you're getting feedback on, hey, this is working. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for schools to say, hey, why is this working? Let's alter things, double down, see what works, and try to expand it.
00:42:39
Speaker
So it's definitely in an iterative design, let's figure out what's working, but that's where it is. Synchronous, I mean, that gets to, well, let's take advantage of working with faculty expertise from the universities and a way that you can really help market it as well. So it's a shifting
00:43:01
Speaker
a shifting area, but I think it's a lot of opportunity, but it's in so many ways something that's difficult for schools to deal with. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see, you know, whether
00:43:18
Speaker
PricewaterhouseCoopers prediction or recommendation is gobbled up by cash-starved universities over
Conclusion on Institutional Health
00:43:25
Speaker
here. We'll have to see how that plays out. But yeah, that's been a really interesting discussion. I'll hand back to you, Phil, and you can wrap us up. Sure. And I will point out that, and I think this gets to some future coverage that we're all talking about,
00:43:41
Speaker
We of course care about learners and students, but so much of what we're dealing with is institutional health. How could institutions change their models and become more stable? And it serves students differently and more profitably and more stable. So I think this is yet another angle that's getting to
00:44:00
Speaker
How can the existing colleges and universities reach financial stability, particularly in a time when there's so many things fighting against them? So I enjoyed that conversation and I do recommend again for anybody who hasn't to go read Neil's piece behind a lot of this thinking. It's a great one. Well, I look forward to talking to you all next week. Morgan, I'm not sure which time zone your body will be in when we have our next recording, but
00:44:30
Speaker
Back on that side of the Atlantic. Yeah, but it's great talking to you all and look forward to next week.