NewslettersBorderless Report November 2011‘Adapting to Disruptive Times’: Conference report ‘Adapting to Disruptive Times’: Conference report
Disruptive challenges
Coverage from Times Higher Education is HERE.
William Lawton, Director of the Observatory, opened with thoughts on the problems to be addressed. The driver of the current disruption was the digital revolution; the premise was that institutions from all sectors were trying to cope with rapid technologically driven innovation. Those on the receiving end needed to be innovative themselves – organisationally and in terms of what they deliver – to find ways of remaining competitive and relevant.
Many wonderful innovations were evident, including iTunes U, MIT’s OpenCourseWare, and Stanford’s massive new online course. But in the context of the withdrawal of the state from HE funding, the strategic challenge to universities was not just about harnessing the internet; it was how to develop new delivery models and create revenue streams from them. Lawton said that most universities were concluding that the most direct way of doing this was to strike up synergies with the disrupters.
Ken Sloan, Director for Universities and Higher Education at Serco, a global, multi-sector outsourcer for governments, suggested that the situation was nothing to be scared of. He said the current obsession with shared services within HE was understandable but that there were wider choices available. He provided three case studies of ‘strategic service partnerships’ from the health sector and local authorities, all of which transformed disruption into a positive experience using new partners from outside. In one of the latter, the problem was the disconnect between spending and perceptions of quality; the solution cut costs by 20% and drove up user satisfaction rates.
Sloan said that HE was a turbulent market. Institutions would not be able to do everything but there were a wide range of options available to those able to develop the skills required for partnering outside the sector. That, he said, would become par for the course. In the Q&A, he referred to a new report from PA Consulting on ‘Open Innovation’ (partnering beyond the institution), a free summary of which can be obtained from the company HERE.
Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC, noted the challenges to HE over costs, sustainability, and changes in student expectations. He argued that technology was but one string to the bow; strategy rather than technology was at the core. His examples included online learning and the role of JISC in brokering the use of cloud computing for the HE sector (see Borderless Report 6). Both, he said, offered huge potential but only if considered at institutional level and not as local, bolt-on tactics.
Two UK Vice-Chancellors, Geoffrey Crossick of the University of London and Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University, spoke from very different perspectives. Crossick argued that short-term thinking, driven by government policy (‘so energetically about now’), produced a tendency to make too much of disruption. He felt a more historical view showed that HE expansion, the focus on skills and employability, international competition, and new business models had all been unfolding over two decades. What was new, he suggested, was the conjunction of these changes with government policy: the volatility produced made planning more difficult.
Senate House
Crossick’s core point was that universities need to be longer term in strategy, even when governments cannot. He predicted a reconfiguration of the UK sector over the next decade, with more collaboration and some universities not achieving sustainability. He saw the exacerbation of social divides and the distinctive flexibility of the UK graduate as threatened – if the coming changes were responses to market forces rather than strategically led.
Gillies laid out seven propositions on higher education: 97% of it is mass education, skills are what this majority are mainly after, value for money matters, ability to pay is more important than whether public or private sectors provide it, HE is a global industry but highly unglobalised, cross-border students represent only 3% of the world total, and benefits to the family is a more important driver than personal empowerment in many places.
The questions he posed to universities included the role of outsourcing in executing administrative and support functions and the fundamental issue of whether all institutions needed to have the same core purpose and mission. This was developed in discussion, where Gillies responded to a query on hierarchy in the sector with the point that people do not all want the same thing, whether in cars or education. Crossick added his concern that the variations in student experiences would become entrenched.
Two case studies on models of provision in the public sector followed. Kelvin Everest, PVC for the Student Experience at Liverpool University, outlined his university’s partnership, over a decade, with Laureate Online Education, through which Liverpool offers 22 postgraduate programmes fully online. The delivery model has Liverpool responsible for academic quality and the degrees; Laureate hires the tutors and covers marketing costs.
Everest noted that the online programmes were comparable to campus-based provision in quality and standards, but different. They were customised for mid-career professionals who take the online programmes while working. Their experience was that most online students valued and benefitted from the programmes. Online provision was not informed by current research and, in the main, not taught by research-active tutors. It was rooted in work experience and focused on vocational requirements. The inherent challenge was its relevance to, and degree of connection with, campus-based provision, which was rooted in Liverpools’ identity as a research-intensive university.
Tim Gore, Director of Global Networks and Communities at University of London International Programmes, gave a crisp overview of their mission (providing worldwide access to internationally-renowned programmes, at an average cost of £3600 for the whole degree), their delivery (involving 12 of London’s 19 colleges) and the relative risks attending some models of transnational education (TNE) now in use.
London International Programmes offer both independent and supported modes of teaching; for the latter, there are 72 partner institutions in-country and 47 more on the way. Gore contrasted London International’s ‘supported mode’ with validation, franchising and branch-campus models. For validation, the originating institution provides brand marketing and the partner institution covers everything else: admissions, teaching, curriculum, assessment, pastoral care, library access, study materials. In the franchise model, curriculum and core study materials are provided by the originator and library access is shared. In the supported model, admissions, curriculum, final assessment, core materials are done at home, teaching and care by the partner, and other elements are shared. For the standard branch-campus model, of course, everything is done by the home institution.
The level of risk is inverse to the level of control exerted; on this formulation, branch campuses hold the highest financial risk but validation holds the greatest reputational risk.
Private-sector case studies followed, with the focus on the employability of graduates. Roxanne Stockwell from Pearson Education, publisher of books and online resources, indicated that they would apply for degree-awarding powers ‘at an appropriate time in the future’. In the meantime she outlined their plans for a business and management degree, to be validated by Royal Holloway, and scheduled for autumn 2012. The three partners in the course design were industry (Cisco and BT), a professor from Warwick Business school and Aaron Porter, former NUS president. Delivery would be online, classroom-based, and include industry-based workshops.
Alan Jenkins, Vice-President of Kaplan Europe, a lucrative part of the Washington Post Company, indicated that Kaplan is not in the business of setting up universities. They have 20 university partnerships in Europe, the US and Australia, and more than 1m students in 600 locations. He outlined their project with the University of Essex for a hotel school using an existing facility on the Essex campus. It will open in April 2012. The driver is the hospitality industry’s skills shortage and the model attempts to incorporate aspects of traditional university teaching, vocational training, and hotel schools. Sustainable commercial viability for both partners is the goal.
The final discussion panel reviewed the question of whether these really are disruptive times and offered some glances into the future. A number of voices, including that of Aldwyn Cooper, CEO of the private, not-for-profit Regent’s College, said that they saw more opportunity than turbulence. Jonathan Kydd, Dean of University of London International Programmes, argued that these were genuinely disruptive times, with the new players, some represented today, and the shift to a more consumerist approach reinforced by government policy. David Law from Edge Hill University argued that we live in disruptive times but at his university this was embraced. Ken Sloan added that disruption is integral to academic life. He said that new models for running universities will be in place within five years, driven by cost pressures and the need to maintain quality.
The growth of online provision was remarked on, as was the consensus that online will itself never be enough. Eva Egron-Polak from the IAU gave some sober thoughts on the difficulty in staying true to the core missions of universities in the face of consumer-led demands.
The main fault line in the day’s debates was partly ideological and evidenced by different views on what extent of marketisation of HE is necessary and acceptable in the decades to come. The sense conveyed by the for-profit players is that they wish to be on the inside rather than an upsetting force. It is a generalisation – and there were dissenting voices – but there seemed to be an acceptance that new forms of partnerships with the private sector will be the vehicle for sharing services and adapting and delivering new forms of HE provision. The private sector will play an increasing role because they will make the investments that governments are less willing to make. They will act as competitors to parts of the sector and as adaptive facilitators for others.
The Observatory