2024 Q3 Review: Online learning developments in UK higher education
Photo by Steve Johnson
Before reflecting on the various events of the third quarter of 2024, I naively thought that, since this period coincided with summer, it would be difficult to find topics to report on. How wrong I was.
This quarter has seen new partnerships between universities and companies, significant developments in online education and edtech companies, the release of important data on online enrolments, and a continued focus by UK higher education institutions (HEIs) on recruiting for online education-related roles.
During this time, we also had a general election, alongside much debate about the state of UK higher education and the necessary and desirable policy and structural changes in the sector.
There’s almost too much to cover in one newsletter, but I’ve tried to highlight the key online education news and developments in the UK below.
Online education company news
One of the biggest stories in the last quarter was the US OPM company 2U entering, and then exiting, a form of bankruptcy. Anything involving the "b" word is pretty bad PR, and to the uninformed, it may seem terminal. However, this is best understood as a recovery and restructuring mechanism that has ultimately resulted in them doing what they said they would—exiting bankruptcy in September.
They are no longer publicly listed but live to fight another day. What remains true is that they’ve experienced a significant fall from grace and still have a lot of work to do to rebuild, but rumours of their imminent demise are exaggerated. This will be welcome news to their current and prospective UK HEI partners.
Another major US online education company in the news is Coursera, which reported its Q2 results during this period and made several announcements at their annual Coursera Connect conference.
Financial signals were positive in the Q2 results, with higher revenue year-on-year and higher revenue than expected for this period. Revenue from their three segments—consumer, enterprise, and degrees—was up year-on-year, and degree student numbers increased from 22,200 in Q1 to 22,600 in Q2, with a year-on-year growth of 19%.
More interestingly, Coursera's portfolio continues to evolve. The company is betting big on AI and professional certificates, expanding its AI course offerings with UK partners such as the University of Glasgow helping to boost numbers.
At their conference, they also announced several professional certificates from a range of companies. Partners like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM increased their number and there was a notable addition of a games design certificate from Epic Games.
Another interesting announcement was a new International Foundation Programme for Computer Science from Coursera partner, the University of London. This will serve as a feeder into their successful BSc Computer Science degree and is another example of a pathway-focused strategy aimed at creating more routes into and through higher education. On the surface, this appears to be a smart move that enhances access and contributes to greater cohesiveness within a portfolio—these are two areas that UK HEIs could benefit from paying more attention to.
EdTech company news
This past quarter coincided with several edtech companies, best known for virtual learning environments (VLEs), holding their main conferences in North America. This period has seen some noteworthy developments among these companies in particular.
One eye-catching piece of news was D2L, the company behind the VLE Brightspace, acquiring the edtech company H5P. For those unfamiliar, H5P is a popular company and product that enables interactive content and is widely used in UK higher education. As this product is integrated across all the main VLEs, an obvious question arose about a potential move towards exclusivity. However, H5P will continue to integrate with what are now competitor platforms. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how H5P evolves and what strategy D2L adopts to capitalise on their acquisition.
Another major piece of news among VLE companies was the announcement that Instructure, the company behind Canvas, is to be acquired by global investment firm KKR. Recently, acquisitions in the online education space have often been driven by a company’s struggles, but this deal is far from that. As reported by Phil Hill in the US, this is a case of financial engineering, where the previous private equity owners, Thoma Bravo, have essentially reached the end of their term and it is time to sell and return capital to investors.
Another feature of this quarter was the further AI-focused product developments announced by Instructure, D2L, and Anthology (the company behind the Blackboard VLE) at their respective conferences, with the latter arguably being the company advancing the most in terms of AI features. These developments, along with other news, were discussed in detail by Phil, Morgan, and me in a recent episode of our Online Education Across the Atlantic podcast . I will also be covering some of the upcoming European conferences of these VLE companies, so keep an eye out for this in the newsletter in the coming weeks.
Partnership news
This quarter hasn’t seen as many headline online education company/OPM and UK HEI partnerships as earlier ones. However, there were some new partnerships established. Perhaps most notably, UK-based OPM company Skilled Education added to their list of partnerships by announcing a new collaboration to deliver what will eventually be 10 online master's programmes with the University of the West of England (UWE). It should also be noted that this last quarter saw a few OPM and UK HEI partnerships come to an end for various reasons, though unsurprisingly these are not publicly announced.
An interesting emerging relationship seen this last quarter is between Cintana Education and Coventry University. Cintana recently won a tender aimed at accelerating and scaling the university's online education offering both domestically and internationally. This is an interesting partnership with a company founded in collaboration with Arizona State University by Douglas Becker, who was also the founder of US OPM Laureate Education.
This is another example of the growing number of universities entering a second phase of their online operations after an initial move into the market. I’ve written about Coventry University previously and noted how they didn’t meet the ambitious goals they set during their first foray into online education. However, things feel somewhat different now, and this is evident in their recruitment efforts, which have so far been focused mainly on developing digital marketing capability.
This leads nicely to the ongoing recruitment for online education roles within UK HEIs, which continues at a decent pace. I’ve previously highlighted how the number of senior online education roles has been increasing in UK higher education, and this quarter has seen both Goldsmiths and Swansea University advertise for an inaugural Director or Head of Online Learning.
Recruitment also continues within the online education divisions of other universities, including the University of Birmingham and the University of Greenwich. Although the level and focus of recruitment varies by HEI, more online education roles are being created across UK higher education, with some institutions making significant investments in building capability.
Enrolment trends
This quarter saw the long-awaited release of student data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) for the 2022-23 academic year. This release provided an opportunity to examine enrolment trends for UK-based online students. Except… this was challenging due to changes in the way data was collected this year, and I’ll leave it at that.
My overall conclusion in my analysis of this data is that the 2022-23 numbers likely indicate a continuation of the growth in the number of UK-domiciled online distance learning students observed in recent years.
Course news
A few notable pieces of course news stood out to me this quarter from two different HEIs. The first was the University of Essex Online, which launched over 50 new courses, essentially disaggregated modules from postgraduate programmes. They now offer a portfolio of over 60 courses across a range of popular online education subject areas. While they are not the only UK HE institution doing this, they are an example of the growing move towards developing shorter online offerings. The UK government would do well to understand these developments as it considers the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), as funded level 7 courses like these—either directly or through an employer levy—would align this funding model more closely with proven offerings.
The other HEI is Escape Studios, a specialist provider in animation, games, and VFX. Last quarter, they launched several new postgraduate degrees that offer both an on-campus and what they call a “live online” study option. Essentially, these are degree programmes where on-campus and online students join the same live teaching sessions concurrently. This is not the first example I’ve seen of such programmes within creative education. If other providers follow suit, it may signal a trend within creative education towards mixed modality pathways that run at the same pace and some congruence between that delivery approach and some creative subjects.
Wrapping up Q3
This past quarter has shown some positive signals for online student enrolment in the UK domestic market, although there is a lag in the data and some caveats around interpretation. Nevertheless, this should be welcome news for the growing number of HEIs developing and expanding their online portfolios, with continued evidence of this over the last quarter. The market is becoming, and will continue to become, more competitive as several universities recruiting for online education roles as part of a new or reconfigured operation are yet to hit their stride.
The company partnership space remains dynamic, with some companies on the up, some trying to get on the up, and others down—though with a few exceptions, this rarely plays out publicly. Partnerships are still being actively considered by a number of UK HEIs, and despite the announcement of increased scrutiny from the Office for Students (OfS) on subcontractual arrangements, I would still expect to see some new partnerships established or in progress before the end of the year.
Even in an uncertain UK higher education environment, with real financial pressures on many HEIs, online education continues to grow and evolve in various ways—whether through new market entrants, broader subject coverage, or diversification into shorter products than degrees. While income diversification remains a key driver, the sector may be becoming more aware of how some elements of their provision need to evolve to respond to changing demands, circumstances, and in light of opportunities.
