During the recent Covid pandemic, various sectors were forced to change their business model dramatically due to the lockdown imposed on customers and other stakeholders which meant they were unable to trade normally.
One of those hit hardest was the higher education sector with universities having to close campuses and move quickly to online learning in order to continue to ensure students were able to complete their courses.
Some have argued that online learning should have been implemented earlier with some predicting the decline of the current model of university learning as new providers could develop more flexible programmes at a lower cost to students.
To date, that hasn’t happened although the introduction of online learning may now have opened a Pandora’s Box which may prove impossible to close.
From my own recent experiences, the pandemic suggests that universities have been largely ineffective at coping with the pace of digital change. Often, senior staff lack any understanding of not only the technology but also the needs of their student population, many whom have a very different view of how digital developments can support their lives.
That is also the conclusion of the 2022 Higher Education Digital Experience Report which surveyed 2000 students and higher education leaders to reveal what students expect from their university’s digital experience, the benefit to universities
of meeting these expectations and the challenges universities face in dealing with a fast-changing digital environment.
The analysis by the study is not kind to the higher education sector and paints a picture of universities and their executives that are largely out of touch with the needs of students, have little comprehension of the investment needed to create a coherent digital experience and, worst of all, lack the knowledge and capabilities to employ the latest technologies that can make a difference.
Indeed, like many who have not worked within the commercial sector, they suffer from the classic syndrome of approaching the problem from what they think the organisation needs rather than from the point of view of their users, namely the student population. This is despite clear evidence that digital experiences have the potential to make university life more rewarding, accessible, and inclusive for all.
So what are students looking for from those institutions in which they have paid tens of thousands of pounds of tuition fees for their degrees?
For this generation of digital-savvy students, digital experiences are important to students and they expect value from universities given how much they are paying every year.
For example, the report shows that 91% of students expect a university’s digital services to be at least as strong as its face-to-face offering. This not only applies to learning but for their overall university experience including managing their wider student life, feeling a part of the university and maintaining mental wellbeing.
Indeed, Generation Z - those born after 2000 – are highly demanding when it comes to this area and two thirds of those questioned said that they expected their university’s digital experiences to be as good as services like Facebook, Amazon or Netflix. Unfortunately, the vast majority of academic institutions which seem to persist on using old technologies are clearly not anywhere near this standard.
Whilst universities would like to be more digitally oriented the report suggests that, as with all large organisations, there is little appetite amongst senior staff to push forward the changes needed to make this happen with universities struggling to deliver digital change quickly enough.
For example, when I recently tried to introduce a new and innovative learning platform that was superior in all aspects to deliver a new online course, I was told by the University of South Wales that this was unacceptable and was instead instructed to use an existing platform that was not fit for purpose either digitally or in terms of what students wanted from their learning experience.
Sadly, this antediluvian approach to new digital solutions is not atypical within the sector and I have spoken to colleagues working for other universities who unfortunately have had similar experiences.
For the sector as a whole, perhaps the biggest problem seems to be little consideration of students as paying customers who are demanding greater value and satisfaction in terms of digital provision.
And this will become more important as the digital world will disproportionately affect young people who are becoming more reliant on their devices and the experience they get from these in all aspects of their lives, especially in relation to their learning.
Whilst some universities may dismiss this focus on digital as being irrelevant to the overall student experience, it is worth noting that not only did half of the student respondents state that the quality of digital provision was a key factor in deciding which university to study at, the continuing digital experience will affect the student outcomes that are used to rank universities for the quality of their provision.
Therefore, as universities get the first student cohort joining their ranks this month without Covid restrictions since 2019, it is clear that developments during the pandemic means they now need to take the digital agenda more seriously.
Yet whilst many UK institutions continue to spend tens of millions on pounds on yet more new buildings, there seems to be little investment in developing a state-of-the-art world class digital experience for students.
Fortunately, some are taking steps to change this. The recent appointment of a recognised global leader in digital transformations across the university sector as new Vice Chancellor will accelerate the process at my alma mater Aston University and hopefully others will choose leaders who can do the same.
If not, then those universities who fail to focus on maximising the digital experience for their students by investing properly in the infrastructure and people to make this happen will continue to lose market share in the same way that any business who ignores the needs of their customers deserve to.