Москва, 
Disruptive Challenges to the Universities. How to respond?
Senior lecturer at HSE / Managing director, National Rating Agency
On June 21, 2021, 2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), one of the leading companies in education technology, acquired all assets from Harvard and MIT-founded edX. This $800 million deal include EdX’s brand, around 3,500 digital courses and the website (with 50 million learners). This deal causes disruptive changes for “traditional” colleges and universities.Universities should stop resist the changes but respond by rethinking and unbundling their value chain. This can be done by creating beneficial ecosystems between colleges and EdTech companies.
One successful example of unfolding of such ecosystem is the recent launch of degree program Master of Business Analytics by the School of Finance at HSE at Coursera platform. This program provides cutting-edge approaches to new finance meeting the challenges to secure integration of non-financial capital’s into financial analytics and functions, incorporating their measurement, metrics in decision-making and reports, their interpretation in terms of risk, materiality, connectivity and consistency.
Vijay Govindarajan, Anup Srivastava, and Luminita Enache in their fascinating article “What the edX Acquisition Means for the Future of Higher Education” published at Harvard Business Review (HBR)[1] website, argue that these disruptive changes are not only underpinned by the progress in the technologies but also shifts in society and business caused by Covid-19 pandemic. EdTech companies demonstrated that it is possible to provide education without all of the massive brick-and-mortar infrastructure of traditional schools. This alternative online teaching is providing better experience for students due to access to the best courses and the best professors around the world as well as asynchronous virtual learning. As a result, the new education model of providing high-quality education at low cost has born. My recent conversations with students have shown that they appreciate online learning because of the possibility of combining work and study and even saving time by not arriving to the university. The latter recently has become one of the most important considerations, especially in megapolises such as Moscow.
How “traditional” universities shall response to these challenges? The authors form HBR think that the solution is to stop resisting these changes but to adapt to the new reality. Colleges and universities shall reconsider their vertical integration model, unbundle their value chain and create ecosystems with EdTech companies. In particular, universities shall retain in house their core competencies such as research expertise or teaching resources but outsource the areas where EdTechs possess the superior competencies. These competencies include the content, the platforms and technologies including artificial and augmented reality. This will help to “expand the pie” by attracting price-sensitive students, erase geographical and even geopolitical boundaries and enlarging the course offering. Simultaneously, the collaborative ecosystems will help universities to retain control over significant part of the value chain. The authors of HBR are sure that these steps will help universities to gain a significant portion of income that would otherwise steadily migrate toward EdTech companies. Conversely, retaining these incomes will help universities to further driver their EdTech initiatives and experience.
How we, in Higher School of Economics in general and in School of Finance, in particular are responding to the above-mentioned challenges? Given the young age of our university, limited funding from the state and medium income level of our students the hybrid model is the best solution. In this model the available resources must be optimally divided between the traditional and high cost on-campus model and low-cost asynchronous virtual learning with the co-operation to EdTech leaders.
The best example of such ecosystem is the recent launch of Master of Business Analytics Program by School of Finance at HSE. This program is fully online and provided on Coursera platform. This HSE-Coursera collaboration is fruitful and mutually beneficial. HSE contributes its brand, cutting-edge curriculum, reputable teaching resources as well as professional and international network. Coursera on the other hand contributes its global reach, the platform and the technologies as well as its vast marketing and promotion resources. This program is really unique. It offers approaches to intellectual capital measurement, metrics and reports, their interpretation in terms of materiality, connectivity and consistency. The Fall 2021 cohort applications are now open. The application deadline is 27 August, 2021 for Russian and non-Russian citizens.