Are UK universities overlooking online education to better serve students?
The big, long-running story in UK higher education is the financial difficulties higher education institutions (HEIs) find themselves in and how the value of tuition fees has been eroded by inflation. Last week the BBC reported on proposals it had seen from Universities UK, a body that represents 142 universities, calling for a tuition fee rise linked to inflation and more government investment to halt what it sees as the growing risk of the sector sliding into decline.
There’s no corner of the UK’s public sector that isn’t calling for more investment as a challenging current operating environment is being navigated, and this is made worse by the fact that the government keeps telling us its purse strings are extremely tight. Recently, the government said that there would be no more money put into the NHS without reform, and this got me thinking about a similar position being taken with respect to higher education.
Especially because calls for further investment into the sector seem to be centred on maintaining the status quo. There’s been talk of “less lectures” and “less nice buildings to teach in” if the government doesn’t put more money into the system (incidentally, those nice buildings cost nearly £9 billion between 2014–19). It can feel as though it’s all about preserving the time-honoured, residential, campus-based experience.
This is despite the rising challenges that students are facing in engaging fully with that model. There are accommodation challenges, cost of living challenges, with more students having to work alongside their studies. These issues aren’t easily or rapidly solved by government policy initiatives. Add to this the fact that there’s some evidence of students wanting more flexible options as well as some questioning the value of the current university proposition as a whole.
One would hope that this current juncture in UK higher education would not only cause deep reflection on the funding model, but also on what wider change might be necessary. Although they are both very different and facing different challenges, it feels as though UK higher education, just like the NHS, doesn’t just need more money but also reform. Not least because it can feel as though higher education is becoming more and more incongruent with the modern world.
Online education: market diversification vs penetration
One aspect of reform that is surely worth considering is diversity and innovation in how students access and engage with higher education. This does not mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater and abandoning the campus-based experience, but instead offering a greater selection of experiences that cater to people’s needs and circumstances.
Online distance education forms part of this mix, and it is welcome that more HEIs are looking to develop this type of provision. However, it can seem as though this provision is dominantly being explored as a means of income generation and diversification. That is understandable in the current climate, but online education does not only offer the potential for product and market diversification but also for market penetration. That is, in product terms, the strengthening of existing products in existing markets. Or put another way, HEIs incorporating a greater amount of online teaching and learning into programmes to enhance and evolve their existing offer.
It is hard to make a strong case that there has been significant evolution and innovation in how degree programmes are offered over recent decades. It is also possible to argue that any innovation, evolution or new course products have been driven by external factors and actors. If you were being blunt, you might say that it took a pandemic for HEIs to actually engage with some form of blended learning and it took a financial crisis for them to engage with online distance education. Equally, can we really say that HEIs themselves were the main driving forces behind new course products emerging in recent decades, such as MOOCs, microcredentials and degree apprenticeships?
It would, of course, be wrong to suggest that there are no examples of innovation and evolution in how programmes are offered and the nature of the commitment, but those examples tend to be in the minority.
For HEIs considering their online education strategies, it is important not to overlook the ways in which online education might support market penetration and not simply diversification. The two do not have to be mutually exclusive, but it might be more viable for some institutions to focus on the latter rather than the former for now. The reason for this is that the online education market is growing more competitive. HEIs entering this market seriously for the first time who plan on going it alone are likely to face significant competition from both incumbents and those that have the capability and investment that comes from private partners such as OPMs.
Some HEIs will not necessarily need to make a choice between market penetration and diversification, but some institutions whose resources and finances are stretched and limited might find effectively competing across different markets to be extremely challenging. In these cases, strategic prioritisation for online education may become an important consideration.
In recent years, there have been examples of a jarring disconnect between the real lives of undergraduate students and the delivery of their degree programme. Despite the talk of students as consumers and the forces of marketisation, to a large degree students who want to undertake a degree do so on a university’s terms. There are limited alternative formats and relatively few online distance undergraduate options and choices.
In respect to how HEIs might utilise online education, it might be that using this format to reduce attendance, travel and/or relocation commitments for an existing audience might make a real difference or might be a more compelling proposition for those considering your university.
Signs of evolving formats in higher education
In terms of evolving formats, online-only years are an interesting model that might be worth exploring by HEIs. Arts University Plymouth is an example of a HEI that is offering a number of undergraduate degrees which provide students with the opportunity to study flexibly at home in their first year. Incidentally, that first year starts in January rather than September and runs to August, with on-campus study following in years two and three.
In a similar vein, there are examples of low-residency programmes that are predominantly online but have attendance requirements that tend to be a week or two at a time at set junctures in the years.
There are also examples of smaller providers utilising online distance education to integrate undergraduate study with professional commitments that are directly related to their programme, proving there’s more to earning while you learn than degree apprenticeships.
I know that there is nothing earth shatteringly new about some of these formats, and people will point to versions of these formats that have existed for many years. The striking thing is not that these are examples of revolutionary innovations, but that deviations from the norm are so rare.
Understanding your audience to improve education offerings
A rarer example of another format is summers-only programmes. The relatively few examples of this format I’ve seen are aimed at teachers who, for obvious reasons, have limitations to attendance at other times of the year.
These programmes are a direct example of an institution seeking to tailor their offering for their audience, but to do that you need to understand your audience… and to do that you have to have an organisational disposition and culture that values and prioritises this.
There are examples of institutions that seem to have that, such as Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), who unsurprisingly have grown their appeal and student numbers by “understanding what students really want—and changing everything”.
While in the UK there are plenty of examples of initiatives within HEIs that seek to understand students, these can sometimes feel like they spring up in small pockets driven by localised enthusiasm and are not drivers of holistic institutional, organisational and portfolio change.
You could argue that in 2024 there should be nothing overly remarkable about a university like SNHU, but instead institutions that have sought to really understand the needs of today's students and not simply tinkered at the edges but changed more significantly feel like outliers.
While the financial pressures being experienced by UK HEIs are real and need to be addressed, there may come a time when it is not a lack of money that precipitates a slide into decline, but a lack of understanding your audience and changing what you do as a result.
