Findings show
that people (not technology) will drive change, revenue is the ultimate goal,
and HE is globalising, but gradually
“What will higher education look like in 2020?” Tackling this
broad question was a departure from the usual data-led work of the Observatory
on Borderless Higher Education where I am director. The short answer is that
2020 is only seven years away and, with a bit of luck, things should not get
much worse.
The approach of our recent Horizon Scanning report for the
International Unit and Leadership Foundation for Higher Education was dictated
partly by the current landscape of higher education and further shaped by
judgement. Its frame of reference included transnational education (TNE),
Moocs, and ongoing debates around the sustainability of recruitment and
international mobility. Other contributing factors were funding, student
trends, trade liberalisation and the role of international rankings.
The paper concludes with a note on disruptive political change –
while intended to be relevant to planning and policy decisions, it is
descriptive and analytical rather than prescriptive. Here are three key digests
from its findings:
People, not technology, will drive educational change
The consensus on technological disruption says: existing models
of higher education are broken; universities must embrace rapid change or have
obsolescence visited upon them; technology drives this and nothing can stop it.
Our report takes a less dramatic approach. Technology does not have a free hand
in driving change.
Change is driven (and held back) by people, institutions and
countries with real political and economic interests. The manner in which
higher education institutions have reacted to Moocs already provides evidence
of this. Academic staff tell management and politicians to slow down and
think.The shelving of a coercive online-education bill in California last month
that would’ve required public universities to award credit to students who
complete Moocs by outside providers is a good example. The impact of MOOCs on
pedagogy and university business models will be profound, but will manifest as
an evolutionary shift rather than an avalanche of change.
Academic provision and accreditation are unbundling
California’s online-education bill would have hastened the
‘unbundling’ of educational provision from accreditation, but such things are
underway in the US already. Beyond the reach of elite universities, this
process is set to spread and students will choose courses from different
institutions and receive credit toward a degree or non-degree certificate.
A wider range of credentials will have status equal to
university degrees for employers. Unbundling will see a rise of alternative
provision pathways that may have relevance for a greater diversity of students
in more parts of the world. There will also be an explosion of business model
experimentation to integrate Moocs into degree courses. The goal for both Mooc
platforms and universities is revenue – developing ways of awarding credit for
a fee. The ‘open’ part of massive open online courses may survive but only
alongside fee-paying, credit-bearing options.
Higher education will continue to globalise – but gradually
Demand for qualifications from the main higher education exporting
nations will hold up, even as their shares of the global student market
continue to decrease. That decrease will not be not a disaster; it is the
unavoidable consequence of more exporters being in the game. Similarly, the
fact that more Asian universities appear in the top 200 of the three main
international rankings does not mean that UK universities are collapsing into a
‘pit of mediocrity’, as was reported in 2012. It means that Asian universities
are getting better.
Growth in international student mobility will not keep pace with
the growth in demand for higher education worldwide, for two reasons: the
increase in domestic higher education capacity in some countries and the growth
of TNE options in many countries, including online options. Provision through
TNE may grow faster than through international mobility. And mobility to
traditional exporting countries will be challenged by more intra-regional
mobility, for example through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN).
The ‘business end’ of international networks will see more small
international partnerships, such as the Center for Urban Science and Progress
in Brooklyn and larger ones such as the bilateral Monash-Warwick alliance, both
launched in 2012. The latter, in particular, forms a precadent for a highly
integrated partnership, of which we will only see more in the coming years.
The paper also examines the withdrawal of
the state from funding higher education teaching in the developed world, and
suggests that this will not be reversed as the global economy enters a recovery
cycle up to 2020. ‘User pays’ is already the norm.
