Franchised Blended Learning Programmes

A Model for the Future of Higher Education

Simon Collyer

“Over the next 10-15 years, the current public

university model in Australia will prove unviable in all

but a few cases.”

Franchised Blended Learning Programmes

Higher education franchising seems to be a growing phenomenon.

As with all commercial investment in higher education, there are

significant possibilities for problems. So far, the franchisers seem to

be working on the McDon­alds principle. It would be interesting to

ask why no one is looking at the educational equivalent of

Intercontinen­tal Hotels—aiming at a higher-end market

segment-—as a better model.

Think what happened to music distribution, newspapers, etc. The

key difference between music and education is that education will

likely involve a face to face component, and a local content

component, lending itself to the franchise model over the fully

centralised model.

Franchising: The McDonaldization of Higher Education Philip G. Altbach (Winter 2012)

John Cavanaugh and Christine Cavanaugh (2006) Franchising Higher Education

Lessons form the past

There were few signs of trouble in the newspaper industry before a

critical mass was reached (in online readership), and then a very

dramatic drop in revenue. This has happened in a number of other

industries of course, most notoriously in the music industry.

Lessons from the past

..after they’ve lost 88% of their stock value, dramatically

cut costs and staff, they belatedly moved to an online

model to stay afloat.

The Model

There will only be three types of programme delivered by a University…

• Franchisee - Local delivery of a course/programme written and

owned by another University that is an acknowledged worldwide

brand/leader in that course. There will be less than 50 course

franchise author/owners for each programme. The owner will

collaborate to customise courses for different environments. E.g.

James Cook has a chance to be one of the top 50 Marine Biology

franchise owners, if they move now.

• Franchiser: The most lucrative but hardest to achieve: Creation

(and delivery) of an internationally franchised course/programme

actually written and owned by the University itself, with a market

leading reputation, demanded by employers and employees.

• Custom: The least common & least lucrative: Delivery of a custom

local course/programme that has little international or national

franchise potential, for the local market. Least number of students.

Drivers

• Globalisation and the internet have already resulted in

Universities competing against each other globally, and will lead to

dramatic rationalisation, and improvements in economies of scale in

delivery, and larger investments in quality control and marketing.

• An internationally mobile workforce will drive employers to

increasingly prefer courses that have a global reputation and quality

standard (over a local unknown university)

• International Marketing will drive employees to increasingly prefer

courses that have a global reputation and ‘known good’ quality

standard. The quality standard will not just be tied to the academic

reputation of the author. But significantly to marketing, pedagogy,

and quality control. The new top 50 university brands may therefore

be different to the current top 50, based on whoever adopts this

model first, and establishes a reputation for their franchise.

• Rationalisation in a global market means it is untenable that

10,000 unis will be creating or certifying ‘Introduction to Business

101’ when it can be done by 50 unis. There will be rationalisation.

Strategy

• Franchiser? Identify the key areas you can compete

internationally on, and build an internationally competitive course

or programme, and aggressively franchise it for delivery around

the world, certifying other unis.

• Franchisee? Where you are not a world leader, seek out best of

breed courses authors by other Universities, to deliver more

efficiently and at a higher quality.

• Local Needs? Identify what courses might be required to service

just the local market, that are unlikely to be delivered under the

franchise model.

Franchiser

A franchise course is one that would typically :

• be written by a university known for leading research in the field;

• have a higher number of professional designers;

• involve local collaborations to customise to different markets . I

understand for instance that US education providers are doing

this in Nursing for the Australian market;

• have a bunch of people marketing it, and certifying delivery at

other unis, to maintain reputation and quality control and therefore

marketability.. to the extent that students looking for a course in

Miami for instance would demand to study a well known

internationally branded course at Miami University.

Change Plan

Identify the schools that are capable of being truly world class,

delivering programmes that internationalise well.

Partner and Merge: Find partner institutions and start with a contra

deals with another respected Universities where we will deliver their

ABC programme if they deliver our XYZ programme, and grow from

there. This could also be achieved by amalgamating the schools of

two institutions together. e.g. Marine Biology with James Cooks into

one school to create world programmes.

Design: Inject world class blended learning ed designer resources

to that school.

Certification: In the same way as Microsoft certifies its training

providers, the school would have to create a process to certify the

instructors at many other institutions (100s) that will deliver the

programme. The same process would be applied to local

instructors.

Marketing: Build a marketing capability to aggressively sell the

course to other institutions as a package with the advantage it

being: world class course materials based on world leading

research, using best practice teaching.

Change Plan…

Certify the physical environment too: The physical environment

for the F2F part of blended learning at each franchisee would have

to meet minimum requirements, including mostly collaborative

rooms (depending on the programme), and reflect the fact that

students increasingly work and therefore are time poor and have

less need for cultural experiences, but more need for on the job

placements. E.g. They may be in town.

Organisational Structure: The school would separate research

from teaching staff. Teaching staff would be highly professional

educators, certified in the same way as the franchisees, similar to

the Phoenix model (but we are talking higher overall quality

though).

Infrastructure: All of the above would be supported by a central IT

infrastructure to host the online part of what of a programme that

should have 100-500K students around the world.

The Transition Period…

• Traditional universities may be bypassed as partners for

delivering franchises, as too inefficient. Likely a modern blended

course would require much more modern delivery environments

and organisations (online and off). Actual test delivery could be

outsourced to organisations like Prometric.

• Traditional universities that are not preparing now to be in the

‘top 50’ author creator franchise owners in 3 years, will probably

be left behind, and have to chose between delivering type 2 or 3

courses (requiring dramatic changes), or contracting to pure

research model through loss of students.

• The best model for could therefore be a combination of type1

and 3 courses along with more focused research.

• The eventual top 50 are the ones that are quietly and frantically

building their new business now, and not just experimenting.

Are you ready for this?