Though 2020 has been tough on students and teachers—causing a drastic shift in instructional formats—many ed tech companies have been given a boost from virtual learning. Especially for companies already supporting global, online courses, the pandemic has positively impacted the higher education supply chain.
“When the world moved online, it became far more feasible to share courses and programs from all over the globe, and the options available to instructors and learners actually increased exponentially,” said Anant Agarwal, founder and CEO of edX, a platform that brings together instructors and students from around the world. “Moving forward, the educational system will need to perfect the supply chain—smoothly allowing for best practices to be shared—so that it meets the needs of all higher education learners and instructors.”
One way in which edX worked to improve the supply chain last spring was to start offering existing partner institutions free access to courses and programs. Then, the company expanded the offer to provide faculty, students and staff at any accredited institution across the globe with free access to its teaching and learning resources.
Agarwal said that edX’s model has proved successful during the pandemic and well beyond. In the future of higher ed, he predicts a shift to a greater demand for short courses and programs for specific skills—similar to a certificate program. In addition, an online format like edX’s offers a reasonable price without the arduous process of applying to a two- or four-year college.
“All of this means that learning is accessible lifelong,” Agarwal said, adding that he sees collaboration of higher education as a big positive that has come out of COVID.
“edX’s partner institutions are typically already on the cutting edge of education, and we work together as a consortium to learn from each other to make the best online content. We have been able to share and learn a lot from each other this year, as everyone was faced with the same challenges posed by COVID,” he said.
Another positive lesson out of the pandemic is that higher education no longer needs to function in a vacuum.
“Much of our growth came from workers coming back to learning to either upskill or change career paths. I think we’re going to see this trend continue—higher education isn’t something you do once and move on. It’s a lifelong process that you constantly return to in order to prepare for the workforce and adapt in real time as it changes.”
Moving forward, Agarwal says that the new university format will no longer be information given on the local level from the professor.
Instead, the supply chain will come from all over the world. As an example, he references the auto industry, which uses a global networking, enabling a higher quality as well as lower cost because the suppliers can specialize and perfect what they do.
“I believe that we can create a global digital supply chain for education, where learners will be learning from universities all over the world. There will be large credit exchanges—learners can take a MicroBachelors program from NYU on the edX digital platform, but receive credit for it from Thomas Edison State University,” Agarwal said.
There are many higher ed institutions that do not always have the courses that a learner wants or needs or can work within their schedule. Plus, decentralization helps both students and faculty. It reduces the barriers to entry for students (cost, applications), while allowing colleges to attract a wider breadth of students and collaborate in shared resources.
Some of this university decentralization is already taking place. But Agarwal believes this can be scaled to all disciplines via the online world.
Finally, the changes in the supply chain will mean a shift in the way professors teach content. While the world will return to some form of in-person learning, Agarwal said that professors will have to change their strategies for the new hybrid format. No more of this “sage on the stage model.” With the availability of quality digital resources, he envisions a “guide by the side model.”
edX experienced exceptional growth in 2020. The platform grew from 81 million global enrollments in 2019 to more than 110 million enrollments, a 29 million increase.