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On the 21st-24th of November, Durban University of Technology hosted the annual meeting of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of South Africa (HELTASA). As part of our impact and engagement strategy, three members of our team – Dr Rebecca Swartz (UCT) and Prof Neil Morris and Dr Mariya Ivancheva (University of Leeds) participated in the conference by offering a pre-session workshop “Unbundling Higher Education: Exploring Models in an Unequal Landscape”. The workshop aimed to generate discussion around some key questions of our project that would allow a two-way engagement with participants. This allowed us to offer some insights from our research findings and where our project sees some advancements and challenges happening at the intersection of unbundling, marketisation and digitalization in South African Higher Education. We were also eager to hear from participants and gather data on their perceptions of these processes from the position of their institutions.

This second blog post offers a brief overview of the answers which our participants – mostly academics, academic development and education technology workers from South African universities – offered to the questions of the shifting public private divide in public higher education in the country. In our first blog post we covered topics around the changing nature of the changing nature of public universities through public-private partnerships in teaching and learning provision.

In the second part of the workshop we inquired if and how the introduction and increased role of digital technologies, curricular disaggregation, and marketisation has changed the teaching and learning provision at the participants’ institutions. We asked them to give examples on what are the advantages and challenges to this development especially when it comes to introducing students to online or blended learning and digital technologies and through marketisation. We were also interested to explore participants’ visions of where this change will lead public higher education in South Africa in the next 5-10 years.

Workshop participants saw digital technologies as holding huge potential but not being in widespread use. They insisted that digital technologies would come as a must in any further training, be it within universities or as unbundled provision. They also commented, however, on university staff as resistant to change and not always on board with technological developments.  Faculty were believed to be making limited use of digital technologies, and sometimes had outdated or faulty ideas regarding their use.  At times it was a generational matter in which younger faculty were more tech savvy and open to innovation and use of online platforms and forums to provide content. Alternatively the confidence, competence, and pedagogical skills of teachers was seen as more important than their age. Whatever the case, however, the resistance to adopting technologies was seen by participants quite unanimously as putting students at a disadvantage. This was even more the case for students who lacked digital literacy upon entering university. Those from underprivileged backgrounds could use the entry into universities to get ahead with technology and often e-books and devices were made available to accelerate this process, but this opportunity was lost if staff did not give them a good technological introduction, thus perpetuating their disadvantage. The disconnect between the availability of technological devices and the ability of students and faculty to use them for academic research, teaching and learning, was also named as a central challenge.

Read moreReport from #Heltasa2017 workshop Unbundling Higher Education, Part II: The influence of Digital Technologies and Curricular Disaggregation on Teaching & Learning Provision

On the 21st-24th of November, Durban University of Technology hosted the annual meeting of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of South Africa (HELTASA). As part of our impact and engagement strategy, three members of our team – Dr Rebecca Swartz (UCT) and Prof Neil Morris and Dr Mariya Ivancheva (University of Leeds) participated in the conference by offering a pre-session workshop “Unbundling Higher Education: Exploring Models in an Unequal Landscape”. The workshop aimed to generate discussion around some key questions of our project that would allow a two-way engagement with participants. This allowed us to offer some insights from our research findings and where our project sees some advancements and challenges happening at the intersection of unbundling, marketisation and digitalisation in South African Higher Education. We were also eager to hear from participants and gather data on their perceptions of these processes from the position of their institutions.

This first blog post offers a brief overview of the answers which our participants – mostly academics, academic development and education technology workers from South African universities – offered to the questions of the shifting public private divide in public higher education in the country. In our second blog  we will speak on how participants saw the influence of digital technologies and curricular disaggregation on teaching and learning provision.

Read moreReport from #Heltasa2017 workshop Unbundling Higher Education, Part I: The Changing Nature of Public Universities through Public-Private Partnerships in Teaching & Learning Provision

In this blog post, I unpack some of the key themes that have emerged from our first phase of interviews with higher education leaders in South Africa. Having interviewed 26 individuals, a number of common issues have been raised in relation to the impact of digital technology on unbundling (defined as the disaggregation of provision and services) in higher education.  As we explore the data, and continue our analysis, it is useful to reflect and explore these key themes.

Ubiquity of digital technology?

We know that South Africa is a hugely unequal country, and this pervades the higher education system as much as general society. In this regard, we should make a distinction between educational inequalities as shaped by structural factors, and the economics of unequal technological access in higher education. While the former are tied to the historical trajectory of South African higher education, the latter are mainly concerned with unequal patterns of supply and demand of devices, bandwidth and expertise.

A stark picture of structural inequality in the South African HE sector is painted by official data, for instance the fact that between 2007 and 2012 [1], universities increased fees by 8.4% p.a. in real terms. This was a response to strong growth in enrolment (6% p.a.,) coupled with slow growth in government funding (5.4% p.a.), and nearly no growth in so-called “third stream” income (0.2% p.a.), where funds are sought through liaisons with the private sector, knowledge exchange, donations and, increasingly, on-demand online education. NSFAS, the financial aid scheme, is also underfunded (31% of eligible candidates were rejected in 2014) and the eligibility cut-off figure of R122,000 household income left many students unable to cope with the fee increases.

Read morePerceptions of the impact of digital technology on unbundling in Higher Education

In this blog post Sukaina Walji, part of the The Unbundled University: researching emerging models in an unequal landscape project team takes a preliminary look at the emergence and role(s) of private providers in the South African Higher Education landscape. (Our study also includes England and Higher Education providers but in this blog we focus only on South Africa)

The Unbundled University research project is examining what constitutes the ‘unbundled university’ and considers the intersection of marketisation, digital technologies and the notion of unbundling (defined as the increasing disaggregation of services and curricula provided by a Higher Education institution). As part of the examination of the forces that are enabling unbundling we are interesting in understanding the role and nature of ‘private providers’ as a way to understand the evolving nature of Higher Education provision in South Africa, and in particular what makes up the various components that are part of the ‘bundle of services’.  We acknowledge that ‘private providers’ is a very broad category, and in this project we wish to examine more closely the types of services and relationships that currently exist and are likely to emerge between public institutions and private providers.

This blog post shares some preliminary work by the team, and which has begun with a process of ‘mapping the terrain’. In terms of scope we consider ‘private provider’ falling into two broad categories:

1. Private universities, which offer degrees and accredited qualifications to South African tertiary students. Their core product is then largely the same as a public HE institution: degrees for enrolled students.
2. Entities, business and service providers that are privately owned and provide services to public (or private) HE institutions.

In this blog post and in our study we are predominantly concerned with understanding the second of these categories – the entities, businesses and service providers which seek to support, service and partner with universities. This is not to minimise the existence of and potential influence of private universities as part of the broader context, but for reasons of containing scope they do not form part of our study.

The context in South Africa

Our first policy brief in this project outlined the broad context of the changes and forces that are shaping changes in the South African Higher Education sector. Policy initiatives have encouraged many public institutions to consider online and blended learning to offer new programmes, and increasing numbers of students are studying through distance education programmes at predominantly residential institutions. This is enabled by the availability of ICTs which is allowing for more flexible forms of provision, sometimes known as mixed mode or blended learning which can offer tertiary education to a wider group of potential students. A number of South African universities are offering various types of provision online including paid-for short courses for certification, post-graduate diplomas, Master’s degrees and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). These types of provision are increasing year on year and are motivated by a range of factors including the potential for third stream income, reaching so-called non-traditional learners who require more flexibility, increasing capacity in the sector and reaching new geographical markets.

Moves towards more flexible forms of provision have also been catalysed by the emergence of student movements at South African universities under the banner of #feesmustfall  which have resulted in partial shutdowns where physical access to on-campus facilities was restricted. In a drive to keep on teaching and to complete the academic year, many educators turned to virtual modes of teaching which ranged from using simple communications technologies such as email and WhatsApp to keep classes going to more sophisticated modes such as live virtual classrooms or extensive use of a learning management system. As well as individual academics keeping their classes going through virtual modes, a number of institutions formally turned to online and blended modes to complete the academic year. While these strategies took place in a “crisis mode”, the medium term effects seem to have resulted in more interest in the potential of online and blended teaching and learning spaces.

Given these forces and developments, South African universities are grappling with how to resource and produce courses and programs in online modes, as our first set of interviews seem to indicate. The skills and resources needed to produce new educational opportunities require finding new resources to fund online education development including paying for instructional design, course production including video production, technical infrastructure, maintenance, student support and management. This range of skills and new needs mean that most traditional residential universities have to consider a number of options for resourcing online education provision. Whether this is done in house with developing new units and jobs or whether these services are bought in either through outsourcing or partnering with private providers is a key decision needing to be made by Higher Education leaders.

Types and nature of private providers

At the same time as universities have expressed interest and started projects to develop online courses, the notion or idea of education as a business opportunity has become increasingly of interest to investors, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. This has been the case in the Global North for some time with many educational businesses servicing educational institutions and thus constituting a form of ‘marketization’ of education or a ‘global education industry’. Worldwide it is clear that education is seen as a potential market in which businesses can take an interest or stake in an educational endeavour and for which some return is expected. With increasing austerity worldwide and cuts to public funding to universities, institutions appear receptive to how new projects such as online learning provision might be achieved in the absence of inhouse funding for investment. Many of these businesses are referred to, as in this Inside Higher Ed article,  as online program management providers (OPM) while others use ‘edu-businesses’ or ‘enabler companies’ as a catch-all term. In the South African market, a number of private companies are currently providing a range of services to South African universities across a range and spectrum of services.

The diagram provides an overview of the types of activities an educational institution might engage in when developing an online education program. Any of these activities can potentially be provided by a private provider and at different entry points.

 

 

 

 

 

View larger diagram (link to a Google Slide)

While the entry points can be at any stage, if an institution is starting from scratch, it is likely to start with strategic planning and readiness assessment as the first stage. By way of illustration a brief explanation of each stage is given below with some possible examples:

Strategy and readiness: this is the first phase where the private provider helps an institution develop a strategy or strategies for what sort of online provision is required and ascertains the institution’s readiness. This may involve engaging with policy level and accreditation requirements for any new programs as well as analysing the technical and platform infrastructure. For example an institution might be interested in starting short courses in executive education and wants to consider the opportunities in the market as well as what it would take to start a short course program in executive education. Current learning platforms would be evaluated as well as a needs analysis of what potential new consumers might require.

Planning at program level: following on from strategy and readiness, this phase involves planning programs and products and includes ascertaining the specific business models and funding requirements for a new online education initiative and what models there are to partner with an external company. This also includes taking into account the marketing, admissions and accreditation needs of any particular programs. For example an institution might be interested in offering a number of postgraduate diplomas in online mode and needs to firm up the parameters and business model for any given program including how many students would need to be enrolled for the program to be viable, what the price point might be given the costs (that include marketing, admissions and administration support) as well as what level of funding is required for the initiative and what sources might be drawn on. This phase will also involve faculty buy-in and appointment of program convenors.

Design, production and delivery at course level: This phase comprises a series of pathways that consider the design of courses, production of materials, development of assessments and the course delivery process. Following launch, the phase also includes course support and maintenance.

The diagram shows not only the phases of a full scale online education development and production model from the point of view of an institution, but also shows at a level of granularity the types of services and tasks – effectively the components that make up the bundle. We are seeing that enabler companies and edu-businesses are coming in at different points to offer different services, and our preliminary analysis in the South African context shows two main types of companies:

Multi-service companies which offer a full range of services which an institution might pick and choose from. Effectively a multi-service education provider might offer an institution a complete service that includes developing an online education strategy or conceptualising products and then offering production,design, development and launch.. Examples globally include Cengage, 2U, Academic Partnerships, and multi-service online education provision is an area that some of the major MOOC platforms such as Coursera and FutureLearn are moving into as they evolve their business models. A local South African example is Getsmarter (which was recently purchased by 2U). While GetSmarter/2U and Academic Partnerships are actively operating in the South African Higher Education sector, many other companies are tentatively exploring the possibilities of the South African Higher Education market.

The other type of provider is one that offers a single-service such as exam proctoring or tutoring and can range from large scale organisations to small localised ones. Examples include ProctorU, PearsonVue and also includes providers of Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard or Canvas.

The role of private providers and their business models is evolving with differing views of their effectiveness and potential impact on quality of offerings, and also on their potential to impact on the purpose of higher education itself as in this example to enable more career ready graduates. One of the outcomes of this project is to assist senior leadership in universities including strategists, procurement officers and institutional planning departments to understand the nature of what private providers are offering in terms of business models, services, and what the implications and consequences of various models of an unbundled and rebundled partnership might be.

We welcome comments on the description of the online education bundle described here,  whether the categorisation of private providers resonates, and if there are other examples of business models or partnerships in the South African Higher Education sphere. The author welcomes feedback and can be contacted via email [email protected] or via Twitter @sukainaw.

In this blog post Rebecca Swartz, part of the The Unbundled University: researching emerging models in an unequal landscape team, relates her impressions of the AltC conference, where she and Alan Cliff presented on the project.

Alan Cliff and I recently had the opportunity to attend  AltC, held at the University of Liverpool from 5-7 September 2017. The theme of the conference, ‘Beyond islands of innovation – how Learning Technology became the new norm(al)’, provoked interesting discussion about the nature of technological change in higher education today, and urged participants to consider the language of ‘disruption’ in higher education discourse. The conference attracted university-based researchers and learning technologists, as well as representatives from the private sector. One of the most interesting parts of the conference was talking to private providers in the Exhibition Hall. This gave Alan and I a sense of the plethora of educational technologies on offer to institutions in the UK, as well as drawing our attention to the changing nature of higher education provision in that context.

Read moreReflections from AltC: Unbundling, rebundling and the ‘new normal’ for higher education

One of the catalysts that inspired this research project is the seemingly disruptive influence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Higher Education provision and the potential for ‘unbundling’ that MOOCs offer. Globally there is an increasing demand for Higher Education, and MOOCs, which offer a form of flexible educational provision at scale, have been labelled as having the potential to transform Higher Education particularly as they evolve into different forms of provision such as being offered as accredited courses or  involving organisations other than universities. The New York Times declared 2012 as ‘The Year of the MOOC’ (1) and Anant Agarwal, president of the MOOC platform edX said ‘I like to call this the year of disruption and the year is not over yet’ (2). MOOCs were hyped as the means to reach those students who could not afford a traditional route to education, particularly Higher Education.

Evolution of the MOOC landscape

There are many reasons why Higher Education Institutions have become involved in developing and offering MOOCs: as a business opportunity to expand their market potential; to raise awareness of an institution’s research and teaching excellence and broaden the brand globally; to entice students through a free course to a more formal paying course; to widen access to those unable to pay or attend face to face; and for some, simply to not miss out on offering this new form of provision. As John Mitchell, the vice-provost at Stanford responsible for online learning stated: ‘I think everyone agrees there’s something very exciting going on here. So how do we as a university participate in that?’ (3)

Read moreMOOCs and the potential for unbundled higher education provision

I write this blog in my dual capacity as both co-investigator on the Unbundling Higher Education research project and as departmental co-ordinator of academic staff development work in my local university. As such, my particular interest in this post is on pedagogy; in this instance on the inter-relationship between the process called unbundling and the pedagogical dynamic between academic staff and the students whom they teach. Our academic staff development project work and research at my university has consistently sought to understand the ways that lecturers and students engage pedagogically with each other; with disciplinary contexts; and with the wider tacit and explicit socio-cultural contexts called higher education. In so doing, we have located our focus in the micro, meso and macro educational and other systems that surround teaching and learning and the ways in which the players act in, on and with these systems. Unbundling is one such ‘system’ and it is crucial for an understanding of how teaching and learning works (and changes) that we see this system as both shaping and being shaped by the pedagogical system in this university. The systems and the players are making each other; they are co-constructed and have different and dynamic agency.

Read moreUnbundling Higher Education: An Academic Staff Development View

This project is about the ‘unbundling’ of higher education in South Africa and England. Unbundling refers to a range of organisational models, technologies, alternative forms of provision and new relationships between producers, users and gatekeepers of knowledge. These factors are gradually emerging (or, rather, they are claimed to emerge) because of social, economic, technological influences exercising a centrifugal force on higher education systems. Centrifugal means that the components of the traditional, costly university experience – provision, accreditation, student services, assessment, knowledge production and research, etc. – become disaggregated, possibly externally procured, reorganised, redefined through partnerships and alliances, reassembled as modular, affordable digital units, available ‘a la carte’, and so forth. However, the physics analogy of centrifugal forces should not give the mistaken impression of a natural trajectory of unstoppable change, whereby adaptation and compliance are the only options. In our project, we think that these dynamics are playing out differently in individual geopolitical contexts, that what looks like a benefit to English institutions may not be so positive for South African ones, and that there is a distinct and timely need to shape, perhaps even challenge, these trends along social justice and equity lines.

Read moreThe Unbundled University: our analytic focus

by Alan Cliff, Laura Czerniewicz, Neil Morris, Carlo Perrotta, Bronwen Swinnerton

The ethos underlying the “Unbundled University: Researching Emerging Models in an Unequal Landscape” project is towards seeking high quality educational provision which reduces inequality, enhances social mobility and improves graduates’ employment opportunities, through the pedagogically appropriate use of technology.  While the research team is pragmatic about the increasing influence of marketisation on higher education, and the opportunities this may provide for students, we are mindful of the destabilising and negative effects that marketisation can bring, be it from economic or social pressures.  We are aware, as Mansell (2013) observes, that there are two prevailing social imaginaries about digital technologies, with the prevailing dominant imaginary in today’s ‘information societies’ being market-led while alternative imaginaries are described as ‘open’ or commons-led. These different imaginaries provide problems ‘for stakeholders in deciding which policies and strategies, or mix of policies and strategies, is most likely to facilitate progress towards more just and equitable information societies’ (p.10). Through this research project, we will study unbundling in both imaginaries and interrogate the market-led approach as it is being enacted in higher education, with an awareness of the necessity for more equal societies in an era of disturbingly growing inequality (WEF 2013). That said, we intend to conduct this study using evidence before us, while at the same time building on previous research on the marketization of higher education.  For instance, we will draw on the following positions in the literature to guide our research.

Read moreResearching marketization and unbundling in Higher Education: perspectives from the literature

To say that South African higher education is in crisis would hardly be an exaggeration.  At the end of the 2016 academic year, several of the country’s 26 universities completely shut down and others were writing exams either late or under particularly stressful conditions. The sector was rocked for the second year running by student protests broadly aligned under the call for free decolonised education. Both these terms are hotly contested- what does “decolonised” actually mean in practice, and what are the implications of “free”? Who pays in a country when only 22% of the population pays personal income tax? Should higher education be free for all or should it be free for those who can’t pay, while those who can pay should contribute? This question is especially burning in a country determined the most unequal in the world in 2016 by the World Economic Forum. Affordability in unequal societies is a critical matter elsewhere too –the UK, for example,  has recently allowed fees to be uncapped with unknown consequences, especially for equity in a place the most unequal in Europe and the 4th most unequal of OECD countries.

Read moreUnbundling “unbundling” in Higher Education in South Africa and England