Why go to University? MOOCs will change everything. Higher Education beware!

There are many reasons for going to university but, arguably the most important three reasons are:

1. To have a life experience: making the first steps to independence by living away from home, living with like-minded people.
2. To gain an Internationally recognised qualification, which will open doors into the job market.
3. To study - to learn skills and engage with a body of information.

British Universities have had it good for a long time, with successive Governments encouraging ever greater student numbers, but I suspect that the tide is about to turn. The arguments for going to university are not nearly as strong as they were in the past.

Going away to university is a luxury that not everyone can afford

There was a time when going to university was a privilege for a minority that was earned by gaining a good A-level grades and was paid for by the Government, who saw fit to invest in our 'brightest and best'. Those days are gone. Universities are now businesses operating in a competitive market place and they are far from free. According to the National Union of Students the true cost of being a student outside London is £22,189 each academic year (£10,133 for course costs £12,056 for living costs - for the full breakdown of these figures see the NUS website). Today's undergraduates are likely to leave university with £50,000+ debt (BBC Website: 'Average UK student debts 'could hit £53,000' 12/08/2011).

Going away to university to have a life experience increasingly is going to be an luxury that young people cannot afford. Although there is no evidence of this beginning to happen yet, it is likely that we will see more young people living at home, at least for part of their course.

Graduate Employment patterns are changing: almost half of recent graduates are working in non-graduate jobs:

According to the Office of for National Statistics, Graduates now comprise 38% of the adult population (up from 17% in 1992). The positive news is that graduates are more likely to be employed and less likely to be searching for work:

However this ignores a key factor that 47% of recent graduates are in employment, but in non-graduate roles:

The graduate employment market is increasingly competitive, with job prospects broadly being determined by the following three factors:

Whilst there remain significant rewards for those with First Class Honours (and even Upper Seconds) from top institutions, the reality is that a 2:2 in a Humanity from a middle ranking university will mean that your employment prospects are very limited. All of this begs the question if there will be any 'graduate premium' for a significant proportion of our university leavers, let alone whether or not it will be of a significant level to justify the investment of taking on the inevitable debt that will be incurred.

MOOCs will change everything

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are set to transform Higher Education. Imagine have Open University courses available free taught by the world's experts. The leading Universities around the world are making their courses (not just lectures!) available in online versions.  EdX brings some of the best courses from Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, McGill et al (full list of institutions here); Coursera a similarly distinguished body (full list of institutions here).  The following YouTube video gives a basic introduction to EdX:

At present the range of courses is limited, but it is only a matter of time before complete undergraduate programmes are available online.

MOOCs: Accreditation will be the battle ground of the next few years.

The only problem with MOOCs at the moment is that, although you can get a 'statement of accomplishment' for reaching the standard in each unit, the courses themselves are not accredited and don't count towards degrees. MOOCs are in effect the wedge that will separate a university's role as a provider of education and their function as a degree awarding institution. Hitherto these functions have been related - the university taught the course to its students, it examined them and it awarded them a degree. MOOCs change everything. MOOCs mean that an online student can do a course, learn the skills, assimilate the information and even be assessed. It rather begs the question why they can't be accredited for the work that they have done. 

FAQ from the Coursera course 'An Introduction to Financial Accounting'

We might even envisage a situation where a MOOC student has completed the first two years of a degree course online and then applies to transfer as a resident student into the third year of the undergraduate programme.  How will that university react?  How can it argue that the student hasn't reached the requisite standard? 

MOOC courses, Employers and Professional Bodies

A further complication is that employers or even Professional Bodies might accept MOOC courses, even though they are not accredited by Universities. Take, for example, the Coursera course 'An Introduction to Financial Accounting' taught by the University of Pennsylvania. Employers and the Institute of Chartered Accountants are likely to be more concerned that an applicant has mastered the principles of financial accounting than they have a shiny degree certificate. Indeed it is easy to see that they may be more impressed with the self-starter from a humble background who has shown the motivation to complete an online course over and above the resident undergraduate.

Conclusion The laws of supply and demand will hold sway and is that we are likely to see the top universities continuing to get stronger and the lesser universities falling by the wayside. I predict that

• there will be a flight to quality. Degrees from the top universities will always have a currency in the job market and there will always be sufficient numbers who will be willing to pay for that experience, education and qualification. Increasingly savvy students are likely to consider that it just isn't worth the debt studying esoteric courses or studying at lesser universities.
• increasing numbers of students will study living at home, perhaps going away to university for a year to have the experience
• an increasing minority will head to the big name universities in Europe which have lower entrance requirements (EE at A-level), lower fees (Universities are free in Germany) and which are increasingly offering courses delivered in English (in order to attract the Far East market). This is certainly the best option for the CCC candidate where the British alternatives are overpriced for the end value of the degree that they have to offer.

Accreditation of MOOC courses is going to be the real battle ground of the next couple of years and it is set to split Higher Education:  MOOCs pose no threat to universities who are in the top 50 in the world rankings. There will always be demand for these institutions' courses. Indeed these universities will drive the expansion of MOOCs to enhance their reputations worldwide. However MOOCs will pose a real threat not only to the Open University (why pay if you can study online from HarvardX for free?), but also to lesser British universities, who are likely to guard their degree-awarding powers jealously lest their residential numbers plummet.Ultimately this is out of their control. The top 50 universities will do what they will do - it is a competitive marketplace after all.  There is little doubt that MOOCs will be a significant catalyst for change in the whole structure of Higher Education around the world.

MOOCs: the greatest threat to education as we know it?

Imagine a university where you could be taught by the pick of the teaching talent from Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, Wellesey, University of Texas and Berkeley.  

Imagine, now that these classes were free.

Imagine that there would be no selection or entrance criteria to get onto any course.

Imagine now that the tuition could take place at your convenience: at a time and place at suited you.

That university would be the popular university in the world.

Welcome to the world the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

A MOOC (as the man from Ronseal would say) "does exactly what it says on the tin":

1. They are MASSIVE - teachers have the potential to teach 100,000s of students.
2. They are OPEN - they are free
3. They are ONLINE
4. They are COURSES - anD not just resources.

On May 2 2012, MIT and Harvard joined forces to form edX (www.edx.org) a non-profit collaborative project to run courses designed and taught by leading academics from the six top american universities listed above. What is more they have teamed up with Pearson, who have established expertise in examinations (they own EdExcel) and online testing (they are responsible for the UK online driving theory test and the online PTE English language test).

Eric Hellwig, writing on his Harvard Business Review blog (29/01/2013), sums up the impact that MOOCs are likely to have:

"The advent of massively open online classes (MOOCs) is the single most important technological development of the millennium so far. I say this for two main reasons. First, for the enormously transformative impact MOOCs can have on literally billions of people in the world. Second, for the equally disruptive effect MOOCs will inevitably have on the global education industry." 

Certification

At present, those completing the courses offered by edX receive a certificate from the institution who is offering the course (e.g. HarvardX) but the courses do not yet carry with them credits to work towards a degree, but this may only be a matter of time. Either way, it is likely that the HarvardX certification will carry some weight as a qualification in its own right-  after all employers are unlikely to turn their nose up to applicants who have completed the MITx course "Introduction to Computer Science and Programming" or BerkleyX's "Software as a Service". As Bill Gates put it: Our whole notion of 'credential', which means you went somewhere for a number of hours, needs to move to where you can prove you have the knowledge."

MOOCs will undoubtedly change the landscape of Higher Education over the next couple of years - the question that I'm asking is: how long before they transform Secondary Education?

More:

• Eric Hellwig 'Eight Brilliant Minds on the Future of Online Education' Harvard Business Review 29/01/2013 
• 'Harvard-MIT Online School EdX to Offer Supervised Final Exams' Business Week 06/09/2012
• 'Free, high-quality and with mass appeal'  Financial Times 22/10/2012

Universities - time to be leaner and fitter?

The news that University applications fall 9% after tuition fee hike (Daily Telegraph 24/10/11) should neither surprise or concern us.

With tuition fees increasing from just under £3,000 p.a. to an average of £8,678 p.a. (Guardian 18/04/11), one would expect to see the reduction in applications. Furthermore, this is unlikely to be a temporary blip: there is little doubt that we are going to see a reduction in the number of young people who are willing to put themselves into significant debt in order to have a university education.

I have believed for a long time that too many young people are going to university. It has taken the recession, graduate unemployment, student debt and now increased tuition fees to focus minds, but the early indications are that we are about to see an important shift in how we view Higher Education. HE is going to contract and, in many cases, it will be driven by the customers, the students, rather than by the suppliers, the universities. Most importantly, young people now are being forced to see university as a time when they are making an investment in themselves. 

  

The Value of a Degree

The value of a degree can be determined by the following three factors:

1. The quality and reputation of the Institution
2. The quality and reputation of the Subject
3. The class of a degree

I welcome the news that University applicants facing tuition fee hike avoid softer subjects (Daily Telegraph 24/10/11). For too long too many young people have not done the research into what advantage their degree will give them. "Softer university subjects such as communication studies and creative arts have seen a drop in applications of up to 40 per cent." - Hurray!  Why should tax-payers subsidise these sort of courses? It is no surprise that we are seeing a shift to the more academic courses at the better institutions. 

Universities are going to have to raise their game too. If students are paying £9k p.a., then they are going to expect to be getting something for their money - cancelled lectures and large tutorial groups, poor lecturer feedback become all the more unacceptable when you are paying personally for it. Students will vote with their feet - well taught courses leading to good jobs will be popular, poorly taught courses with poor employment prospects will not be viable.

Higher Education will consolidate around quality and value.

One of the consequences of the reduction in numbers is that students will gravitate towards quality and value. The top universities will continue to expand, to grow and thrive.  Universities at the lower end of the food chain are going to find it increasingly difficult to fill their places. (This is a phenomenon that we have experienced in the Independent Schools sector during the past twenty years as fees and costs have risen and customers have become better informed.) 
In the long term less successful universities are going to be faced with increased specialism based around niche courses, departments closing, universities merging with other institutions and, in some cases, closure. But before that happens, as with all markets where there is over-supply we are going to see the price fall. This will happen in two ways. First, some institutions will compete on the price of their fees - i.e. by lowering their tuition fee; and secondly, others will reduce their entrance tariff - lowering the entrance requirements for certain courses.

So what does this mean for those young people who will be applying in the next few years? 
Getting a place at a top university is going to be as competitive as ever. Applications to Oxbridge are up this year, and we can anticipate that this will be the case with all of the top 20 universities.

However for weaker pupils who are willing to invest in themselves, it is probably good news. At present it is really difficult to get onto any sort of meaningful degree course with grades less than CCC (= 240 points).  This will change - an A-level candidate with CDD will be able to get onto a significantly better course from Sept 2012, than has been the case during the past couple of years.

What is University for? Part One: Time to rethink?

Twenty five years ago University was for an elite which only about 7% of the experienced; now it is much more accessible with between 20% and 30% "participating in Higher Education" depending on how you define the term.

The decade 1999 to 2009 saw a 44% rise in the number of applicants to UK Universities that were accepted onto a course [Source: UCAS statistics: 1999 - 334,594; 2009 - 481,854]. This expansion of Higher Education has led to a number of changes in the student demographic: 11% of University applicants accepted onto undergraduate courses are now over the age of 25. More students are living at home. Course are modular, flexible and transportable: with students studying for part of their course in one institution and then moving to another to complete their course.

I know of one young graduate of ICT Networks and Web Design who did the first two years of his degree at evening classes at the local FE college before going away to the University of the West of England to do his final year. This trend of mix'n'match degrees is set to expand as young people weigh up the costs of going away to university.

This model throws an interesting light on the question What is University for?

On the one hand, University is about receiving an education to a degree level. As such it has been the entrance qualifications to the professions. On the other, it is an opportunity to have a life experience of moving away from home to live in a community with other young people. It is a formative experience - a "life-building" experience.

The young ICT graduate took a pragmatic and more affordable step of distilling these two aspects. It may be that, in the present economic climate, the time has come to consider the three-year life-experience away from home a luxury for which students should be expected to pay. Here is a model that will enable a greater participation in Higher Education without the Government and students alike running up ever more debt.

Is going to University worth it?

When five percent of the population went to university, being a graduate meant something. Today, the value of a degree is measured by the combination of the three factors: the quality of the course, the status of the institution and the class of the degree. Of these, you need at least two out of three to make it.

Sadly, too many young people are being wooed to read meaningless courses at institutions that are more concerned with funding than teaching. They are being sold a dream of a graduate premium that simply will not be there for them.

One of the positive aspects of student loans for university tuition fees is that it forces young people to invest in themselves by making a financial commitment to their studies. A prudent sixth former should research the employment rates for their chosen course weigh those up against the living and tuition costs that they are going to incur. Furthermore I expect students to demand better value for money from their universities in terms of the teaching and learning that they have to offer.