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Is there demand for fee loan backed short courses?

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Over on Wonk corner, David Kernohan discusses the legacy of Keir Starmer on higher education.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Keir Starmer was a prime minister who had a substantial influence on higher education.

Though overing the Starmer legacy, also in the article David says

…there are still important questions about demand for fee loan backed short courses. I’m not convinced the LLE was a good idea…

I have been looking at the infrastructure (and the importance of interoperability) in relation other student mobility in Europe, one reason for this is the applicability of the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework to the concept of the LLE in England.

When discussing LLE with colleagues in Jisc and in the wider higher education sector, that question about demand does come up quite often. Are there people out there demanding short courses and are they looking for fee loan to cover those costs? We are not seeing people wanting to do such courses, so does that mean there is no demand?

I always think that this analysis is a bit chicken and egg, and that I mean by that, there appears to be no demand for fee loan backed short courses, so the sector does not offer fee loan backed short courses. However, could it be that because sector does not offer fee loan backed short courses, there is no demand as a result,

Going back to why we are going to have LLE, the government say this.

As set out in the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, the government is committed to ensuring the country develops the skills needed to:

  • drive sustained economic growth
  • break down barriers to opportunity
  • improve the living standards of hardworking people

The LLE will deliver transformational change to the current student finance system by 

  • broadening access to high-quality, flexible education and training
  • supporting greater learner mobility between institutions

This will enable individuals to learn, upskill and retrain across their working lives. It will create opportunities for both young people and adults to develop the skills needed to succeed in life, contributing to growth across the entire country.

The implication is that there is an untapped demand for high-quality, flexible education and training. It is currently not been provided as there is no demand for it. However that demand is based on charging actual upfront fees for the education and training. Remove upfront fees with fees backed by loans, then there will be renewed demand. 

If this is the case then, how does the system ensure that once we have the demand, that there is a supply. Is the system agile enough to respond to changes in demand. The government believes that it is, the question is does the sector believe that too?

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Discovery and student mobility

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I have been looking at student mobility in the UK. What I mean by student mobility is how a student can choose when and where to study, at a time and place that is suitable for them. It’s about enabling students to take parts of courses from different institutions. This (in theory) is possible now, but was challenging for students from both a financial perspective and administratively.

One of the use cases of the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework is about discovery.

Enhancing the visibility and comparability of diverse learning and mobility opportunities across HEls, emphasising the importance of machine-readable metadata for easy comparison and discovery.

The discovery use case marks the beginning of the learner journey. This use case focuses on the concept of a course catalogue. 

coffee
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Student story

Margo wants to study towards a degree but wants to combine different modules from different courses across Europe. She knows the subjects she is interested in; she also knows which countries where she would like to study. However, she doesn’t know which universities across Europe offer which modules. Discovery would allow Freya to access the course and module catalogues from across a range of universities, compare different offerings and would be able to refine her search based on specific criteria. She would also be sure that the information she finds is up to date.

When you start looking into discovery you start to realise that there are quite a few different doors into discovering what higher education is on offer.

Firstly every higher education institution offers a catalogue of courses, usually on their website, often they will also offer a print prospectus.

If you are looking at a three year undergraduate degree and you have just finished your A Levels then the UCAS website can tell what courses are out there and other can use it as well.

The government has a website, DiscoverUni, which uses HESA data to provide information on what higher education courses are been delivered.

The Student Loans Company also has a list of courses, not all courses, but all those that can be funded by a student loan.

However the data requirements for all these services are different. So, each institution has to provide the data to all the services using a different structure and format. This must add to the administrative burden for institutions. Also, at the moment this isn’t dynamic data, so regular updates need to be provided.

Of course from a student perspective, discovering and choosing a course is one thing, the next stage is application. Only one of these services, UCAS, providers an application route. With the other discovery services, the student will need to work out how to apply, whether that be through UCAS, or going direct to the providers’ website. Each higher education institution has a different process of application, virtually all will ask you to create an account on their application portal, and you will need to do this each time for different institutions.

LLE will add a huge level of complexity to the student experience in discovering courses as well as increasing the number of applications. At one stage a prospective student  may be looking on the provider’s website, then they will need to check the SLC website, then they will need to apply, which may be on the provider’s website or potentially through UCAS. They will then need to do this each time they want to complete a module of study.

In many ways, discovery is one of the more simple use cases, the data requirements are quite minimal. However, the reality is that there are multiple stakeholders with different needs and requirements, so getting consensus and agreement could be challenging.

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Too hot to handle

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Long term readers of the blog will know that I use to discuss snow days, and how universities and colleges would close due to snow and that the possible options of moving learning online were often ignored as snow was such a freak occurrence. Of course Covid changed all that kind of thinking.

Last week we had another heatwave, not long after a similar heatwave the previous month.

With red warnings from the Met Office, lots of schools and quite a few colleges closed because of the heat. 

Following the Met Office weather warning and forecasted high temperatures, we are making some temporary changes to teaching arrangements for the remainder of this week to help ensure the comfort, wellbeing, and safety of learners and staff. Campuses will be closed to curriculum teaching from Wednesday to Friday inclusive. 

Reminded me of all the snow days. However, I was a little surprised to see that some schools and colleges were moving learning online. If the college buildings are too hot, then I can’t see how a learners’ home would be any cooler.

When it snows, your home is probably okay for studying, but when there is a heatwave, then your home might be rather uncomfortable. I know my own home, it was not conducive to working, so much so, I headed into the air conditioned comforts of the office.

Didn’t notice many closure notices from the higher education sector, but it is close to the end of term for most universities.

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Going forward, we will see more hot weather, the question is, not so much should we move learning online, but how can we improve our campuses to be more conducive for studying in hot weather. We may also want to think about start times, what with the early mornings being cooler as well. Term dates might also need rethinking.

Air conditioning may be seen as the obvious option to keep buildings cool, but you can’t aways retrofit on existing buildings, and it is expensive to run. In a financially constrained environment, the cost of running air conditioning may be prohibitive and offsetting that cost with solar panels may not be possible with an upfront capital investment. The environmental impact of air conditioning can not be ignored either. In France air conditioning, after recording its hottest day is creating a political divide. As the BBC reports, France use to be  quite hostile to air conditioning, now with record temperatures the political responses are changing.

Last week was too hot to handle, this week, it is going to be a lot cooler. Of course it is highly unlikely we will not see future heatwaves, maybe now is the time to think about responses, and mitigation so to ensure that high temperatures don’t negatively impact on the student experience.

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Stacking your qualifications

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I have been looking at student mobility in the UK. What I mean by student mobility is how a student can choose when and where to study, at a time and place that is suitable for them. It’s about enabling students to take parts of courses from different institutions. This (in theory) is possible now, but was challenging for students from both a financial perspective and administratively.

One challenge this is often thrown out when discussing student mobility is about who awards the degree if a student is undertaking studies at a range of different institutions. The usual thinking is that the home institution would be responsible. However the aspirations of student mobility (whether that be within LLE or not) is that of lifelong learning. The concept of a home institution may not be practical or viable for a student who is studying over a longer time period.

This got me thinking about the necessity of having to stacking a student’s studies so a degree can be awarded. Is that absolutely essential?

This however isn’t something that students and institutions need to grapple with, employers and others would also need to be engaged in the process. So when a person makes an application for employment (or future study) the stack of qualifications they have, are recognised for what they are, without the need for some institution to combine them into a single qualification. 

If you have 360 credits, this is recognised as equivalent to a standard degree. Does the student need to have these credits validated so they can be awarded a degree? I am sure some individuals would want that, but is it a requirement, does it have to happen?

One of the challenges is who awards that degree? What if the home institution no longer exists? 

A question that I saw at a recent event was how long is a credit viable for, will it lose its validity over time, and does that matter, or if it does which subjects would need this.  What about validity of the credits earned. Is the 30 credit course I did ten years ago still able to be stacked into that degree.

Looking at some thoughts from the sector on this, the Open University does not consider study completed more than 16 years ago for credit transfer towards an Open University qualification.

It is common for other universities only to offer credit transfer for study completed in the last five years.

Is the validity of a qualification something we want to leave to individuals institutions? Who should be saying it is sixteen years, or five years, or something in-between.

I did my Economics degree back in the 1980s, and much of what I learnt then hasn’t changed much, to be honest it hadn’t changed much in the previous forty years, let alone the last forty years. Some units I did are probably out of date, thinking about that unit I did on the Economics of European Community for example. Whilst others, such as that module on Economic and Social History probably hasn’t aged. I suspect if I had done computer science, that the stuff I learnt back then was now out of date. However, the skills I gained by learning and studying (economics) have remained relevant to this day.

Does a credit from one institution now mean it is equivalent to a credit from another? Will that be accepted by all institutions. I can see the concept of equality between institutions not being accepted by all institutions.

If we are to really embrace student mobility and the opportunities that the LLE can bring to higher education, we do need to, as a sector, decide how and if we need to stack qualifications, and what is required if a student who has stacked their credentials and wants to be awarded a degree. 

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Sun Loungers, PCs and Desks

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Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Last week I read this news article on the BBC News site about reserving sun loungers with towels.

A German tourist has won a payout of more than €900 (£850) after he was unable to secure a sun lounger due to other guests reserving them with towels.

Of course if you were to go down to the swimming pool you would find that there were plenty of empty sun loungers (with towels on them) not been used. People would reserve sun loungers first thing in the morning, then go back to their rooms, go to sleep, have breakfast, even pop in to town. All that time the sun lounger would sit there, unused and surrounded by people complaining that there were no free sun loungers.

iMacs in the library

Reminds me why I never used PC booking software when running my libraries. Students would reserve PCs with their “towels” and then never turn up. The PC was unused and unavailable for others to use.

The example I often used was that a student would book a PC from 10am for an hour. A student would arrive at 09:45 find that there was a “free” PC, but it was booked from 10, so wouldn’t use it, even if all they wanted to do was print an assignment, or check something online. The original student who booked the PC then didn’t turn up. We would hold the PC until 10:15, when it would then be free. This would result in lots of unused PCs which were unavailable to those who wanted to use one.

I also remember seeing students enter the library “book” a PC with their coat and bag and then head off to breakfast in the canteen! We soon stopped that.

What we did was remove the booking software (cost saving) and did not require students to book computers, they could just turn up. The end result was that we didn’t have rows of empty “booked” computers we computers been used by students and free computers for those who wanted one. There was the odd exception, so, though we didn’t require students to book a PC, if a student wanted to book a PC they could. Few did this, as we had lots of availability. It doesn’t need to be one or the other, you could of course have a fleet of bookable PCs and a set of unbookable PCs.

These days though, a lot of students would have their own devices and this would reduce the demand for bookable PCs. Reminds me of the whole discussion on BYOD, that’s a topic for another blog post.

online meeting
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The title of the blog mentions desks, and of course I mean hot desking and booking desks. The sun lounger issue rears its head again here. People would book desks for the day, and then spend all day in meeting rooms and at lunch. The desk wasn’t there to be used it was a place to store their bag and coat. You would enter the office, find that no desks were free on the booking system and virtually every desk was empty.

The other thing some people would do is book the same desk all the time (even if they didn’t need it) and then personalise the room with their clutter, making it unusable for anyone else.

These days with many people working in a hybrid manner, maybe it is less of an issue. However, with hybrid working, you could see the number of desks and office space being reduced in cost cutting measures, as there are now less people in the office. This then demands (by some) for desk bookings to come back.

I would apply the same mentality here that I used with PC bookings, have both bookable and unbookable desks.

Shall I talk about meeting rooms?

sun loungers by a pool
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

Going back to sun loungers there was a follow up article on BBC News which talked about how hotels are stopping the ‘dawn dash’ for sunbeds after man wins payout.

Holidaymakers have told the BBC how some hotels and resorts are cracking down on people reserving sun loungers with towels, after a man won a payout over the practice.

If every tour operator had to pay £850 to tourists who couldn’t get a sun lounger, then perhaps we might see a different approach from hotels and resorts.

What does this mean for bookable PCs and hot desks, who knows.

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Next Generation (Digital) Experiences

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I have been thinking about the future student experience. You can quite easily argue that digital is already embedded into the current student experience. Much of what they do at university is now dependent on digital; from connectivity, cyber, to authentication, access to resources. Online resources are more the norm these days, and resources like ebooks are proving more popular with students. The use of learning platforms (the ubiquitous VLE) is embedded as are video platform tools such as Teams and Zoom.

So what of the future?

As, we know predicting the future, is easy, getting it right though it nigh on impossible.

What we have seen over the last ten years though is widespread adoption and usage of digital technologies. Whereas twenty years ago we would be trying to “sell” the benefits of learning technologies, today the use of technology for learning and teaching is pretty much the norm.

Those with long memories may remember the many presentations I gave over ten years ago now on the future of learning. I was on the conference circuit then talking about the future impact of digital and technology on the learning experience. Some of what I said came true, other aspects less so. Look I told you, predicting the future, is easy, getting it right though it nigh on impossible.

One feature that I never really saw people predict was the widespread use of AI (well large language generative models) by students. The long term impact of that has to be seen, but in the short term we are seeing extensive use of AI by students in many different ways. 

broken computers
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Getting back to where I started this blog post, the future student experience. Thirty years ago when I was teaching, I didn’t have the Internet (I didn’t get access (with a 56k modem) until 1998). The college I was working in as a lecturer did have a single computer with internet access and that was really slow. My students did use technology, but it was in the main using a word processor to write assignments, and Excel for doing finance stuff. I did use presentation software, but in the main that was for printing acetates which I then used with an overhead projector (OHP).

The current student experience is so different to where it was twenty years ago. Back then colleges had been connected to JANET and virtually all had decided to have a VLE. Usage of that said VLE though was inconsistent across not just the sector, not just the college, but also departments and teams. Many learning technologists of that era were trying to persuade and sell the use of said tech to academics, who were a little sceptical. At the same time though IT teams were expanding the network infrastructure, professional services were digitising their processes, and email became much more ubiquitous. Though there was still some wariness about learning technologies, digital technologies were been or had been embedded into the operational side of education. It was this that probably had more impact on the role of digital in education than anything else.

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“The LLE model is not financially viable”

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Zoom
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This week I was part of a panel session looking at LLE. My focus was on the importance of the student experience, the data journey, and the  necessity of the sector to adhere to standards and enable interoperability. 

One delegate in the event spoke about the financially viability of LLE, indicating in their opinion that the proposed LLE model is not financially viable. That did get me thinking that what this does imply is not that LLE is not financially viable in itself, but the income derived from LLE will not cover the costs of LLE. You could also argue that the current spending model of higher education is not financially viable when delivering LLE.

So, do you raise the fees for LLE, and increase the student loans for the student, or do you change the business model of delivering higher education so that it is financially viable. It’s not too much of a surprise to see that a model designed for delivering a three year degree programme isn’t really fit for purposes in delving modular programmes.

One factor that traditional higher education institutions may want to reflect on, is that non-traditional higher education providers and new entrants may be more agile and able to change to deliver modular programmes in a cost effective manner. Just because you can’t see how to make LLE financially viable doesn’t mean that others won’t see opportunities.

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The cost of living with student loans

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Over the last couple of years I have been saying across various conversations about the impact of paying back student loans could have on future student recruitment. I would talk about how the next generation of students will be the first whose parents were required to take out student loans to pay their fees and for the maintenance. Their parents would have the seen the real life impact of their student debt on their lifestyle. It would reduce their real income and would have had an impact on other financial choices such as mortgage affordability.

You could quite easily see these parents advising their children to really think about university and also think about other possible options. 

We have seen some evidence of this with the huge demand for degree apprenticeships, getting paid, part time study, and no loans. The supply of such apprenticeships has certainly not increased to meet the demand.

When the government raised student fees, there was a almost audible sigh of relief from the university sector, however I do remember the press coverage of the time rarely if ever mentioned the impact of this on students. They would need get larger student loans.

Over the last few weeks there has been substantial press coverage about student loans, it certainly has become a political issue and is getting talked about on the news, in the press, and online. There have been whole programmes and features on the issues of student loans. What we are now seeing is human impact stories about loans.

The BBC News has published an article which makes for interesting reading.The article, Paying back my student loan is more painful now I have a young family, covers the story of a graduate who went to university in 2014 who took out a Plan 2 student loan. The one line from the article that stood out to me was this one.

Richmond is “really pleased” with where he’s got to in his career in recruitment. But he says he has colleagues doing just as well who didn’t go to university, so he questions whether he needed his degree.

When this comparison starts, then some people will start to think seriously about whether going to university, getting loans, is going to be the best option. Is there going to be that graduate premium in earnings that will offset the extra student loan charge.

On the WonkHE site, David Kernohan looks at the graduate premium in much more detail than I could ever do.

I think another factor out there is that university is no longer the life changing event was, even in the 2000s. I remember when I went away to university, it was a paradigm shift, the only way to communicate was by letter and using the payphone with huge queues. Today technology means even if you do go away to university, you don’t need to break everyday contact with friends and family. Likewise, in order to survive at university you will probably need to have a part-time job as well. Then, your life is not university, university is just something you do alongside everything else. That experience may mean that looking at alternative pathways for the same kind of benefit.

Something else which gets lost in the discussion is that for many students, they don’t go away to university they stay at home and go to their local university (to save money, but for other social reasons as well).  For many students alternative routes to higher education may become the preferable option.

There are lots of benefits to higher education, the question though going forward can you achieve those benefits in ways which don’t mean getting huge student loans and the negative impact that debt has for life after university.

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Competition Time

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market stall

Last month the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) published guidance on collaboration in higher education. This clarity about collaboration within the sector has to be welcomed. The law has not been changed, but the clarification can provide reassurance to the sector that looking to work together, sharing services and resources, as well as more formal collaboration is potentially possible. 

When the sector conversation started on collaboration there was some loud voices saying that we couldn’t collaborate because of the legal implications of competition law. The government and sector bodies were pushing the opportunities about working together and some parts of the sector were pushing back, talking about competition and the law. I wrote about this in a week note from February last year.

So, much so, that a discussion was had with the CMA and then the resulting guidance from them was published.

Part of me though does wonder, if the apprehension about collaboration was using the CMA and competition law as an excuse for not looking at collaboration rather than an actual reason not to collaborate. Will the new guidance mitigate that excuse now.

Was the rhetoric from the sector about Competition Law more about using it as an excuse to avoid the discussion and need to collaborate.

Now the guidance has been published, or will we now find that there is another reason why HE can’t collaborate?

Is it because they don’t want to collaborate?

Is it because they don’t know how to collaborate?

I think it’s a bit of both.

I was reminded of my experiences back in the 2000s when I was introducing technology into learning and teaching.

Often staff would tell me why they couldn’t or wouldn’t use learning technologies.

Where is the evidence etc???

When then presented with the evidence, it was then another reason, and then another reason…

Sometimes you had to listen, other times you need to dig a little deeper to understand why a person (or an organisation) doesn’t want to do something. The reason they give, may not be the actual reason why they aren’t going to do that thing.

The reality was, more my problem, I was presenting the introduction of learning technologies as a problem to be solved, the reality was technology was actually a solution, what I hadn’t done, was identified the problem. Learning technologies are a solution to problems, not the problem that needs to be solved.

market stall

We need to move away from excuses and obstacles, and move towards opportunities and solutions.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing. I recently wrote about bridge building in helping understanding about problems and solutions.

Back in the day when I was designing aspects of the Digital Leadership programme I recognised that helping people to understand the differences between problems and solutions I would use a bridge building analogy.

If we are to work towards solving the solutions to the many challenges the higher education sector is facing then we need to stop just thinking about the problems with potential solutions, but focus on making those solutions work.

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Bridge Building

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wooden bridge
Image by Elizabeth from Pixabay

One question that sometimes comes up, is do we know how to collaborate?

Though there has been ample talk about collaboration and sharing, it is one of those things that is probably easy to talk about and more difficult to actually do. Part of the challenge is how universities are inconsistent in their approaches to managing themselves, which then makes it even more challenging to work together or collaborate.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing.

wooden bridge
Image by hmauck from Pixabay

Back in the day when I was designing aspects of the Digital Leadership programme I recognised that helping people to understand the differences between problems and solutions I would use a bridge building analogy.

If you imagine a river, you know where you are and you have fair idea about where you want to be. The problem is how do you get from one side of the river to other. The solution is to build a bridge. The bridge in itself is not the problem you need to solve, it is the solution to the actual problem of crossing the river.

One of the challenges is that often people don’t know how to build a bridge. Then the focus energy and resources are pushed into bridge building. Sometimes it becomes all about bridge building and less about crossing the river.

In many ways I see collaboration as the bridge. We know that the sector is facing challenges, one solution is to build a bridge (collaboration) but the bridge itself isn’t the problem.

Generally what most communities do when they need a bridge, they get experts in to build that bridge. It’s pretty much the same with collaboration, why not get expert help, to help with the collaboration and then that allows greater focus on the actual problems that collaboration is trying to solve.

Generally once you’ve built a bridge, you use it to cross the river and then move on.

So are you building bridges, or are you still thinking about how to construct one?