The new era of higher education will face challenges including the digital transformation of learning and teaching models and preparing graduates for the workplace of the future.
This report examines how universities around the world are responding to the tertiary education sector’s most pressing challenges and offers some guidance on how they can thrive in the future. The report draws insights from a series of regional round-table discussions, held by Times Higher Education in partnership with PwC. Regional reports from Africa, Australia and Singapore, the Middle East and the UK provide an overview of the issues higher education faces and strategies to overcome them.
The round tables brought together senior leaders in higher education, including vice-chancellors and education and industry experts from PwC. The regional reports are also informed by PwC surveys, completed by senior higher education and business leaders.
In Africa, faculty and students face challenges around connectivity as the sector seeks to embrace digital change. There is a digital and educational divide to overcome, with a need for collaboration between higher education institutions and other stakeholders to ensure the continent’s youthful population has access to educational opportunities.
University leaders in Australia and Singapore want support to make disruptive decisions, including creating new, student-centric teaching models and harnessing analytics and artificial intelligence to revolutionise delivery. Engaging more effectively with government and industry is seen as a priority.
Graduate employability is a concern among higher education leaders in the Middle East. To build skills capacity in the region, redesigned courses that teach the skills employers need in the digital world are seen as essential.
In the UK, the “perfect storm” of Covid-19 has shone a light on issues like student experience and digital learning. The UK is exploring how universities can respond to these challenges by working with industry and the local community under a civic engagement agenda.
With the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating change in the global higher education landscape, this report investigates how universities can effectively face new challenges and embrace opportunities to thrive.
Modernising course design to diversify student learning can improve the employability prospects of graduates in the Middle East and inject much-needed skills capability into the region. At a Times Higher Education round table, held in partnership with PwC, academics and industry leaders agreed that redesigned curricula and enhanced engagement with industry would help prepare graduates for the rapidly changing workforce.
Sally Jeffery, who leads PwC’s global education and skills network and PwC’s education practice in the Middle East, says the region now has a real appetite for modernising course design to give students a multidisciplinary understanding and improve employability. However, Jeffery says, the region continues to suffer from a lack of flexibility in regulation around programme design and acceptance of blended learning.
“The post-graduation employability stats here are a real concern for the ambitious leaders of this region. In some cases, they’re lingering around 30 to 35 per cent six months post-graduation, which is very, very low compared with top ranked institutions. Not all institutions are like that, of course, but unfortunately a lot of the public ones are,” Jeffery says. “Modernising course design to open up access, improve the diversity of learning of the students and improve their employability skills is the most urgent driver of reform.”
A PwC survey asked senior higher education leaders in the Middle East about their experience of the transition to more blended learning models. Nearly 90 per cent of respondents reported that their institution was doing well or very well in adapting curricula and delivery models to maximise student success.
Despite significant funding and resources in the region, businesses seeking growth at a time of technological transformation are struggling to find graduates with the skills they need. “We work with many clients that are on this journey and none of them are comfortable that the current education and training sector can help them plug those skills gaps fast enough,” Jeffery says. “They’re still hiring a lot overseas and they’re still keen to get into the business of education themselves because they view this as easier than trying to work with some of the local universities.” Though this is a sentiment expressed by clients world- wide, the pace of ambitious reform and the maturity of the education sector in the Middle East means that many view this gap as being insurmountable for the foreseeable future.
PwC is in the business of education itself, with 44 PwC Academies around the world, the largest of which is in the Middle East. They provide both in-person and digital learning solutions. The academies are helping to plug some of the skills gaps in the region, offering courses in disciplines such as cybersecurity, digital awareness and leadership skills, as well as traditional professional certification courses they have offered for years. “We’re helping drive change because we’re mostly offering shorter courses and are less constrained than the universities are, and also because we’ve got the global reach and real-world experience to help us develop relevant content,” Jeffery says. “But we always reach out to the local higher education system and faculty and try to get them involved in providing more formal qualifications and microcredentials. This is partly because microcredentials are a great learning motivator, partly because faculty best understand the discipline, latest research and pedagogy, but also because they’re not going to understand what’s needed unless they start to participate in it.”
Upskilling is not limited to graduates, with the round-table panellists stressing the need to give faculty training to be better able to manage new delivery models. Panellists also identified the need for regulators to embrace more flexibility in the definition of faculty roles.
The PwC survey found that only 44 percent of respondents thought their institution was doing a good job of strengthening partnerships with industry to become more internationally competitive.
The region’s governments need to play a role in supporting the higher education sector as it undergoes a profound transition. “I think they need to fix regulation as soon as possible, give institutions a chance to do what’s right for their learners and industry partners, and to be more trusting,” Jeffery says. “I would like to see the regulator really increasing transparency, for example. This is an uncomfortable but effective role for education regulators. If they were to put in systems that made performance transparent to the learners, such as the way the Office for Students does in the UK, then I think the impetus to change will be taken up more by those that are actually responsible than those that are running the institutions. If they don’t drive behavioural change in the institutions, then whatever policy changes have been made at the top will fall flat if the faculty member or the teacher doesn’t understand it, doesn’t have the skills or latitude to implement it, or simply doesn’t believe in it.”
Modernised administrative systems will also need to be complemented by cultural change. Regulations around procurement and hiring in the public sector, in particular, can be “bureaucratic and slow”, Jeffery says. “I see very talented faculty and institutional leaders being brought into the region full of energy and enthusiasm for bringing about change, and they get frustrated,” Jeffery says. “After about six months or so they plan to move on for the sake of their future careers or stop trying.”
As the region moves into a new era for higher education, refocusing on the needs of the local population presents an opportunity for institutions to innovate. “I wish universities in the region would set aside the idea of trying to be high up in the global rankings by emulating those that are already there, and instead focus on what’s right for their learners and what’s right for the economy in their country,” Jeffery says. “They don’t have the legacy and the constraints of a 200-year-old, branded institution. They can start afresh, they can try some new things, be truly innovative, more agile, more inclusive, more accessible. The youth in this region are very tech savvy and the employers are desperate to hire them. They should have the confidence to look at completely new campus models.”
An important advantage for the region is governments’ strong desire to invest in education. Saudi Arabia’s Human Capability Development Programme, for example, includes 89 initiatives, the majority of which relate to education and training. The Saudi government is investing SAR15 billion (£3.1 billion) in the programme. “That’s just one country. It’s going to be hard work, but I think in the next two to three years we’ll see massive change,” Jeffery says. “The opportunity to be quite innovative in higher education exists in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, where the funds are being made available and the government truly believes in the power of education to transform their people and transform their economy. Faculty and leadership skills in the Middle East need to be developed, but that’s the case world-wide, and my view is that you ought to be able to count on smart faculty to learn what’s needed – that’s their business after all. Governments need to continue supporting this change through funding, trusting those who are running these institutions, and highlighting through data when that trust is misplaced.”
The challenges facing global universities in the new era of higher education
Universities around the world must drive transformation through technology and adapt to meet the changing demands of students and the future workforce. A series of round-table discussions, held by Times Higher Education in partnership with PwC, considered some of the sector’s most pressing challenges, while regional reports focused on Africa, Australia and Singapore, the Middle East and the UK further interrogated the higher education landscape.
Sally Jeffery, who leads PwC’s global education and skills network and is PwC’s Middle East education and skills practise Leader says one of the aims of the series was to examine leadership capabilities in higher education. At the Africa round table, for example, panellists discussed how digital transformation was impacting students and the support staff required to deliver new modes of delivery. “There were discussions about supporting each other more and recognising they’re more powerful in teaching teams rather than as individual faculty,” Jeffery says. “That to me was quite an honest finding, recognising the longer-term benefits of having to support each other more during a period of crisis.”
Prioritising well-being
With the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic still fresh in the memory, student well-being was a key concern across regions. “We found that all faculty initially found it quite hard to talk about themselves and their own capabilities and what they need,” Jeffery says. “Student well-being was a massive theme. Whereas previously the UK was the only network firm doing significant work in this space, we found that it was now front and centre at all round tables.”
With blended learning the new reality, the speed of transition varies across sectors. “There’s a lot of change happening, not just to delivery models but also to curriculum design and it’s a worldwide trend,” Jeffery says. “I think the UK system is one of the pioneers in moving to more innovative models, for example with its two-year undergraduate programmes and the degree apprenticeships. Education technologies are opening up exciting possibilities, with more agility in programming and scheduling, and therefore improved accessibility for a more diverse student body.
“The US has some great blended learning models and Australia is opening up with a more flexible academic calendar. The US and North America and Australia are geographies that are very commercially driven. Australian universities have seen a massive dent in their revenue through the drop in international students. There’s a real economic urgency around them sorting that out. Those geographies are moving really fast.”
Change mindset
While other areas are taking longer to adapt, there is an awareness of the need to change and the role government can play in assisting the transition. In the Middle East, for example, graduate skills capability is a concern and governments are investing heavily in training and believe in the power of education to transform societies.
Higher education is far from the only industry undergoing technology-driven disruption and university leaders can look to the private sector for inspiration. “We’ve been looking at how PwC can play a role in providing more guidance to university leadership around leading an institution in this age of uncertainty,” Jeffery says. “We’re seeing a lot of transformation in other organisations that are really breaking those silos so they can be much more agile and work in a much more interdisciplinary way.
“That is a matter of survival in some of the companies we work with. Some of the large manufacturing companies, for instance. So, I think there’s a lot more we can do to help universities break away from the very traditional organisational structures that they have and understand what it means to embrace some of those new models.”
Sally Jeffery
Global Education and Skills Leader Partner, PwC Middle East
Tel: +971 (0)56 6820539
Dion Shango
Territory Senior Partner for PwC’s East, West and South Market regions in Africa, PwC South Africa
Tel: +27 (0) 11 797 4166
Partner, Regional Market Leader, Northern Ireland and Education Consulting Lead, PwC United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)7764 331623
Asia Pacific Government and Public Sector (G&PS) Leader and Salesforce Practice Leader, South East Asia Consulting, PwC Singapore
Tel: +65 9753 6736