policy & reform
Higher education booming online
The rise of massive open online courses has created wide mainstream interest in online higher education technologies. By Andrew Norton
In its October 29, 2012 edition, Time magazine published a cover story on‘ reinventing college’, asking if online technology could make higher education better and cheaper. Hundreds of similar stories appeared in the other media outlets around the world.
Justifying at least some of the hype, online higher education is growing strongly in the United States. The number of students taking at least one online subject in a university or college increased from 1.6 million in 2002 to 6.7 million in 2011. The American MOOC providers have attracted millions more students from around the world.
In Australia, education statistics do not record delivery technologies, but distance education numbers suggest that growth in online education is slower here than in the US. In the public universities, more students mix on and off-campus study, but all off-campus students hold about the same share of total enrolments as 10 years ago. Only Open Universities Australia, operating in the not-for-degree market, expanded rapidly in the years up to 2011.
The demand-driven funding system that began full operation in 2012 seems to be shaking off conservatism caused by previous regulation. New ventures such as Swinburne Online are reporting strong enrolments, but are too new to show in
14 | May 2013 published government statistics.
As in the United States, there is a big potential Australian market for online education. Simulations are removing or reducing the need for laboratory, studio or clinical components, meaning that an increasing share of subjects can be studied online.
Online technology supports innovations such as self-paced courses, allowing students to complete in less, or more, time, depending on other commitments.
A recent study by William Bowen and colleagues found that online students did as well academically as on-campus students.
And we are just at the start of major advances in online technologies. Early online course technologies offered convenience but not improved learning compared to classroom instruction.
The latest online technologies offer real educational advantages. Adaptive learning software, for example, adjusts course materials to suit each student, identifying and correcting common student misconceptions as they emerge.
Though online courses can often match on-campus study for student learning, this is only one student outcome offered by higher education providers. In a recent Grattan Institute report, we identified eleven outcomes which higher education providers offer students, divided into three broad categories: learning, employment, and broader personal benefits.
The vast majority of students have employment as at least one of their desired outcomes from higher education study. We do not know much about what Australian employers think of online education. But American research suggests that there is a perception problem. In a 2012 survey on the desirability of employing graduates from different types of college, online universities were the only college type that received an average negative rating.
Perhaps these results are influenced by employers being unfamiliar with new purely online colleges. In Australia, online education is typically provided by major universities with established reputations.
But there are other reasons for thinking that employers may have concerns, at least for bachelor-degree graduates. In Australian employer surveys non-academic factors feature prominently among desired attributes of graduate employees.
The most highly-rated attribute is interpersonal and communication skills, not academic grades. Other non-academic factors in employers’ top ten list of employee attributes are teamwork skills, emotional intelligence, leadership skills and extra-curricular activities.
It isn’ t clear how well on-campus