If more EdTech leviathans become unicorns, does it mean that education is entering the age of leviacorns? This million-dollar question involving two mythological creations is in search of a realistic answer as the contours of education undergo a tsunamic change conceived by digitisation and mid-wifed by the pandemic. The global blitzscaling of EdTech enterprises along with a multi-barrelled policy explosion of online education has together created an unprecedented buzz making government agencies and EdTech companies go in search of a middle path. In this search for a middle path, will genuine education be mindlessly pushed to the ‘platform’?
Globally renowned market intelligence portal Holon IQ estimates that there are 32 unicorn EdTech companies in the world as of January 3, 2022, and together they have raised over $27 billion with a combined valuation close to Rs100 billion-plus. Leading the unicorn valuation pack is India’s BYJU’s with an estimated value of $21 billion and in the distant company of five more Indian EdTechs in this global list of unicorns. As much as the EdTechs are ‘platformising’ the models of engagement in the education space, the regulators are trying to streamline the education value chain at all levels—school to college.
Indian EdTech companies like BYJU’s, Unacademy, upGrad, Vedantu, etc formed the India EdTech Consortium assuring a common code of conduct that puts affordable education and protecting online learner interests as their common denominator. The education statutory bodies like AICTE, UGC, etc have also issued advisories with regard to questionable practices by certain universities in the name of online degree programmes. In the middle of self-regulation and statutory regulation is education at its crossroads pointing towards two extreme directions —personalised learning offered by corporatised EdTechs and socially transformative purpose of brick and mortar institutions, both undoubtedly delivering substantial learning outcomes.
There is no doubt that education is always a growth market and is expected to touch $10 trillion globally by 2030. Borrowing from a senior academic’s humorous quote “the demand for education in India will always grow as wives want their kids to be more intelligent than their husbands.” This global demand will have a significant Indian push, India being one of the main driving forces. Policymakers must be mindful of the fact that the aggregate demand comes from various elements of the educational value chain and not only through online teaching-learning classrooms in school and college education. This is emphasised by Holon IQ through its Higher Education Digital Capability Framework (HEDCP), which is an open-source 16-point framework identifying key capabilities that create a pathway for digital higher education.
This framework was prepared after an iterative engagement with an informed community of higher education professionals, and identifies four connected dimensions in a learner’s life cycle—Demand & Discovery (DD), Learning Design (LD), Learner Experience (LX) and Work & Lifelong Learning (WL). These four dimensions address 16 domains through 70+ capabilities that touch various milestones of a learner beginning from Enrolment to Expertise-building to Experiencing creativity to Eternal and life-long learning. These 4Es represent a comity of different transactions in the learning cycle that can be digitised and delivered online. The role of EdTechs and brick and mortar institutions are both critical in this multi-dimensional endeavour and more important is the role of policymakers who have to prepare a road map with clarity.
The third wave of Covid is predominantly pushing the education ecosystem into the online space and normalcy should pull it back to face-to-face space. It is, however, imperative that statutory and regulatory bodies in the Ministry of Education put in place a balancing act that not only restores the importance of face-to-face education but also does not undermine the importance of digital and online education. Initiatives like National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT) have to be analysed and prioritised through the HEDCP framework and all existing regulations reviewed for reform to ensure that the power of both brick and mortar and bits and bytes are coherently synergised. When normalcy is restored, there is going to be revenge tourism, revenge shopping, revenge entertainment, etc. We need to get ready with clarity for revenge academics —both inside the campus and online. Are we ready?
S Vaidhyasubramaniam
vaidhya@sastra.edu
Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University