This Is How Universities Can Survive After Covid-19

Beyond Credentials

Further education is horrifically expensive. Here in the UK, we charge every undergraduate nearly £10k per year…and that’s before you factor in any living/studying/occasionally-having-fun costs.

While the graph below is based on US data, you can see that between 1996 and 2016 education (and textbooks) stick out as increasingly awful deals. It’s reasonable to ask: have textbooks or undergraduate courses become twice as good over the last 25 years? No, of course not.*

*If anyone thinks these price increases have coincided with 2x better education, I’d be a willing listener.

Disruption everywhere

I think we were all aware we weren’t getting a great deal from our universities before. But the impact of Covid-19 has now made that even clearer.

As Scott Galloway (a blog worth signing up to) puts it, the value you get out of your undergrad is as follows:

Coronavirus will continue to threaten the value of both the Education and Experience parts of this formula. There’s no campus experience right now and as more of the world goes remote, we can assume there’ll be less of that experience in the future too.

What’s left? Do universities become credentials factories? Are we prepared to see education solely as an engine for professional mobility?

The university perspective

Academic institutions will not be blind to these trends. Disruption to this academic year has been near-total, so they’ll know that their online offering needs to improve. They need software and services that enhance Education and Experience, otherwise, their business models will be in grave danger.

Thinking about the more positive effects, more online learning will presumably mean lower prices. Those who previously couldn’t afford it might now be able to get a degree. If universities want to make the most of this opportunity for inclusivity, they’ll need to position for this market too.

The Opportunity

Businesses can step in and fill this void. We’ve recently seen Riff and Echo win early-stage deals for products that augment professional video-conferencing. That same style of opportunity exists for entrepreneurs wanting to tackle the education space.

One area that comes to mind is this: replicating campus-centric opportunities to meet-discuss-debate and think critically beyond course material (i.e. the real magic and intangible value of education, the experience).

What might a startup in this space look like?

Certainly, a business that made use of social tech, yet perhaps with content seeded from the lecturer or the university. For example, we’re invested in UpLearn who produce bespoke content to support syllabus requirements at A-Level. Perhaps a new startup could do the same for undergraduates? The best go-to-market strategy here might be through individual academics or students themselves.

Of course, there will be many opportunities beyond this too. It’s clear that university-level education is about to change dramatically.

If you’re working on something in this space, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch with me here.