College has long been a package deal. Traditional students pay for a bundle of services—a fixed number of courses, as well as access to libraries, gyms, campus quads, and more—as they work toward conventional degrees that some say feel one-size-fits-all.
These days, though, more and more colleges are experimenting with unbundling that package. Some are trying “microdegrees,” designed to get students a quicker, more focused credential. Others consider dividing courses into “modules” to allow students to take only what they need for their personalized courses of study. And a few are going even further to break out costs so that students can, say, skip library access to get a discount.
Such unbundling has happened in industry after industry: Most people now buy music by the song rather than the album. Air travelers pay extra to check a bag or get a seat with more legroom. And more TV viewers have cut the cord of cable and buy a mix of streaming services and individual shows. Consumers want to pick from a menu rather than be told what they’re getting.
Education is different from entertainment or travel, of course. But technology may bring more change to teaching and learning than college leaders realize, argues Ryan Craig, managing director of University Ventures, a private-equity fund, in his new book, College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan).
TAKEAWAY
How Colleges Can ‘Unbundle’
- Dividing courses into shorter “modules” can help students create a more customized course of study.
- Offering “microdegrees,” especially online, can reach new students who don’t have time for or interest in a traditional degree.
- Some students may not want or need all the services offered by colleges, like gyms, libraries, and manicured lawns. Lower-cost academic options that don’t include full campus access could attract new types of students.
And the trend is coming whether colleges like it or not. “I expect colleges to not lead the way, but lag the way and be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century by consumers,” he said in an interview.
Among institutions pondering the chopping of their curricula into smaller bits is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A task force on the future of the engineering powerhouse put out a report last year imagining a world in which students could take online courses they assembled themselves from parts they found online. “Much like a playlist on iTunes, a student could pick and choose the elements of a calculus or a biology course offered across the edX platform to meet his or her needs,” it says, referring to the online platform led by MIT and Harvard University.
That approach would let students retake any module they struggled with before they move on to more advanced material, making it easier for professors to co-teach larger courses by letting each faculty member tackle a portion.
In-person courses could be divided into modules as well, the report says. Though officials are still deciding whether to adopt the recommendations and enter this piecemeal world, MIT is already experimenting with making in-person courses modular. A popular introductory computer-science course, for instance, can now be taken in two parts: one focusing on the Python programming language and the other on “computational thinking and data science.”
The biggest moves have taken place online.
That’s where the “microdegree” comes in. Such degrees are an effort to reach new students by putting a series of courses online—often involving skills that are hot in the current job market—and offering a certificate for them. The biggest difference between these new offerings and existing certificate programs is that they can have even shorter course lengths, or let students learn at their own pace. The approach is an outgrowth of MOOCs, or massive open online courses, and may turn out to be a way colleges can bring in some revenue to support the free content.
One example of a microdegree is the “specialization” in data science started last year by the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, in partnership with Coursera, a popular provider of MOOCs.
The program includes nine courses—which doesn’t sound very “micro,” until you learn that each course takes only four weeks. Some 478 students, from 73 countries, have completed the free courses and a required “capstone project,” and have paid about $500 each in fees to get certificates proving their achievement. Many students took just part of the course sequence; 83,000 certificates have been issued for individual courses since the program began, in April 2014, according to a spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins. That amounts to millions in revenue to be shared by Johns Hopkins and Coursera.
“A full-size, say, master’s degree is often way too much commitment for a working adult—it’s not feasible for most people,” says Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera. “This gives them something that’s much more targeted and focused.”
Upstart companies with no connection to colleges are also entering the market. One example is Udacity, with what it calls “nanodegrees” that students can take at their own pace. The company offers five so far, all related to computer science, and it plans to start eight or nine more this year, says Sebastian Thrun, the company’s founder.
The big question is whether employers will be impressed by these new credentials, which come with no formal accreditation.
Mr. Craig, author of College Disrupted, predicts they will, in part because big tech companies will create easy ways for students to show off these new educational markers. His best guess is that LinkedIn will become the arbiter of these minidegrees and other educational badges, verifying each certificate and having its software read over a user’s LinkedIn profile to generate a standardized list of proven competencies that employers can easily search.
How far will the unbundling go? An offshoot of Coventry University, in England, charges only a fraction of the usual tuition rate but does not allow students to use the university’s library, computer rooms, or sporting facilities.
While this seems like a dystopian future for colleges, says Mr. Craig, he believes such new offerings will, counterintuitively, make traditional college even more valuable. The traditional undergraduate experience is about more than just courses and skills, after all, so colleges will just need to do a better job of communicating why those who can afford it should pay for the whole package.
“I don’t believe that you can train someone in core cognitive skills in a way that is totally unbundled,” he says. “We think that universities, at the end of the day, will be the winners here.”
