Decoding the Future of Higher Education

The Higher Education landscape is constantly changing.

We all experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, we all saw what happened after, but now we’re at this new stage where everything is changing again. The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t just a thing of the past, it’s something that’s changed the world in a way we could have ever foreseen. The pandemic has introduced this situation where hybrid and hyflex learning is expected, it’s no longer a luxury; both faculty and students expect and demand the flexibility, which puts pressure on many other areas of the working world. This then influences what students deem as an acceptable level of learning and ultimately, the price associated. We’ve all seen the protests globally...

Faculty teams are down by up to 50%, the pool of talent and resources is diminishing as talent migrates to the corporate world and away from Higher Education, yet the expectations not just from students, but from dean’s, faculty, or executive leadership is increasing.

All that sounds pretty volatile, add the fact that IT budgets are not being amended or aligned to meet the new demands, and the question begs...

How can a CIO or CTO navigate a positive future and bring back a level of tranquillity?

Change & Disruption  

Having the ability to adapt

Since 2020 universities and colleges have been forced to rapidly adapt to change and disruption as a result of the pandemic that swept across our globe. As an aftermath, the benchmark changed forever. Adapting to change and disruption had to be something we all embraced, some institutions did so well while others were left behind. EDUCAUSE did a QuickPoll and shared their results to highlight the current climate of change and disruption in higher education, as well as calling attention to institutions and their readiness for future changes and disruption.

Unsurprisingly, they pointed out that 69% of institutions continue to experience either “a great deal” or “some” change and/or disruption, mainly related to the IT department and its infrastructure and systems.

Adapting to change isn’t just willingness, it’s also about capabilities. You can see from the below image that this also falls into staffing, operations, work location, and a few more points. We’re all feeling the pressure of staffing issues globally, whether it relates to the available talent pool, the burnout of current employees or employee expectations.

Staffing & Talent Management  

Knowing it’s a compromise

Deloitte. Insights put it very nicely that “college campuses are often seen as teaching and learning centers, research enterprises, and living quarters for students. But they are also workplaces. As the pandemic exhibited, running a campus is like running a city—and the Great Resignation, which has impacted every sector of the economy, has created a stark new reality for higher education leaders when it comes to talent”.

It’s clear that employee expectations have changed hugely – they no longer tolerate low pay and heavy workload in exchange for job satisfaction, employees expect an improved work/life balance, flexible working hours, hybrid or fully remote working, a job that fits around their life. No longer do you have to work in a 10/20mile radius of your home, instead you can work for a company on the other side of the country if they’re offering the right package. Previously there was a huge financial divide between people who lived and worked in the city compared to the urban workers, now that barrier has been removed through the offering of fully remote positions.

To add to the above, even if people haven’t moved yet, the below shows that many are likely to switch jobs within the next 12 months.

What about the people who don’t switch jobs, the ones you manage to retain - are they then cherished and looked after? Well, yes, sometimes they are, but not always. Hybrid or remote working creates an environment where you are no longer present in the office or attached to your institution and colleagues in the same way. Naturally you drift, and relationships fade while empty offices remain.

Staff Burnout

Burnout is a reality of many who stay, especially the c-suite employees. They’ve had the challenge of navigating unprecedented times and switching to a whole new world overnight, they were not given notice or knowledge of what COVID could mean to their working world but were expected to deliver. This perhaps was enough to push a large proportion into a different direction and leave Higher Education for good.

Deloitte. Insights also state that “coupled with a limited pipeline of talent due to the lack of succession planning and leadership cultivation at many higher education institutions, and the fact that over 80% of presidents historically hail from within higher education (a figure that has not changed in decades), the gaps in the top role are growing more pressing”.

Could this therefore be the future? Will there be a stronger bridge between the Higher Ed and Corporate worlds? Will institutions have to plan to not only loose talent to the corporate world, but also gain it from it too? Either way, retaining talent is a must to be successful either today or in the future.

Student Fatigue and Mental Stability  

What’s right or wrong?

Students are synonymous with the younger demographic. From Millennials/Generation Y to the iGen/Generation Zs, students across the past 20 to 30 years have all undergone studies with accelerated advancements in digital technology. With this has come an unprecedented challenge of how to manage digital wellness and online education.

But do they think they’re receiving sufficient resources and support to justify their tuition fees, or are they being overwhelmed by the onslaught of course content. AppsAnywhere CEO, Nick Johnson, often engages with institutions from across the globe and recalls a recent conversation with an Ivy League University where the expectations are high. He commented that “the quantity of course content from day 1 is very extensive. There isn’t much opportunity available to the students to partake in areas outside of studies”. He went on to ask, “is this the right or wrong support for a student?”, stating that “expectations do have to be high” but are the “expectations to study course content remotely adding to the digital stress and perhaps effecting the mental wellbeing of the students?”.

An Australian study confirmed this isn’t isolated, in fact it’s something that potentially is affecting all universities & colleges:

“More than half of the students described online engagement fatigue in terms of feeling overwhelmed. Mostly they spoke about feeling overwhelmed due to the amount of learning content and how much coursework they thought they were expected to complete. In feeling overwhelmed, some of the students described wanting to ‘shut down’ or quit (in response to feeling that way)”.

Studying coupled with adapting to student life presents hurdles and pressures for the student population, therefore, student mental health is an aspect of higher education that is closely managed.

“I physically could not do all of the content and that was quite overwhelming especially when you hit that week six or seven and you're just like, oh my goodness, I haven't done anything, but that's not the case. That's definitely – then it starts to feel like you're not going to do well for the next bit so I would say that is fatigue …I just didn't do anything for about three weeks. That included my break, so I just didn't. This semester I didn't do anything because I was just like, this is too hard. (Jenny, Arts student)”

“I shut down personally. I say, no that's it. I'm done. I'm quitting. I – there was lots of times where I actually reached out to [UNIVERSITY] and said, can I please defer? (Charlotte, Aviation student)”

Computers and Education Open.

Serving Students Successfully

During 2023, there have been student and lecturer protests within the UK highlighting the need for balance between online and in-person learning. This isn’t only for access to learning material and ability to achieve their education, but also for the fees associated.

How is there such a disparity between the education world and the working world. Employees are enjoying and taking advantage of the freedom and flexibility remote working is providing. Yet students are suffering mentally from the same environment.

We cannot treat them both the same or provide the same options - the meaning of learning is to transfer knowledge through experience and training which cannot solely be found in a book or PowerPoint presentation. This must be done though more effective methods, as time goes on and we adjust to delivering course material in new methods, the approach will improve, but we must understand that this process will take time.

It’s also easy to forget that attending university is about becoming an adult and gaining life experiences, such as working collaboratively in a team, managing budgets, running a home, scheduling an itinerary, meeting new people, communicating effectively, the list goes on.

We cannot let down the young adults of tomorrow and enable them to be recluse just because they weren’t given the same experiences and opportunities we were given.

Budget Constraints  

How can we keep the lights on?

Tie your hands behind your back and then sign your name… That’s the best way to sum-up the current situation?

Forbes released an article earlier this year stating that within the past two months, four of the 14 universities currently in the Big Ten conference have revealed they are facing significant budget shortfalls - topping $100 million at two institutions. The announcements have come from Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Nebraska.

That said, during the pandemic the state of the higher ed’s financial condition could have been worse had it not been for the extra money the federal government handed out to colleges and their students to mitigate the economic fallout. That aid came in three rounds of Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) grants, totalling about $77 billion.

• $14 billion in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES),
• $23 billion in the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSA), and
• $40 billion in the American Rescue Plan (ARP).

Although did this provide false hope by masking the losses of students and decline in revenue, and was it enough to weather the financial storm that is yet to end?

Perhaps it isn’t enough for everyone, there’s the stark truth that universities and colleges are either closing or merging. For more information and a list of closures and merges, here’s a link to Higher Ed Dive.

Closing & Merging Institutions

Data from different sources, including Higher Ed Dive, show that 91 U.S. private institutions either shut down, merged with other schools, or announced closing plans between 2016 and 2023. 54% of these closures or mergers occurred between 2016 and 2019, with the remaining 46% occurring after the Covid-19 pandemic erupted in 2020.

All of which were for different reasons ranging from decreased enrolment, decreased re-enrolment, course completion rates, cyber security and competitive threats.

Could mergers strengthen an institution's chance of survival within today’s climate? AGB recommends Baldridge’s book, The College Stress Test, which contains analyses of market trends and a set of formulas that boards, executives, trustees, and institutions’ quantitative staff can perform to determine just how challenged their institutions are.

What about the future – well, the future of higher ed IT is being able to combat and balance all of the above, but how?

So, what’s the future of Higher Ed IT?  

Starting with Digital Transformation

EDUCAUSE state that Digital transformation is the future of higher education “But the future doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of a process—one that requires strong leadership and a commitment to institutional change to be successful. We’re here to help you lead your team through the digital transformation (Dx) journey”

Effective Talent Management

A journey where talent management becomes a strategy, and the magnitude of risks demands a new response paradigm.

“The current environment demands that institutions be more agile and deliberate about connecting and integrating the various offices around campus in planning for, averting, and managing the aftermath of a crisis, ultimately becoming more risk-aware institutions” Times Higher Education

Combatting Change Fatigue

Higher education institutions also need to partner with stakeholders, including students, staff and outside organisations to stave off change fatigue, according to attendees of an Adobe round table at THE Digital Universities Week UK 2022.

“Digital tools can improve student outcomes, but institutions must bring staff along on the digital transformation journey.” said Helen Laville, provost at Kingston University. “There is change fatigue when it comes to trying to move forward with digital tools. After the pandemic they are not up for more change.”

Times Higher Ed goes on to add that “integrating digital tools into curricula can improve the student experience and outcomes”, said Mark Andrews, pedagogical evangelist at Adobe -this is something that is echoed throughout our customer base.

Embracing Centralization

In addition to all these points, centralizing Learning and Operations is a way to better serve your students . “There’s a movement out there”, says James Wiley, Eduventures principal analyst for technology at Encoura. “A lot of it comes out of wanting to be more efficient. Instead of having redundancies, institutions are trying to consolidate and share.”

The Future CIO

Finally, CIOs and institution leaders cannot just iterate, they must be thought leaders and recalibrate, reconfigure, or re-strategize their way to success. The Higher Education industry needs a new legacy of people who think differently and lead during dynamic and testing times. As EDUCAUSE states in The CIO as Quantum Leader Article,

“leaders must introduce new strategies for increasing engagement and motivation, and developing emotional and spiritual intelligence so that all members of the institution are empowered to think and act in ways that transcend themselves and their institutions. Simply put, the leadership methods that got us here won't get us there”.

Closing Remarks

Pete Cooke, COO of AppsAnywhere

The expectation to do more with less is going to be the greatest challenge in the short term and into the medium term for higher education IT. The implications of that for technology providers is that over the last 20 years, 10 years, the market's gone through this transition of in the early days it would build itself something, a solution. It would come all together a solution code in house, develop custom built proprietary technologies and solutions to fix problems. The iteration that came after that was that universities procured and bought technology to fix that problem, implement that technology and build it up and then deliver it to the end users.

Because of everything we’ve just described in terms of the challenges, we're going to see this next phase, if it's not already here, which is universities and higher education wanting to consume services rather than just technologies. And that really is the direction of travel, certainly for us, but should be also for the rest of the technology industry and how it better serves higher education.

Provide a service, use the technology to do more for higher education, more for students and increase the out-of-the-box experience. And that's really, I guess in a nutshell where innovative software providers such as ourselves will thrive in this world by solving more of the problem for universities by better understanding their needs.

But you know the future is as I guess technology providers look to deliver a service to their customers is how AI can be leveraged in that to go one step further and sort of pre-empt what you need to do before you know that you even need to do it.