How are OPMs changing the UK’s online degree landscape?
If you work at a UK higher education institution (HEI), I wonder what you think is a good annual recruitment target for a postgraduate master’s degree? There is quite a range of cohort sizes for these degrees, with some institutions recruiting as little as five students annually and others over a hundred.
UK HEIs offer a wide variety of postgraduate degrees across different subjects, with a steadily increasing number of interdisciplinary degrees also being offered. Inevitably, demand for degrees across the spectrum can and will vary significantly.
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Exploring the current dynamics of OPM and UK university partnerships
Partnerships between UK higher education institutions (HEIs) and private companies are a significant component of the online distance learning landscape. It is impossible to properly and comprehensively consider this landscape without including private companies and their relationships with UK HEIs.
If you are unfamiliar with the landscape, it may be interesting or confusing to consider that HEIs, whose core activity is offering programmes of study, might need external help to do so. At first glance, these relationships may seem odd.
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Can US OPM 2U succeed in UK higher education amidst financial turmoil?
The online programme management (OPM) company space has undergone significant turbulence in the last few years. The influences behind this are varied, causing changes among many of the companies in this market.
As of 2020, the biggest players in the OPM world were Pearson Online Learning Services (POLS), Wiley Education Services, Academic Partnerships, and 2U. However, all four have been involved in mergers and acquisitions that have fundamentally changed the landscape.
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Exploring the changing online education company landscape in UK higher education
In the last 12-18 months, I’ve frequently described sluggish performance, acquisitions, the cloud of US regulatory changes and less than healthy financial signals as turbulence in the world of online education companies. It would be difficult to claim that things have settled down significantly since my last exploration of this topic, but it does feel like an opportune time for some reflection.
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How are online education companies managing through turbulent times?
Towards the end of 2022 I wrote a post about the turbulence being experienced by online education companies that partner with universities. This was on the back of a raft of negative company announcements about their performance and financial health.
There’s been a number of changes since then and there’s still plenty of dark clouds looming. What we’re seeing is a more prolonged shake-out of some of these companies.
So it’s an interesting juncture to reflect on what’s unfolded over the most recent period of turbulence. It’s also worth considering what turbulence-driven changes might mean for the way online education companies operate in the future and what we might be left with.
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What's the current state of OPM and UK university partnerships?
As a type of technology company, several online education companies have experienced the kind of turbulence that’s been prevalent across the tech sector as a whole. For some, their lack of profitability and/or valuation has been exposed by an altered macroeconomic climate and there have been layoffs as well as several acquisitions, changes in strategies and leadership.
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2022: What's the current state of OPM and UK university partnerships?
One of the big changes of the past couple of years has been the number of universities getting serious about what they are doing in the online distance education space.
Whilst the number of online distance education courses on offer in UK higher education has been steadily growing, the events of the last couple of years have spurred some universities to more intentionally consider what they are doing in this space.
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