leading to the retirement of its traditional residential degree offering. MOOC platforms such as Coursera and EdX leverage data from tens of millions of learners and billions of course datapoints, using machine learning to automatically grade assignments and deliver adaptive content and assessments.įorward-thinking institutions like the University of Illinois are disrupting the graduate degree market using technology that reduces faculty labor to scale programs to thousands of students at a discounted cost of $22,000 for an entire M.B.A. However, in the multi-billion dollar market for fully online courses and degrees, a variety of powerful new platforms and technologies have emerged, grounded in cloud computing, enormous datasets, and artificial intelligence. Online learning became the default in 2020, but the approach most colleges are employing is simple “remote learning” via live Zoom classes, a method little evolved from video conferencing from the late-1990s. Next-Gen Online Learning Scaled via Algorithms Unlike other industries - such as finance and healthcare - education has lagged behind in having a capitalized “industry” to support it, but those trends are now rapidly catching up. Much of this investment is focused on higher education and its intersection with the workforce. According to investment intelligence firm HolonIQ, the first half of 2020 was the second-largest half year for global edtech investment - at $4.5 billion - three times greater than the average 6-months of VC investment during the prior decade. Following a slow, two-decade march toward more digital business models, higher education’s overdue technological transformation has been rapidly accelerated by the events of 2020, and centers more than ever on technology- and analytics-driven online learning experiences and business models.Īs in many other economic sectors, the digital transformation of postsecondary education is being increasingly driven by start-up companies and private capital. Education is one of the least digitized and most people-intensive economic sectors - suggesting that the opportunity for and risk of technology-driven disruption is strong. college students had some type of online course experience before the pandemic, the other two-thirds remained traditional campus-based lectures - little-changed from hundreds of years ago. Department of Education data, while one-third of all U.S. One measure of this is that less than 5% of college budgets are dedicated to IT spending. Higher education has significantly lagged behind other industries in moving to a more digitally-driven, outcomes-focused business model. Insight CenterĮxamining the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. This moment is likely to be remembered as a critical turning point between the “time before,” when analog on-campus degree-focused learning was the default, to the “time after,” when digital, online, career-focused learning became the fulcrum of competition between institutions. This comes after a decade of growth in postsecondary alternatives, including “massively open online courses” (MOOCs), industry-driven certification programs, and coding bootcamps. Fall 2020 marks a clear inflection point as students, educators, and government leaders alike scrutinize the price and value proposition of higher education through the new lens of traditional classroom versus multiple modes of digital delivery.Ī number of elite institutions - such as Princeton University, Williams College, Spelman College, and American University - have substantially discounted tuition for their fully online experience in an historically unprecedented fashion, highlighting pricing pressures and opening up Pandora’s box. Pre-pandemic, there was already widespread acknowledgement that the traditional higher education business model is seriously challenged. The tumultuous fall semester, complete with aborted campus openings and widely diverging online and blended options, has only increased the pressure on America’s colleges and universities. This spring’s campus shutdowns led to a quick rush to “remote learning,” exposing the fragmented adoption of high-quality education technology and digital capabilities across thousands of colleges and universities. Higher education is being pummeled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
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