Changing markets: new threats and opportunities in tertiary education

Professor Eddie Blass

Executive Director, Learning Innovations Hub

University of New England

Imagine 2025…….

• What are you seeing?

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Imagine 2025……

• Context

Government is ‘broke’

Knowledge base is largely irrelevant; skills to mine the knowledge base and assess its relevance are core (Future work skills 2020, Institute for the Future)

Increasing environmental turbulence impacts on living choices (floods, storms, droughts)

Demographic shifts

Value of formal education is questioned

SECTORAL DRIVERS OF CHANGE

Ernst and Young (2012) University of the Future identified 5 drivers of change:

1. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

• growth in BYOD;

• learning analytics for adaptive curriculum;

• blended learning for student choice;

• informal learning;

• collaboration;

• gamification.

What is the future role of the ‘teacher’? (not someone who focusses on their delivery of knowledge content and examines its retention)

2. Democratisation of knowledge & access

• privacy being redefined;

• smart systems and machines;

• saturation of current markets;

• MOOC = enrol and withdraw before census;

• instant peer-review;

• impact based peer-review;

• crowd sourced innovation.

What is the future role/direction of research at your institution? (not research council research grants)

3. Contestability of markets and funding

• Government cannot fund HE long-term;

• value of HE award questioned;

• tipping point in student values;

• quality assurance paramount;

• retention within sector;

• collaborative advantage through partnerships.

How are you going to be self-financing in the future?

4. Global mobility

• Staff and students;

• knowledge base;

• service provision;

• relevant;

• cross-cultural;

• Networked and inclusive of diversity;

• global brands, global accreditation and retention within global sector

How does your Univeristy contribute to a global HE offering? (partnership, networking, collaborative advantage rather than competitive advantage)

5. Integration with industry

• sector embedded in industry;

• TAFE embedded within HE qualifications;

• corporate degrees;

• future work skills drive pedagogic base;

• negotiated work-based assessments.

How are you going to service this market?

Who will be our academic workforce?

(not a PhD who has never had any real world experience)

SUMMARY OF KEY THREATS

• Funding crisis in HE

• Question of where new knowledge is created

• What value does the university add?

• High graduate unemployment

• University in search of relevance

• Outsource administration

• 50+20 project: Management and leadership ‘best for the world’ not just ‘best in the world’ but questions the future of the business school

The University in 2025

• Corporate, Virtual and Global

• Academics will be ‘Pracademics’

• Fewer in number

• Dual sector – ‘Castles on the Hill’ offering an elite experience and the ‘Universe-cities’ providing knowledge and education to the masses

• Research is largely practice-based

• Third stream activity core to academic activity

• The ‘idea’ of the university is challenged – notion of peer Academy challenged

• Academic freedom superseded by the internet

• Academic identity transient

The University in 2025

• Who here will still be working in ‘the university’ in 2025?

• How will your work day be different?

• Does this feel ‘better’ or ‘worse’ for you?

• Does this feel ‘better’ or ‘worse’ for your institution (in my case, UNE)?

The Student in 2025

• Who knows someone under the age of 10?

• What strikes you about this age group now?

• They will be the ‘traditional’ student base in 2025.

• Who will be the non-traditional student base in 2025?

The ‘Traditional’ Student in 2025

• First generation who will be less economically well off than their parents

• Need to find a sense of value in life outside of wealth

• More environmentally focussed and socially focussed

• Deeply concerned about the meaning and value of life

• Global citizens who seek the wisdom of their global peers before that of the older generation

• Digitally wired – of course!

The ‘Non-Traditional’ Student in 2025

• Retirees wanting to study to be interested

• Mid career professionals wanting a change in career

• Returners to work after time out of the workplace

• Individuals who were not able to take up the opportunity of education before

• Others?

What will the student experience be in 2025?

Castle on the Hill

Enhanced international experience

Extension of the school experience

Online education

for the world

Local thinking to

global thinking

Economically Poor/Wealth

4 MODELS co-exist

• Castles on the Hill for the ‘old elite’

• Extension of the school experience offered by those institutions who are not able to change and on death row

• Online education for the world – MOOCs, open learning courses, collaborations

• Enhanced international experience – blended learning utilising the campus for enhanced f2f facilitation of learning

RECRUITMENT: What will be the competitive drivers of the future?

• Personalised curriculum opportunities (challenge for AQF – must change or lose international market competitiveness)

• Responsive curriculum to global needs and employment opportunities (challenge bureaucratic processes)

• Student centred learning pedagogy with choices (blended learning approach where the student selects the blend)

• Creative assessment of application of learning underpinning assessment FOR learning not OF learning

• Highly efficient student administration processes

• Highly relevant curriculum preparing students for the future

• Philosophical, of value, with meaning.

RETENTION: TACKLING ATTRITION

• Need to define retention as ‘within the sector’

• Allow student flexibility in which bits of their qualification are studied where

• User-friendly courseware to support student progression and flag when they are falling behind their study plan

• Student driven qualification timeframe

• Value add curriculum

• Working with employers and professional bodies

• Facilitating peer learning and interaction

• Inspiring and creating connective sparks

• Need a 24:7 provision

CASE STUDY: UNE

• Learning Innovations Hub created 2013

• Signal change by immediate closure of 20th century legacy provision (print & despatch)

• Merging Academic Skills provision with English Language Support provision to focus on different client group needs rather than service provision

• Developing School visions for 2025 and setting benchmarks/milestones of progress

• Refocus of courseware away from lesson delivery to learning objects that offer a blend of choice

• Policy redevelopment to embed shift in pedagogic practice away from academics owning units to disciplines/Schools/UNE sharing units

• Introduction of new assessment practices to shift away from predominantly essay and exam

• Developing partnerships for collaborative advantage

Concluding thoughts

• Changing markets: new threats and opportunities in tertiary education

Magnified, intensified threats stemming from lack of responsiveness thus far

Greater opportunity if prepared to extend the ‘idea’ of the university

• Who are the learners of the future and what are their expectations?

Everyone is a learner of the future

Expectation of value and relevance

• Recruitment: what will be the competitive drivers of the future?

Responsiveness and quality of service provision

• Retention: tackling attrition rates in an increasingly diverse, open-access and blended educational environment

Redefine retention to encompass lifelong learners – we’re not dead yet!

Thank you for listening

ANY QUESTIONS?