Learning in Lockdown

As of this writing, we’re past Memorial Day still locked down, with 93% of U.S. schools physically closed through the summer. Administrators, teachers, and parents are hacking ways to wrap up the spring semester from a distance. The education industry seems aware that lots of things aren’t working and everyone is salvaging what they can and getting an abruptly minimized Spring session behind them. This all seems appropriate and the efforts should be lauded given the circumstances. Pandemic contingency plans aren’t built into school districts or private institutions (though they certainly will be now).  

Before I go any further, let me be very clear. There’s much lost in school having to go online. I don’t believe the four-year on-campus undergrad degree is a prerequisite , though it is a profound and singular life experience for those who matriculate. Across all levels of education, the relationships forged in focused, often collaborative, learning together will suffer and that’s tragic. So, I’m not overlooking those losses nor am I trying to spin an ongoing terrible situation into one that’s better than pre-virus normalcy. It feels like anyone’s guess what happens in the fall.

However, the coming summer months, especially with no summer campus programs, provide planning time for schools to function adequately online. If we’re all still at home come September, schools should have intentional, comprehensive, and capable systems and processes in place for educating online. It seems more than likely that this will be the case. If we’re in quarantine, it’s a guarantee. If, for instance, large gatherings and live events are still suspended, it seems unlikely that parents will want to send their kids back to daycare, daily school, or college dorms.   

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In his excellent piece on the history of Ed Tech, Martin Weller writes “there has always been something of a year-zero mentality in the field”. While there are many fast-growing EdTech startups in the market today, the majority have found their fit outside the established stages of formal, full-time education, private and public. Over centuries of growth, private education has become a colossus of recurring revenue with a perpetually restocked pool of new and returning students all willing to pay for the service – via parents or loans – for years. Perceived as gateways to future success, private schools can charge ever more expensive tuitions without reducing applicant demand. A case of the innovator’s dilemma, there’s no motivation for privates to innovate. Incentives are most misaligned with online learning providers that deliver quality education in a much smaller package. Any threat to their perceived value, and so their acceptable price, has been a non-starter on the private side. On the public side, the dynamics are inverted. Consistently underfunded, public school coffers are emptied just trying to keep status quo academic operations afloat. Furthermore, school districts employ myriad, non-standard processes for new vendor approvals across various administrative levels by state.

Increasingly, it seems the safest option for continuity in the fall is for schools to determine how to digitize and go online before September. The drastic constraints of an extended national lockdown manifest one of the few situations in which ed tech and online learning receive broad adoption, sustained usage, and meaningful buy-in from students, instructors, institutions, administrations, school districts, and parents simultaneously. A lockdown semester can be an immense proving ground for online education and a lifeline for the industry. On a partner relationship level, with schools directing their services to web-video, much clearer and likely expedited tracks will be laid for relevant service providers to engage with the institutional stakeholders. Where previously there have been administrative buffers obscuring these connections, now everyone -- from department heads, heads of schools, and anyone involved in budgetary purse strings -- will be directly involved in product evaluation and onboarding. The same should be true for executed contracts, accounts receivable and real revenue vs. free trials and MOUs of the past. Of course, bookable recurring revenue commitments and contract lengths probably won’t extend beyond the first semester of the 2020-21 academic year, with some schools eager for outs in the event of campuses reopening. Nonetheless, it’s a step forward for ed tech-online providers to be approved and paid by institutions.

Lastly, on the real integration progress, there’s more value than meets the action in relevant education users – namely teachers, professors, and students – actually signing up for and creating active profiles with various online education products. Ghost accounts are all too common for services that aren’t free and aren’t required for school or work. For the sake of measurable usage as well as reengagement , honest and intentional user signups matter. Obviously, the administrative categories above are pretty mundane but they’re not insignificant given that each one has been a barrier to market penetration to date.

This summer will be a heavy lift for academia taking distribution to the cloud and shifting to digital tools to communicate and collaborate. They’ll need to digitize course materials and syllabi, potentially shift on-campus financial aid to broadband wifi subsidies, and focus on test systems for virtual attendance, participation, and evaluation. Recognizing that some fields of study will transition more easily than others, there’s much to be determined running up to September. If robust plans are conscientiously made by and for all participants, led by institutions intent on making the most out of a semester in quarantine, the fall semester could create the first real-world datasets for formal, online education at true scale. Completing a semester online-only can thus serve a clear and present value to enrolled students and also inform future years of discovery and development in ed tech and online learning.

A priority for all schools not related to new technology adoption is recalculation of their tuition for a semester online. On a practical level, certain core costs of operating a boarding or day school/college don’t exist with campuses closed. Two glaring examples — Student Housing and Student Meal Plan — accounted for 34% of undergrad tuition paid in the U.S. last year. Students will live and eat at home if lockdowns continue into the fall. Particularly during a devastating economic environment, it would be appalling for any school to expect parents to pay twice for these services in a pandemic. Lawsuits are already piling up from parents seeking partial tuition reimbursements for the abridged Spring semester. That’s distressing heading into a potential full semester at home. At a minimum, tuition costs normally incurred due to students’ physical presence at school should not be charged this fall. It won’t silence all the haters, but proactively offering a 1/3 tuition discount this coming semester would be a strong place for educational institutions to start in leading the way through a transparent shift to pandemic education online.

Regarding other cost conflicts, there’s undoubtedly a gray area in interpreting the dollar value of formal academic instruction. There are, however, ways to redirect existing tuition line items to improve the likelihood of success for digital classes. High fidelity wireless broadband and low latency digital conferencing will both be crucial. Many student and teacher homes don’t have access to either right now. Failure to adjust tuition costs seems like the surest way for the education industry to stumble out of the blocks ahead of a quarantined fall semester. With cooperative participation essential now, the prospect of schools squeezing customers for legacy pricing while their services are constrained risks alienating student bodies and infuriating  parents. There’s more on the line for institutions then a single bad year excused by coronavirus. Forever losing whole graduating classes of alumni to the annual giving “Do Not Call” lists could compromise future endowments. More widespread scrutiny of tuition cost versus real value could damage application rates.

With louder voices saying that it’s time to build better institutions, this fall can be exactly that for education. The industry can emerge from quarantine with a new, complementary model for school that’s both more flexible and more durable, safer, and available to many more students. The entire industry can successfully complete a semester online. It should then reasonably follow that online learning post-COVID is seen through a more accepting, approving lens. If it’s still seen as subpar then by its own rubric every enrolled student will be seen as ‘less educated’ in 2021 than their predecessors. Should they all repeat? As important as building better institutions is societal acknowledgement of their quality. It takes nothing away from the value of traditional schools and colleges. However if, in their absence, online education is still perceived as just a bandaid needed to fill a pandemic vacuum, we won’t take that leap. Until we reward excellent online education with the same legitimacy and prestige that we hand in-person graduates along with their diplomas, it’s more likely that this fall plays out as a strange pandemic blip rather than a course-correcting watershed for all levels of learning.