PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Across the World, higher education has become big business and a major contributor to the economic prosperity of many nations. For example, it has been estimated that in the UK alone, universities generate £95 billion for the country’s economy and support more than 940,000 jobs. However, an increasing number of experts believe that rather than expanding further, the university sector in many countries will actually contract due to the changing environment for learning. Indeed, one of the world’s leading experts on innovation has suggested that a significant number of universities in the USA will fail over the next decade.  In examining how the education sector may be disrupted over the next few years, Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School believes that due to innovations such as online learning, 50 percent of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the USA could be closed within the next fifteen years. Whether this will turn to be the case (and whether UK...

In February 2013, I was asked by Leighton Andrews AM, then Minister for Education and Skills, to be a member of the Online Digital Learning Working Group which had the remit of advising on the challenges to higher education in Wales of emerging trends in online learning. Earlier this month, its report “ Open & online: Wales, higher education and emerging modes of learning” was finally published and should make interesting reading for those involved in the Welsh university sector. However, one of its key recommendations also related to developing skills for the workplace and the Welsh economy. In particular, it proposed that the Welsh Government should develop a strategy, working with other agencies, to raise awareness of the potential for online learning to support economic development. There has long been recognition of a significant skills gap in the UK and the Welsh workforce. Various studies such as the UK Treasury’s Leitch Report and the Welsh Government’s “Skills t...

I am delighted to have been asked by Leighton Andrews, the Minister for Education, to be part of his working group that is examining online digital learning and how the Welsh Government can support the higher education sector in this growing field. I first became involved in this area back in the early 1990s, when I was course development leader for Small Business Management on the  MBA (Distance Learning) at Durham University. I was then involved in developing an online MBA whilst at Bangor University in the 1990s , and more recently have been asked to head up a new initiative for Enterprise and Innovation Education within the University of Wales (which has been tasked by the Vice Chancellor to develop online MBA programmes in entrepreneurship and innovation). This includes the online MBA4PHD initiative I am collaborating on with Turku University and the University of Gothenberg. According to the Welsh Government, Welsh Universities are already engaged in a range of act...