The Technology Delivery Disruption in American Higher Education
It is apparent that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated preexisting trends emerging in American higher education over the previous decade. The pandemic has supercharged technological, economic, and social forces and disrupted institutional planning horizons and business models.
In their June 2020 Harvard Business Review article, Vijay Govindarajan of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business and Anup Srivastava of Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, suggest:
The new generation of digital technologies – such as mobile, cloud computing, machine learning, AI (artificial intelligence), AR (augmented reality), and VR (virtual reality) – have matured, so immersive and personalized education can be provided online at scale at a much lower cost than that of conventional education.
Pre-pandemic, the adoption of online digital education had been slow. According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2003-2004 only 4.9% of undergraduate and 6.1% of graduate students were enrolled in exclusively digital programs; by academic year 2015-16, this proportion had more than doubled, to 10.8% for undergraduate students and 27.3% for graduate students.
Consequently, learning has evolved in multiple digital formats, based on the type of content and necessity of direct (or indirect) instructor-student interaction. These formats include online (asynchronous or synchronous), mixed mode (online and periodic in-person teaching), and in-person (supplemented by online teaching and knowledge-evaluation tools). The effectiveness of these modes depends on student demand, institutional mission, tuition structure, faculty availability, and extent of technology access. Moreover, third-party technologies in the classroom are increasingly prevalent to augment and enhance the online student experience, causing a gradual displacement of human instructors. The upcoming expansion of 5G Internet service – with projected coverage to reach 80% of the U.S. by July 2021 – could benefit higher education providers by enhancing synchronicity and quality of streaming content to growing audiences.
Not surprisingly, digital education has become more affordable, as online programs often reduce institutional operating expenses by running larger classes taught by less expensive adjunct, part-time faculty (though the number of adjunct faculty has reportedly declined nationwide by 5% since January 2020). The components making up a new business model for higher education institutions revolve around charging “reasonable” tuition and offering better student value.
Because of the ubiquity of online digital access for students, four-year public institutions will need to be particularly mindful that competition among them has increasingly become state-wide (making price sensitivity acute among in-state students). Digital is a student growth area, as more working students will want the flexibility of such educational access. Moreover, an increasing number of students will demand online education in applied disciplines – e.g., nursing, health sciences, business, engineering, and so on. These disciplines have independent professional accreditation and often state licensure requirements that tend to standardize the undergraduate and graduate curriculums. Thus, the knowledge “value” recognition is less pronounced, and cost and convenience become the students’ differentiators of value.
Up to now, the educational delivery mode has not figured prominently in higher education institutions’ strategic planning. But once a significant percentage of courses moves online, major disruption will be felt everywhere, from the institutions’ physical infrastructure to the local economies, from the institutions’ concept of community mission to on-campus living and learning experiences.
“Scaling up” enrollments in more online courses becomes a method of reducing high overhead costs associated with faculty expenses (i.e., salary and benefits), and subsequently student tuition. Reducing fees associated with student services no longer utilized is another method of reducing “tuition” (as “fees” are calculated into the student’s perception of cost for a four-year degree). In addition, for many online courses, the increasing use of an AI “instructor” may also eliminate the need for faculty, and the subsequent cost savings here may also be seen in to reduced tuition. Nonetheless, the dystopian scenario – wherein higher education institutions enter into a vicious cycle of digitization, cost-cutting, and “tuition wars” – may be effectively managed through strategic service delivery. Instead of completely substituting physical experiences with digital ones, for example, universities should utilize their physical infrastructures as “touchpoints” to connect and engage online audiences.
In summary, this new business model refocuses the cost/value ratio on increased use of cost-saving, digitally scalable, and student-focused delivery modes, yet maintains a value-creating “human” connection to the physical campus.
