EVEN PEOPLE WHO don™t track developments in education in India or abroad are aware something big is happening in this sphere, particularly in higher education. Google search the words ˜disruptive innovation in higher education™ and you™ll get 279,000 results. Type ˜crisis in higher education™ and the number rises to 16 million.
The problem, very simply, is that after holding out a lot longer than other ˜industries™, disruptive competition underpinned by technological innovation and new ways of learning and credentialing is now assaulting the staid and hallowed halls of academia around the world. Suddenly high quality education is cost-efficiently available online and at price points which provide never-before value for money to the consumer. For higher education institutions, the risk associated with ignoring technology advancements in education delivery has become very high. So high, in fact, that their very existence is at stake.
Indeed, higher education could go the way of the newspaper industry. Legacy infrastructure, rising labour costs, and high debt will make it difficult to take on a new generation of competitors and, by the time laggard colleges and universities realise they need to change their business model, it might be too late.
No industry is immune to technology innovation. In the case of education, learning via the internet ” or what used to be called ˜e-learning™ ” started becoming popular in the new millennium. It remained largely outside the mainstream for the next decade until people started to question why technology which is ubiquitous and an integral part of our personal and work lives, is still on the periphery of education.
A key driver of change has been the easy availability and widespread use of handheld devices such as tablet computers and handsets (or what used to be known as mobile phones). Another driver is the explosion of social media and its huge popularity especially among teens and youth of college/university age. These developments have redefined how information is accessed, and how a growing number of people worldwide interact socially. As access to and delivery of information and social interaction become essential elements of the new learning process, it™s inevitable the core business of universities will be affected.
Initial institutional response has been scepticism and denial with academics and university administrators confident that traditional teaching-learning models which have endured for centuries will prevail. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), they argue, are just a flash in the pan because companies offering this service have no discernible business model, and there are formidable problems of authenticating, assessing and credentialing students.
Latter day tech-savvy educationists tend to be impatient with these arguments and predict profound change. They warn that the socio-economic landscape is changing very fast, obliterating barriers to change. Simultaneously widening government budget deficits in times of low and/or negative economic growth have put pressure on governments in countries such as the US, UK and Australia which host the best universities/institutions, to slash subsidies for higher education. Therefore the more progressive universities in these countries are becoming sharply aware that they must transform traditional teaching-learning systems and become more entrepreneurial, or risk oblivion.
This dilemma is more acute for some institutions than others. Top-ranked universities with large endowment corpuses have the luxury of time. However, even the most prestigious varsity brands are certain to be impacted by consumer behaviour, and could face stiff competition from universities/institutes which provide better value driven by innovation. Already some premium higher education institutions have joined forces with the likes of Udacity, Coursera and EdX perhaps for image-building reasons while continuing to market their on-campus education as their core business. Georgia Tech changed all this when it signed a deal with Udacity and AT&T to offer a Masters degree in computer science in MOOC-mode for $6,600 (Rs.39.12 lakh) ” one-sixth of the on-campus price. Moreover it has agreed to provide the content and professors to other universities in return for 60 percent of the revenue, while Udacity provides the delivery platform and course administration for a 40 percent share.
The unbundling of higher education services and innovative public-private-partnerships will surely benefit students in India currently priced out of the market but aspiring to international education. If the Georgia Tech experiment proves successful, others will quickly follow suit.
If they are smart, Indian higher education institutions and corporate entities will look to partner with MOOCs providers in the US, UK, Australia, and elsewhere to provide ˜blended delivery™ options to domestic students with online delivery of international curriculums complemented by local face-to-face learning support on their campuses. Such partnerships could also prompt the long-awaited reform of India™s higher education system.

(Prof. Jeremy Williams is director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at Griffith University, Australia)