Unbundling Rebundling Higher Education

Unbundling
Rebundling
Contestations, concatenations and concerns
in higher education
Laura Czerniewicz, 14 May 2018

This talk
• Considers the components of unbundled higher
education and implications
• Reviews the value propositions for un/re bundling
• Is interested in emergent models for teaching and
learning and consequences
• Has a concern with in/equality and social justice

A brief history of unbundling
•Originally used in banking
(1970s)
•Then in computer industry
•In the legal services
(2000s)
•Understood in music
•Now in Higher Education

Unbundling
the process of disaggregating educational provision
into its component parts
may be provided in partnership with external actors

Components of a university education
• Graduate
competencies
and metaskills
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Disciplinary
knowledge
Opportunities
Experience Graduateness
• Place
• Mode
• Time
• Curriculum
• Flexible
pathways
• Resources
• Academic
expert
1 2
34
AdaptedfromStaten(2012),Disaggregatingthecomponentsofacollegedegree’

Unbundling
Every aspect of higher education teaching and learning can be
(and is being)
unbundled, and rebundled

Rebundling
Rebundling can serve different agendas

What does unbundling and
rebundling look like?

Rebundling disciplinary knowledge
• Graduate
competencies
and metaskills
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Opportunities
Curriculum
Flexible
pathways
Resources
Academic
expert
Place
Mode
Time
Disciplinary
knowledge

The curriculum landscape
conventional flexible

The curriculum landscape
conventional flexible
Czerniewicz, L; Deacon, A; Small, J; Walji, S (2014)

Unbundled components and services
goo.gl/U1yBm8

• The curriculum landscape is deeply entrenched and
very slow to change
• Critical shift – from the informal to the formal,
boundary crossing and fuzziness
• Whose interests do new forms of curricula serve?
• As the “how” of the curriculum changes, so does the
“what”

Unbundling the how, challenging the what
Decolonising the curriculum

Curriculum renewal
• Decoloniality
• Multilingualism
• Africanisation
• Transformation
• Student voice
• Humanising pedagogy

Resources: modular, granular, open
Proprietary
resources
Open
educational
resources
Textbooks Open books
Digital
Analogue
Full
Copyright
Open
licensing

New models of resource provision
• Subscription model – access while you pay
https://mfeldstein.com/cengage-unlimited-draws-battle-lines-curricular-materials-war-3/#more-8510

Other new models of resource provision

Whose advantage?
http://cdn1.cloudpro.co.uk/sites/cloudprod7/files/freemium.jpg

• Auditing
• Is it access at all?
• Licensing
• The implications
of a shift to a
Netflix approach to HE
Emergent models & inclusion?

Emergent models & inclusion?
• Financial aid
• More inclusive?
• More fair?
• Politics of charity?

The promise of flexible pathways

Within the formal system
“California Community Colleges, the nation’s largest system with 113
institutions, just launched a course exchange so students at one campus can
take classes online at another if those courses aren’t available on their home
turf.
To stop shutting students out, California began building its Online Education
Initiative in late 2013. The $56.9 million project includes getting the colleges on
a common learning management system, building an online course exchange
and creating additional services like counseling to support students in online
classes.”

Across the formal/ informal boundary

Increasing
access
to
formal
education
MOOCs for
credit

• Emergent evidence that new forms of unbundled
provision can increase access
• For whom?
• What about success?

Maximum flexibility
We already know what the college of the future will look like,
because the non-traditional students are creating it now. It’s a
hybrid of online and in-person classes, centred on the student
and not the institution, with credits accruing from multiple
schools, and adding up to a degree in alternating periods of
attendance and absence.
Shirky, C (2015)

Macfarlane, 2011
The disaggregation
of academic
practice

Changing roles: the para-academic
Macfarlane, 2011

Academia
goes
part-time
and
becomes
less secure
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/academic-precariat/

The rise of the
academic
precariat
Implications
for knowledge
production,
a
coherent
student
experience
and
a humane
working life?

The
automation
of the
professions

Disciplinary knowledge
In an age of adaptive learning
how will an increasingly fragmented, dispersed and precarious
academic/educator body share knowledge and enable a
coherent, caring and supportive learning experience to all
students?

• Graduate
competencies
and metaskills
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Disciplinary
knowledge
Opportunities
Place
Mode
Time
Curriculum
Flexible
pathways
Resources
Academic
expert
2

• Graduate
competencies
and metaskills
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Disciplinary
knowledge
Opportunities
Place
Mode
Time
Curriculum
Flexible
pathways
Resources
Academic
expert

Unbundling support
•Support is expensive
•The challenge
( & promise)
is to remove that cost
Typical ratio of course production &
presentation costs
Production- fixed cost
Tuition- recurring costs
Tuition
-
Paying
people to
support
learners
Generic
student
support
Weller (2013)

The promise
“The term MOOC applies to any
course offered free, online and at
scale. What marks the MOOC
from conventional online learning
is that no professional academic
time (or virtually none) is allocated
to guiding or supporting individual
learners”

“Access without support is not
opportunity
Effective student support does not arise by chance. It
requires intentional, structured, and proactive action
that is systematic in nature and coordinated in
application”
Tinto, V (2013)

Support is an equity issue
To promote
equity of access and fair chances of success
to all who are seeking to realise their
potential through higher education
South African Department of Education ( 1997) Education White Paper
3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education

Support is an equity issue
• Of students in contact mode 63.6% had graduated
after 10 years of study.
• Of students in distance mode 14.8% had graduated
after 10 years of study.
South African Department of Higher Education and Training, 2016. 2000 to
2008 First time Entering Undergraduate Cohort Studies

Support as a market opportunity
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2016
A Hack Education Project

Support and the freemium model

Support being automated
Learning analytics
and adaptive
learning
promise
to automate
support and
to replace
“pastoral care”

Is this the future of support?
• For the poor
• Machines and algorithms
• For the wealthy
• Face to face
• Paid for support

How can the affordances of new technologies be
exploited and leveraged to ensure appropriate,
affordable and caring support for all?

At the heart of unbundled provision
The traditional boundaries are blurring between
professional development, occupational
credentialing and formal higher education.
Gallagher, S (2016)

Credentials
• Micro credentials
• Nano degrees
• Badges (digital badges, open badges)
• New forms of agreement of competence and status

Battling for legitimacy
Around 70 percent
of students with a
Coursera credential
list it on their
LinkedIn profiles
Koller, Cousera 2014

The jury is out
“There is little evidence that the labor
market values most of these new credentials”.
McMillan Cottom, Sociology Professor

Certification – an equity issue
“Free online courses are not going to change education
in Africa…because education in Africa and South Africa
is a means to an end – the qualification helps to get you
a job which puts food on the table.
Until we can get verifiable accreditation right
I don’t think there will be much traction”
de Hart, (2013) Office of the Vice Chancellor, University of South Africa

Credentials
• May prove to be equalisers in the world of work
• Raise critical questions about the function and reputation
of the university
• Raise issues about value, stigma and legitimacy
• Are an evolving unresolved and foundational issue
How can new forms of credentials increase access to both
formal education and to working opportunities?

Social capital
•Residential universities are sites of peer interaction and
the development of social networks and social capital
•Through the potential differentiation of the system, it will
be the elite residential universities which will inculcate and
enable the networks of social capital.
•Can valuable networks be built in rebundled
environments?
•“Bricks for the rich and clicks for the poor”?

• Graduate
capabilities
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Disciplinary
knowledge
Opportunities
Place
Mode
Time
Curriculum
Flexible
pathways
Resources
Academic
expert
1 2
34

Graduateness and unbundling
• What does it mean to be a graduate?
• Graduateness as brand
• Graduateness as assumed attributes and literacies due
to co-curricular experiences
• Shift to graduatedness as skills and competencies in
an increasingly object –oriented HE culture

• Graduate
competencies
and metaskills
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Disciplinary
knowledge
Opportunities
Place
Mode
Time
Curriculum
Flexible
pathways
Resources
Academic
expert
4

Online goes mainstream
More than a quarter of higher education students (28 %)
are enrolled in least one online course (USA, 2015)

Online is becoming mainstream everywhere
“I think online is the future of universities.
Because of the financial strain, because of the fact that we
live in a global community.
Perish the thought but I think that is going to happen”
University academic, South Africa 2015

Online is creating new work
Online courses require different, expensive, components of work
These include:
faculty development
technologies
design course specifications
instructional design
learning materials
student identity verification
assessments
accessibility
accreditation

Online is creating new market opportunities

Online is creating new relationships
• Private companies
partners,
service providers?
• Outsourcing,
insourcing?

Online: Creating a differentiated system
• Diversified offerings for different
groups
• Case study. MOOCs reached more
non-US students than any other form
• Analysis of 875k students on 9
Wharton Business School MOOCs
• Higher % of foreign born US students
• Higher % of unemployed students
• Higher % of US under-represented
minorities
• Access or marginalisation?
/

Online and equity concerns
• A US surveyed of 40 000 students in nearly 500 000 online
courses found
…While all types of students in the study suffered
decrements in performance in online courses, some
struggled more than others to adapt: males, younger
students, Black students, and students with lower
grade point averages
Xu & Jaggar (2013)

Equity concerns - relative pass rates

Equity concerns - retention
Allen, E and Seaman, J (2015)

Online courses hindering those meant to help?
Bidwell (2013)

Online courses not favoured by those
meant to help?
A study of Syrian refugees in 3 countries

• The online space rife with complex and profound
issues raised by equity issues and by private – public
partnerships
• New and changing roles and responsibilities
• Ownership of the academic project
• Questions of academic identity and of responsibility
• The impact of commercial values on teaching and learning
• Poorly understood emergent models

Place replaced by platform
Platform is
competitive
The LMS market
is expected to be
worth over
$7 billion in 2018

Place/platform matter for learning

Place online shifts beyond the local

• The rise of the global middle class and the
opportunity for global markets
• The middle class is anticipated to comprise two-thirds of
world population by 2025,
• with emerging economies to increase their share of the global
medium-high middle class and affluent segments from 24% in
2000 to 67% by 2025 (or 2 billion people)
• African middle class tripled in last 14 years
http://monitor.icef.com/2017/02/new-agreement-aims-to-expand-online-learning-in-africa/

• Technology and market liberalisation open up opportunities to
pursue the broader conceptual opportunity of the borderless
2025 student. In the relatively untapped borderless skills market
of in-market, online and blended delivery – there are projected to
be in excess of one billion students around the world.
• Intense competition for capable moneyed students
anywhere and everywhere
• What about everyone else?
Australian International Education 2O25

How to make sense of
unbundling?
Opportunity or threat?

Same words, different meanings, different agendas
flexibility
sharing
Value
proposition
convenience
mobility
incoherence
fragmentation
generosity
opportunity gig economy
exploitation
social citizenship return on investment
Semantic bleaching?

The unbundling debate
Speaks to the battle for the soul of the university

“There is a hideously
plausible future in which
the dominant character of
higher education
institutions across the
world would be as
businesses specialising in
preparing people to work
in businesses”

“When we define higher education's role
principally as driving economic
development and solving society's most
urgent problems, we risk losing sight of
broader questions, of the kinds of inquiry
that enable the critical stance, that build the
humane perspective, that foster the restless
skepticism and unbounded curiosity from
which our profoundest understandings so
often emerge.”

The unbundling debate
Speaks to the relationship between the market, the
state and the commons

The market-led approach has been at the
forefront of unbundling
• Graduate
capabilities
• Support
• Credentials
• Networks
Disciplinary
knowledge
Opportunities
Place
Mode
Time
Curriculum
Learning
pathways
Resources
Academic
expert
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$

Unbundled components and services

The big questions
• Who does the monetising and for what purpose?
• Which types of knowledge are valued?
• What is considered “valuable” in HE?
• What is the meaning of the academic “brand”?
• How are the markets shaped &
regulated?
• Why the urgency now?

Massive investment
https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/ed-tech-2016-funding-drop/

Substantial investment (and yet…)

Can higher education be a “real” market?
• Knowledge is a public good
• It is non rivalrous, non –excludable, what exactly is the
product?
• The role of status competition
• the consumer brings something to the university
• Role of rankings (fixed and selective)
• Non-elite institutions cannot entice elite customers by
dropping price for the same service
• The role and responsibility of the state
• Numerous imperatives
Marginson, S (2013) The impossibility of capitalist markets in higher education

At stake – the nature of state market
relationships
“…new hybrid models of colleges and universities that
operate their core academic activities in symbiosis with
their enabling partners…a marketplace that is
increasingly driven by joint ventures, revenue sharing,
and shared risk—in a world where competitive
advantage increasingly comes from algorithms”
Gallagher, 2017

Who controls the relationship?
• There has always been a relationship between the
public (the state) and the private (the market) in
higher education
• The battle now is for control of that relationship
• Who determines priorities?
• Who defines objectives?
• Who makes decisions?
• Who regulates and shapes?
• What is gained and what is lost and by whom?

The terms of the relationship really matter
• Soft version, public sets the terms
• limited privatisation, the critical
appropriation of the market for
public ends
• Hard version, private sets the terms
• commercialisation – the
appropriation of the public for
private ends
Mamdani, 2009

Forms of privatisation
• Endogenous privatisation
• Universities being business-like or like businesses
• Assuming the discourses of privatisation
• ‘Exogenous’ privatisation - bringing the private sector
into public universities
• Multiple forms and terms of engagement
Ball and Youdell (2009)

Higher education is always a hybrid ecology

What are the other possibilities exist?

Reclaiming the Commons
• The Commons approach to education
• places educators and knowledge producers in charge
• foregrounds co-creation and participation
• develops governance mechanisms premised on shared
resources

The Commons approach shifts from a market led
higher education knowledge economy to an open
collaborative learning led knowledge society

Unbundling offers
opportunities for
commons-led
approaches too
Take university-level courses online for
free and submit assessments when you
are ready to have your learning
recognised for formal academic credit.

How can the market be regulated in
unequal contexts to serve the public
good?

Re-asserting the role
of the state
• The state on the
whole has
systematically
underfunded higher
education

Re-asserting the role of the state
• The state too often has abdicated its role as regulator
and ensurer of higher education as a public good
• The state must mediate and shape the possibilities of
the market and the extent of the private nature of HE
• It is the state which has primary responsibility to
ensure redress, successful participation and
disadvantage are addressed

Re-asserting the role of the state
If unbundling is to serve the needs of a knowledge
society for the good of all, how can the state enable the
requirements of socially responsible public education
for a democratic citizenship?

Conclusion
• It is not inevitable that profit making will determine
how unbundling and rebundling in HE play out
• The situation is dynamic, in flux and highly contested,
it is being negotiated and renegotiated
• It is inevitably about power and contestations
• It is appropriated by different discourses and agendas

Unbundling - problem or solution?
• As part of the problem
• may serve the interests of the few and not the many
• may serve the private good at the expense of the public
good
• The risks are many
• exacerbating the fragmentation in higher education
leading to an incoherent student experience
• the monopolisation of the HE sector by a few companies

A hopeful note
• As part of the solution, unbundling and rebundling
offer opportunities for reasonable and affordable
education for all
• Unbundling is opening spaces and relationships that
were previously not available at all
• It can be harnessed to serve the interests of the many
rather than the few
• It must be critically understood and its possibilities be
fully utilised for the good of all

With grateful thanks to Sukaina Walji, Rebecca Swartz and the Leeds-University of Cape Town research project team
The Unbundled University: Researching emerging models in an unequal landscape
http://unbundleduni.com/

References
• Allen E and Seaman J (2015) Babson Survey Research Group (2015) Online Report Card: Tracking Online Education in the United States
• American Association of University Professors (2017) Visualising Change, the Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession 2016-17,
Academe, March – April 2017 https://www.aaup.org/file/FCS_2016-17_nc.pdf
• Australia, Future Unlimited, 2016 Australian International Education 2O25, Australian Trade and Investment Commission,
https://www.austrade.gov.au/Australian/Education/Services/Australian-International-Education-2025
• Ball, S and Youdell, D (2009) Hidden privatisation in public education Education Review . Spring2009, Vol. 21 Issue 2, p73-83. 11p.
• Collini, S (2017) Speaking of Universities, Verso Books
• Craig, R and Williams, A (2015) Data, Technology, and the Great Unbundling of Higher Education, Educause Review, Monday, August 17, 2015 ,
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/8/data-technology-and-the-great-unbundling-of-higher-education
• Czerniewicz, L; Deacon, A; Small, J; Walji, S (2014) Developing World MOOCs: a curriculum view of the MOOC landscape, in Sharma, S and Murphy, M
(Eds) Special Issue of Journal of Global Literacies, Technology, and Emerging Pedagogies, 2(3), 122- 139 Michigan State University
• Faust, D (2010) The Role of the University in a Changing World, June 30, 2010 , Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Dublin ,
http://www.harvard.edu/president/speech/2010/role-university-changing-world
• Gallagher, S (2017) Yes There’s ‘Disruption’ in College Market, But the Bigger Trend Is Growth of ‘Enabler’ Companies, Edusurge May 9, 2017 ,
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-05-09-yes-there-s-disruption-in-college-market-but-the-bigger-trend-is-growth-of-enabler-companies
• Gallagher, S (2016) From micromasters to nanodegrees, University World News 12 August 2016 Issue No:423,
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160809133730588Herrero, A; Abarca, A and Turégan D (2015) Flourishing middle classes in
the emerging world to keep driving reduction in global inequality’ Eagles Economic Watch (2015). ‘, 2 March 2015, https://www.bbvaresearch.com/wp-
content/uploads/.../EW_globalMCs_feb15_vf1.pdf
• Holborow, M. (2012). Neoliberalism, Human Capital and the Skills Agenda in Higher Education The Irish Case. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies,
10 (1), 93 – 111
• Macfarlane, B (2011) Shifting identity and roles The Morphing of Academic Practice: Unbundling and the Rise of the Para-academic Higher Education
Quarterly, 0951–5224, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2010.00467.x 65 (1) pp 59–73

References
• Mamdani, M (2007) Scholars in the Marketplace. The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005. Dakar, CODESRIA
• Marginson, S. (2013). The impossibility of capitalist markets in higher education. Journal of Education Policy, 28(3), 353-370.
• Poulin, R. & Straut, T. (2017). WCET (Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperative for Educational Technologies) Distance Education Price and Cost Report.
• Quality Matters & Eduventures Survey of Chief Online Officers, 2017 The Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE)
• Mindwires (2017) LMS Market Historical Perspectve MindWires LLC http://www.mindwires.com/
• MOOCs Won’t Replace Business Schools — They’ll Diversify Them, June 3, 2014 http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/moocs-wont-replace-business-schools-theyll-diversify-them
•
• Shirky, C (2015) The digital revolution in higher education has already happened. No one noticed. https://medium.com/@cshirky/the-digital-revolution-in-higher-education-has-
already-happened-no-one-noticed-78ec0fec16c7
• South African Department of Higher Education and Training, 2016. 2000 to 2008 First time Entering Undergraduate Cohort Studies
• Stacey, P and Hinchliff, S Made with Creative Commons: A guide to sharing your knowledge and creativity with the world, and sustaining your operation while you do, Creative
Commons and Pearson, 2017 ,
• Staten, M (2012) ‘Disaggregating the Components of a College Degree’ American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Prepared for the American Enterprise Institute
Conference, “Stretching the Higher Education Dollar” August 2, 2012, available at http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/-disaggregating-the-components-of-a-college-
degree_184521175818.pdf
• Tinto, V (2013) Regional Symposia on Student Success, 19 - 23 August 2013, http://www.che.ac.za/content/regional-symposia-student-success-19-23-august-2013
• University and College Union 2016 Precarious Work in Higher Education: A Snapshot of Insecure Contracts and Institutional Attitudes
https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/7995/Precarious-work-in-higher-education-a-snapshot-of-insecure-contracts-and-institutional-attitudes-Apr-
16/pdf/ucu_precariouscontract_hereport_apr16.pdf
• University and College Union (2016) UCT Workload is an Education Issue; workload survey, Report 2016
• Weismann, J (2013) A Truly Devastating Graph on State Higher Education Spending Some states have slashed per-student spending by as much as half, The Atlantic, 20 March 2013,
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/a-truly-devastating-graph-on-state-higher-education-spending/274199/
• Weller 2013, The Cost of Support
http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2013/06/the-cost-of-support.html
• Xu & Jaggar 2013 Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas. CCRC, Working paper No 5. Retrieved from
http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:157286

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