As we enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities in Malaysia and, more particularly, the owners of private institutions, have finally decided to change their teaching and learning model or, more accurately, their business model in a last-ditch effort to survive.
In common with their peers all around the world, Malaysian universities have been crushed by a year of falling student income and fixed costs. Our research projected that 97% of private higher education institutions are likely to have made a loss this year and that 51% of those in the red could become insolvent.
Campus lockdowns have forced all universities in Malaysia into online teaching and millions of dollars and faculty hours are being spent to convert traditional course material, assessments and notes into online formats as quickly as possible.
The economics of this model are simple. Once the core course content has been created and uploaded, it can be used for many years with minimal maintenance. It is almost always of the minimum standard required to comply with regulations and there is rarely any appetite to improve it.
Faculty are often exhausted from the whole exercise and are mostly not paid extra for creating or subsequently improving the material, so it is likely to remain in its minimally converted format for many years to come.
Some universities aim to sell these programmes through overseas franchises as online distance learning certificates in China or neighbouring developing markets in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. In many cases they use only local-language teachers because the students often have very poor English.
With this model, costs for universities become minimal, which as a result, in particular due to competition, forces the free economic zone to reduce the cost of tuition. Because of this, it is believed that those institutions that will adopt this model risk losing the title of “university” and become simple printers of certificates.
This is a suicidal mission for universities in Malaysia. The market will reduce the price of certificates to their lowest cost due to almost unlimited competition from the best programs, especially from abroad.
Teaching and learning are extremely complex processes, the value of which is achieved precisely through social interaction. Learning can be improved through technology, but in both blended and hybrid learning, personal interaction remains vital.