Image: Athanasios Deligiannis [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr
The Russell Group university plans online overhaul as cash squeeze looms
Durham University is planning for an “unprecedented” loss of up to 25 per cent of its income as it rushes to fix “severe weaknesses” in its online learning.
Plans to overhaul Durham’s online educational strategy, seen by Research Professional News and first reported by Durham student newspaper Palatinate, reveal fears that flaws in its online learning programme put it behind competitors and leave it with a “very significant financial and reputational risk”.
The coronavirus is widely expected to force many domestic and international learners to stay at home and join classes remotely, leading to worries of an upcoming scramble for fewer students for the next academic year.
A report by vice-provost for education Alan Houston and deputy vice-chancellor Anthony Long, which was considered by the University Executive Committee and dated 31 March, found a “significant, immediate hit” on recruitment among international students could see income losses of 20-25 per cent the consequences of which “would be unprecedented in severity”. Durham, a member of the research-intensive Russell Group of 24 universities, receives around half its income (54.9 per cent) from tuition fees, £209 million in total, with around half coming from international students.
In the report, called Redesigning Durham’s Educational Offering, Houston and Long said the coronavirus had highlighted “how limited our progress has been in taking the DU educational offer online” and had left the university with “severe weaknesses in our current—even basic—provision”.
To avoid a cliff-edge drop in students for 2020-21, they said a “minimum viable product” must be available for delivery in September, meaning that 25 per cent of its modules must be ready to teach online by July. At the moment, a third of undergraduate modules and half of postgraduate modules have no virtual learning environment.
“In the short-term, we risk being unable to provide even a basic ‘minimum viable product’ online for our AY 2020-21 intake. This is our immediate priority,” they wrote. “But, by definition, the minimum viable product will damage the immediate and long-term reputation of the university, and hurt our ambitions to be a sustainable centre of world-class excellence in education.”
Several experts have warned that universities without a high-quality online education programme could suffer if the coronavirus prevents students travelling to campuses. In the report, Houston and Long revealed the university plans to pay a private firm £12,500 plus VAT to “scope a schedule” for the online transformation.
“The challenge we face is not simply about ‘going online’; it is much more profound and requires us to think fundamentally about what a DU educational experience is,” they wrote, outlining plans to “invert our traditional education model” from a solely residential experience to a system with “online resources at the core”.
Students will be able to choose online-only degrees, mixed onsite and online learning and on-campus teaching. Durham plans to reduce the number of modules taught on site by 25 per cent in the next academic year, leaving 1,200 modules taught at its campus, and it has a target for 500 modules to be delivered online only by the end of the year.
But Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, warned that the proposed changes represented “an attack on the livelihoods and the professional expertise of hard-working staff” and said the coronavirus pandemic was “not an opportunity for universities to try to swiftly implement radical change”.
Commenting on the plans, Long said Durham was planning for the year ahead to make sure “options properly developed and ready to implement for our current and future students”, and he stressed that input from staff, students and trade unions on the proposals was “welcome”.
“Our focus is, as ever, on the quality of the Durham educational offer. If you choose to study at Durham, in Durham itself, from a distance or perhaps in combination, you will get a world-class experience,” he said.
“Anticipating that some and perhaps a significant number of students will not be able to travel to and live in Durham in 2020/21, we are preparing an online, distance learning programme that is both inclusive and high-quality. We already deliver highly successful online programmes such as our Online MBA, which is ranked in the top ten in the world.”
A spokesman for Durham University told Research Professional News that, "the ‘Redesigning Durham’s Educational Offer’ paper is outdated. It has been revised on the basis of feedback and a new paper is being circulated for comment ahead of being discussed by the University’s Senate next week".