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Higher education administrators and service providers are rising to the challenge like never before. New knowledge and skills are needed throughout a lifetime, and our legacy college and university systems are being rapidly re-modeled from a time-sequenced, single-degree curricula to a flexible, learner centric model that accommodates the needs of continuous learning and the 24/7 knowledge economy. While traditional structures of supply-side thinking and value-preservation through scarcity and limited access may have been the norm for the past 100 years, in the past few years higher education has undergone a complete transformation that includes:
- The learner (student-customer) is in the center, not the institution or education provider
- Learning and credentialing are unbundled from the traditional campus-based university product to serve ongoing learning needs
- Learning services are delivered through the Web and can scale to serve thousands of continuous learners
- Educational value is increasingly created through ubiquity and open access, not scarcity and limited access
- 24/7 student services, technical support, and academic support are the cornerstones for managing strategic functions that include retention, recruitment, and overall user satisfaction
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Source: The Paradox of 24/7 Access in Higher Education
