Page 2 - The Managed Learning Environment Strategic Gain_

Online Learning: Strategy or Sophistry?
“Don’t start from here.”

“Top managers spend more time and energy on implementing
strategies than choosing them. Strategies that are well chosen
will fail because of poor implementation. Getting the
organisational structures right for a particular strategy is thus
critical to practical success.”

R. Whittington; What is Strategy and does it matter? P112

Higher education is an industry and one that is currently experiencing the
vagaries of a turbulent environment ( Quote 1). Where once ‘Say’s Law’ held
sway and educational institutions thrived on the basis of predictable funding
and student enrolment with little or no competition today, they face an
uncertain future where the price of failure could mean closure. They are facing
a crisis in both their external and internal environments. Externally they are
confronted by massification of education and greater competitive pressures
whilst internally they face the dilemma of increasing customer demands,
diminishing resources and culture shock. “Although the government has
dropped its target of 50 per cent of under 30-year-olds going to university by
2010, it remains committed to "moving towards" that figure” (Boone, 2006).

Higher education is a mature
industry in which there seems
likely to be only slow growth in
traditional, core markets.
NAPIER UNIVERSITY
STRATEGIC PLAN 2002-
2006
Quote 1

How educational institutional management balances these opposing factors is
the crux of survival. These institutions are today the equivalent of any
business organisation. They are run on a business philosophy that is closer to
market economics than to philanthropic ideals. Where the individual lecturer
may hold to the ideals of education as a vocational choice and a right of
everyone the institutions view it in terms of cost benefit analysis where
resources are finite and competition for customers (students) is fierce and
becoming stronger. For the sake of argument a distinction is made here
between the terms consumer and customer. When the percentage figure of
the population attending university was a single digit students were to a great
extent passive consumers of the educational service. Today however, where
government “Medium-term funding plans suggest that by 2008, the proportion
of young people will rise slightly to about 45.5%.”(Boone, 2006) attending
university, students are far more aggressive and active in the pursuit of their
educational purchases. They have become customers who are more
discriminating in their choice of educational institution and mode of learning,
and as such are voting with their feet.