What's the current state of online learning in Wales' universities
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There have been some interesting developments and reports relating to higher education in Wales recently. These include a new report from Universities Wales and London Economics on the economic impact of Welsh universities’ teaching, research and innovation activities in 2021-22. This report considered the impact of Wales’s nine universities, including the Open University in Wales.
In addition, there has been the recent establishment of Medr, the new regulatory and funding body for tertiary education in Wales. Medr recently published their draft strategic plan covering 2025 to 2030.
One thing that really jumped out at me in the foreword was this line about embracing change and opportunity by creating:
“A more joined-up and inclusive sector, with clearer and more flexible pathways for learners to learn at the level and in the place that is best for them.”
This is not the only example of voices in Welsh higher education indicating plans to change how some courses are offered. In recent reporting about the financial challenges faced by universities in Wales, Cardiff University’s new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Wendy Larner, stated that the university's new strategy “would involve…different ways of delivering courses.”
Given these new strategies and ambitions, it felt like a good time to assess the current state of play regarding online learning in Welsh higher education.
How many online students are there at Welsh universities?
Based on an analysis of data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), which excludes the Open University in Wales, there was a combined total of just under 11,000 UK-based and internationally-based students studying via distance learning at Welsh universities in 2022-23. In the same academic year, the Open University in Wales reported nearly 15,000 UK-based distance learning students.
Including the Open University in Wales, 13% of UK-based students (undergraduate and postgraduate taught) studying at Welsh universities in 2022-23 were doing so via distance learning. For some, this may seem high; for others, it might seem low, but it is broadly consistent with other home nations such as Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Interestingly, the 2022-23 total highlights another year of declines in online student numbers from the just over 14,500 students recorded in the 2020-21 academic year. However, there are specific reasons for this, and it's a story that the numbers alone won’t tell.
The decline is exclusively among online postgraduate-taught (PGT) students, while the number of undergraduate students has increased. For those familiar with the online distance learning market, this may run counter to expectations, given the long-standing alignment between typical online student demographics and PGT courses.
This is primarily due to the University of South Wales, which, from 2015, significantly scaled up online international student numbers to nearly 10,000 via a partnership that subsequently ended, leading to a sharp drop in student numbers. This is not the first time this has happened in UK higher education, with both the University of Liverpool and the University of Leicester experiencing something similar in the past.
If we account for that significant fluctuation, what we’ve seen in terms of online student numbers over the 2020’s has been pretty lacklustre, with the only exception being at Wrexham University.
What opportunities exist to study an online bachelors degree at Welsh universities?
Overall, the opportunities to study an online undergraduate degree at Welsh universities are extremely limited. Prospective students currently have fewer than fifteen bachelor's degrees to choose from across three universities.
It’s worth saying that I’m not trying to single out Welsh universities here; they are no less developed in this area than many other universities in the rest of the UK. However, when you consider this paltry number of options at a national level, the lack of options becomes even more stark.
Of course, some will rightly say that this does not reflect the true range of choices, as I have excluded the Open University (OU) in Wales. My intention is not to diminish their presence, but I believe we have moved beyond the era when most universities delegated online distance learning to one large national distance education provider. Therefore, it is interesting to primarily focus on universities that are not exclusively distance learning institutions.
What opportunities exist to study an online masters degree at Welsh universities?
The situation is somewhat different for online master’s degrees, as you might expect given the audience those courses are more likely to attract.
There are some interesting specialist areas among the online master’s degrees offered by universities in Wales. These include courses from Aberystwyth University’s Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), forestry degrees from Bangor University’s School of Natural Sciences, and history, archaeology, and theology & religious studies degrees from the University of Wales, Trinity St David.
There is also a significant number of online degrees in medicine and healthcare, mainly concentrated in Cardiff University’s School of Medicine and the University of South Wales. The latter’s online master’s degrees are delivered through a partnership with Cardiff-based company, Learna.
Subject coverage at the master’s degree level is broader than these niche or specialised areas. There are several online master’s degrees in popular subject areas, such as business and management, law, education, and computer science, to name a few.
Wrexham University, for instance, has developed a portfolio of online master’s degrees and MBAs in high-demand subject areas through their partnership with online programme management (OPM) company Higher Ed Partners. Arguably, they have become the most notable Welsh university for online learning, growing online student numbers significantly year-on-year with a competitively priced portfolio.
How are universities in Wales approaching online learning?
What is largely evident across Welsh universities is a general lack of an institutional strategy and cohesive, university-wide approaches to online learning. While there are many online degrees developed in an ad-hoc and fragmented manner within specific faculties, there is no clear indication that universities have coordinated, strategic, institution-level approaches to online education.
In general, there are varying opinions on where online education should be situated within universities and how it should be managed. Tensions also exist around centralisation versus decentralisation. One common drawback of a decentralised and fragmented online course portfolio is that online education often has to fit into the structure of an institution designed from top to bottom for on-campus education. As a result, online education and online students can end up feeling like square pegs in round holes.
Key capabilities such as marketing, recruitment, admissions, student and academic support, teaching and learning, as well as digital infrastructure, processes, and procedures, often end up being suboptimal and misaligned with the needs of online students. This is because these systems were primarily designed with an on-campus education model in mind. Consequently, different functions within a university may respond reactively to the specific requirements of each online degree or course, but this piecemeal approach does not encourage the kind of holistic recalibration that would better equip a university to effectively deliver and scale online education. It’s also often very inefficient.
Whether you’re a student or involved in running online education, it can sometimes feel as though the whole system is working against you. One of my favourite examples of this is a cohort of online students regularly receiving emails about buses on campus because the university wasn’t set up to communicate differently with online students.
This organisational structure rarely provides an effective platform to achieve significant levels of online student recruitment or to offer an optimised student experience from enquiry to graduation. While this might be manageable for universities that are content with relatively small recruitment numbers to online master’s degrees, for many, especially given the current financial climate, this is neither viable nor sustainable.
An increasing appetite to move into the online education market
Despite the current situation, there is a clear and growing appetite among universities in Wales, as in the rest of the UK, to enter the online education market. Some are considering partnerships with OPMs (Online Programme Management companies) or other online education providers, others have explored these options and not taken them forward, while others have decided to develop in-house capabilities.
Some institutions have published impressive sounding strategy documents outlining their ambitions to create more flexible learning opportunities. The key question for universities in Wales will be whether these ambitions can be realised. Deciding where you plan to be in 5-10 years is the easy part; the real challenge and essence of strategy lie in determining how to get there and do so successfully.
If Medr's ambition is for the Welsh higher education sector to move towards more flexible forms of education that are not exclusively tied to campus-based learning, this will require major change within Welsh universities. This situation is very similar to the rest of the UK..
Many UK universities are on this path, but I’ve yet to see enough evidence to suggest that the majority of institutions will meet the ambitious goals often outlined in their strategies. The real challenge will be in developing effective strategies, building the right capabilities, and skilfully investing in and aligning digital infrastructure to succeed. However, comprehensively understanding what it takes to succeed is sometimes far from the grasp of the sector, because there’s such a chasm between that understanding and both the legacy and current approaches within the sector. In other words, there is a sense of "you don’t know what you don’t know."
These are still early days in what could be described as a new era in Welsh higher education, and the goals and ambitions I’ve observed are commendable and represent the first steps on this journey. Ultimately, whether or not they will be achieved is a question that only time will answer.
