It’s hard to believe that it has been half a year since Covid-19 first emerged. People are slowly starting to accept that the world is a different place and may never be the same. This global change has accelerated many processes that were already in place. We’re going digital at breakneck speeds.
Higher education should brace for the beginning of a technology-centric and student-focused future.
Forget the Virus, It’s Simply Cheaper
The pandemic aside, higher education needs to go online due to the simple fact that it is cheaper. Running a full faculty comes with a huge overhead cost. One of our clients, Distance Learning Systems, offers a fully online alternative for students to earn college credits towards their degrees. Students can do all of their general education classes and more towards the degree of their choice. The cost? Roughly 1/3rd per credit hour compared to traditional universities. This is simple economics.
Advancements In Technology
The advancement of technology offers a host of possibilities for the future of the education sector. Bob King from the company Collegis Education, a leading provider of managed technology services for higher ed. has this to say:
“Schools that are not in online education in any meaningful way today are aggressively trying to figure out how to get there. A lot of traditional residential schools patch-worked their way through spring with synchronous Zoom classes. And that’s pushed them to think about more traditional asynchronous online education and look into creating or licensing content. We’re also seeing a lot of requests from clients about applying technology in the area of student engagement—from recruiting, admissions and enrollment to managing summer melt.”
The Trend Has Started
The Coronavirus was just what digital education needed to really kick off. It was going to happen anyway but now there is no stopping it. Our article “3 Important Trends Driving e-Learning Growth” goes deeper into the latest trends driving e-Learning growth.
