The future is hybrid learning focusing on value added

As we enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities in Malaysia and, more particularly, the owners of private institutions, have finally decided to change their teaching and learning model or, more accurately, their business model in a last-ditch effort to survive.

In common with their peers all around the world, Malaysian universities have been crushed by a year of falling student income and fixed costs. Our research projected that 97% of private higher education institutions are likely to have made a loss this year and that 51% of those in the red could become insolvent.

The Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities (MAPCU) estimated that up to 100, or one-fifth, of the 440 Malaysian private higher education institutions could close during 2020.

Campus lockdowns have forced all universities in Malaysia into online teaching and millions of dollars and faculty hours are being spent to convert traditional course material, assessments and notes into online formats as quickly as possible.

The economics of this model are simple. Once the core course content has been created and uploaded, it can be used for many years with minimal maintenance. It is almost always of the minimum standard required to comply with regulations and there is rarely any appetite to improve it.

Faculty are often exhausted from the whole exercise and are mostly not paid extra for creating or subsequently improving the material, so it is likely to remain in its minimally converted format for many years to come.

Some universities aim to sell these programmes through overseas franchises as online distance learning certificates in China or neighbouring developing markets in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. In many cases they use only local-language teachers because the students often have very poor English.

There is almost zero marginal cost with this model because online access costs literally nothing. The course fees come from two sources, entry costs for registration and exit costs for examinations. Registration fees will become minimal and certificates will be priced at the cost of paying someone to grade the assignments. In Malaysia this is as little as MYR20 (US$5) per paper.

Add in administration, overheads and profit margins and the costs are inflated, but market pressure is now actively forcing the final price down. For example, standard MBAs in Malaysia retail at around MYR26,000 (US$6,300). Competition has forced ticket prices to as little as MYR12,000 (US$3,000). Even international MBAs retail for only US$2,940, or US$3,000 (MYR12,000) including the US$60 (MYR240) registration fees.

In order to run programmes at these prices, universities cut their largest overhead, which is the cost of their full-time staff. Institutions register and examine students with little or no tuition, the so-called ‘tuition-free’ model. Exams are likely to be graded by people with basic academic credentials or even automatically using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP).

This is a low-involvement, low-interactivity model with none of the traditional aspects of universities, such as interpersonal teaching, research-driven thought-leadership, collegiate activities, social and sporting activities or any of the other life-enhancing but costly experiences that make university education worthwhile.

International students do not need to attend in person and their fee premium could therefore vanish. Only visa seekers would pay the premium fee to attend on-campus.

Students in need of tuition will buy it on the open market through ‘uber-academic’, ‘grab-tutor’ or ‘sugar-prof’ academic matchmaking sites for 20 bucks an hour in pay-to-meet arrangements.

Organisations that adopt this model would cease to deserve the title ‘university’ and will become certificate printers. For many, this will be the end of academia as we know it.

A suicide mission?

Unfortunately, we are already close to this now. The current standard face-to-face fee for teaching postgraduate students in Malaysian private universities is MYR120 (US$30) per hour, so for a class of 30 students an academic with a doctorate and decades of experience will be paid one dollar per student per hour.

For universities this is a suicide mission. The market will drive the price of certificates to their lowest cost through almost limitless competition from better branded programmes, especially those from overseas.

Eventually fees will barely cover administration costs and the massive amounts of money and resources sunk into online conversion will never be recovered.

The ‘tuition-free’ model has no value-drivers to justify higher fees and when degrees can be graded by machine there will be no justification for academic salaries.

By contrast, mounting research from educationalists, psychologists, economists and technologists is providing evidence-based guidance on best practice in online learning which helps us understand the value-drivers and therefore the justification for higher fees and a better business model.

Some key elements include the use of technology to automate routine chores and use learning management systems as repositories of material for 24-7 access. The aim is not to cut teaching costs but to free up instructors to perform their higher value-added roles.

Teaching and learning are a higher-order process which adds value through human interaction. Teaching can be enhanced by technology, but in both blended and hybrid learning, face-to-face interaction is vital. It invokes reflection, provokes critical discussion, draws out insights from the learner on a one-to-one basis, in groups or in peer-to-peer collaborations.

Current technology already allows this in most online platforms using discussion forums and learning teams, but stimulation of critical thinking and unifying fragmented pieces of information are what traditionally define good education.

Socratic prompting, where we stimulate thinking through questions and dig deeper, delve into the intricacies of underlying theories, confront our own biases and explore different worldviews or paradigms which are hidden from conscious thinking all help define good education.

Even in the secular sense of institutional development, technology-enhanced learning processes must leverage two fundamental dimensions. The first is enlivening interactivity and usability through the design of more effective presentations. The second is involvement and psychological bonding to create and sustain engagement.

We need to provoke, attract and retain learner engagement by how we frame the content, sustain interest, elucidate the fine points and make the process enjoyable and convenient. If we can make it on demand or on site at any time, that is even better. Discussion and criticism are welcome. More welcome is the synthesis of different viewpoints and agreeing to disagree. Sound familiar?

Critical thinking skills

Research from Google and the Oxford Martin School as well as our own research in a Malaysian context all point to these critical higher-order thinking skills as being even more important than technology-based skills. This is the role of education. The knowledge economy is underpinned by this cognitive or mental value-added element. It should be much more pronounced, even core, in online education.

Universities should not be using online facilities and technology to become commodity factories and vendors. Engagement provides psychological bonding. The millennial generation and digital native students are tech savvy, but they should also feel they belong to a community.

They have affiliation needs and want to feel that they belong to an institution even though they may not physically see each other. They want to be part of a group, a social network. They want to be proud to be part of an institution which has won awards and which has distinguished itself as being a brand that is really engaged in education.

This is also the value added in a successful higher education business model and universities that fail to recognise this in favour of cheap, no-tutor depository sites will not last.

Professor Mohan Raj Gurubatham is a psychologist at ELM Graduate School, HELP University, Malaysia, and visiting professor at Maharishi International University in the United States. Professor Geoffrey Williams is an economist at Malaysia University of Science and Technology based in Kuala Lumpur. Their edited volume, Advancing Innovation and Sustainable Outcomes in International Graduate Education, was published by IGI Global, Pennsylvania, United States in 2021. The views expressed here are their own.