Tag: Infrastructure

  • A blanket removal of funding for level 7 apprenticeships will damage government plans to boost infrastructure

    A blanket removal of funding for level 7 apprenticeships will damage government plans to boost infrastructure

    Level 7 apprenticeship growth has been one of the higher education success stories of recent years.

    Our technical education system is weak by international standards, yet high level technical skills will be vital to the urban planning and infrastructure improvement ambitions of our current government, while at the same time boosting social mobility by allowing those who can’t afford to study on a traditional course at university the opportunity to gain a postgraduate qualification.

    It therefore would appear counterintuitive that the government has been hinting that many if not all level 7 apprenticeships could have their eligibility for levy funding removed, couched in language of prioritising spending on growing lower level and new “foundation” apprenticeships.

    This proposed redistribution fails to acknowledge that progression benefits apprentices at all levels, as those moving into senior roles create new vacancies or advancement opportunities via the positions they vacate.

    Build baby build?

    Nowhere is this clearer than in the built environment sector. The UK’s housing crisis is the pivotal issue that this government has promised to tackle. Their promise to build 1.5 million new homes by 2030 is ambitious – it has been labelled unachievable by the CEO of the UK’s largest housebuilding company because of skills shortages, and most councils are reporting that it won’t be possible to achieve.

    If such a goal is to be accomplished, it will demand highly skilled professionals to streamline planning processes, deliver housing projects, and support regional infrastructure development.

    At my institution, London South Bank University (LSBU), 70 per cent of our level 7 apprentices are on the chartered town planner standard. On a day-to-day basis they address planning bottlenecks and ensure that housing and infrastructure projects meet the various regulatory and environmental standards. Only last month the first level 7 chartered town planner apprentices in England graduated successfully from LSBU having joined their employer with no prior experience in the planning sector aged 18 after completing school.

    Over half of the employers we work with at LSBU on level 7 apprenticeships are local authorities. Our apprentices enable councils to deliver projects in the wake of increased demand and reintroduced mandatory housing targets. The suggestion that, as employers, local authorities should step in and pay for the level 7 apprenticeships themselves is fanciful. The legacy of austerity has left one in four councils expecting to apply for an emergency government bailout in the next two years. If the Treasury decides to remove levy funding, employers will not be able to fill the gap.

    If the UK hopes to comply with the Future Homes Standard and the National Retrofit Strategy V2, more highly trained architects are required. The profession is in high demand but short supply – it had been on the Shortage Occupation List until the previous government abolished the list last April.

    Level 7 architect apprentices, of which LSBU currently train 78, design energy-efficient buildings and support urban regeneration. They contribute to both public housing schemes and private sector developments by driving innovation in sustainable construction and are already supporting the government’s ambition to retrofit five million homes by 2029.

    Growth ambitions

    In addition to their clear role in developing infrastructure, level 7 apprenticeships are vital for social mobility. They open doors for individuals from underrepresented groups, in part because apprentices earn whilst they learn and aren’t put off by the prospect of incurring student debt. A true leveller of the playing field, they provide excellent career progression opportunities and higher earnings potential. A greater proportion of our level 7 apprentices are from black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds (55 per cent) and are female (52 per cent) than those studying apprenticeships at lower levels.

    Most of our level 7 apprentices are under the age of 25, so the characterisation that they are simply the reserve of older learners is unfounded. For example, at LSBU, we provide tailored pathways for young learners to embark on higher level apprenticeships in regionally relevant sectors from level 2 to level 7 through our unique group model which includes London South Bank Sixth Form (a new technically focused sixth form academy concept) and London South Bank Technical College (the first technical college for a generation).

    Level 7 apprenticeships are central to this government’s ambitions around growth, sustainability, and equality of opportunity. Despite recent increases in uptake, they have actually accounted for a slightly smaller proportion of the total apprenticeship budget over the last couple of years.

    Every standard addresses unique challenges and supports sector-specific needs. A blanket removal of funding from level 7 apprenticeships will risk planning reforms and housing developments. At the very least, apprenticeships in the ten sectors prioritised by Skills England as growth-driving need to be protected from Treasury cuts.

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  • Online Learning Infrastructure: Assessing the Current State

    Online Learning Infrastructure: Assessing the Current State

    How Insight and Evaluation Can Lead to Execution

    Let’s set the stage. You’re a sharp, focused higher education leader staring down the realities of expanding your online and hybrid learning programs. You’ve got big goals: running your online operations in-house, owning the process, and driving growth on your terms. 

    This is where Online Growth Enablement comes in. This isn’t a fancy buzzword. It’s the real work behind sustainable change. It’s the boots-on-the-ground understanding of exactly where you are today so you can figure out how to move forward tomorrow. 

    At Archer, we do this every day — rolling up our sleeves and digging deep to map out the real picture of an institution’s online learning infrastructure. Because, let’s be honest. The only way to grow is to start with the truth about your current state and your place within the landscape of the communities you serve with your programs.

    Why Your Current State Matters 

    Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum — especially not in online learning. Enabling the growth of your online learning infrastructure takes coordination, collaboration, and a whole lot of buy-in from every corner of your university. Marketing, tech, enrollment, financial aid, the registrar, faculty, leadership — if they’re not on the same page as you, you can’t successfully move forward. Period.  

    Driving real growth starts with taking an unflinching look at where you stand today. Questions you should be asking about your online operations include: 

    This isn’t about a vague, feel-good assessment from 50,000 feet up. It’s about getting into the weeds. Because, until you understand the inner workings of your current infrastructure, you’re not going to build anything sustainable. You’ll just be putting a fresh coat of paint on a crumbling foundation. And that’s not going to cut it in the long run.

    The Power of Deep Insights

    Let’s take a look at a real-world example of why a close examination of your current online learning infrastructure matters. One of our partner universities was taking 14 days to review and process the transcripts of students applying to their online programs. This might work fine for a traditional on-campus program with two or three big start dates a year, but for an online program, the game changes. To stay competitive, you need five or six start dates annually. And that 14-day turnaround? For our partner, it meant missing out on dozens of potential enrollments.  

    Fixing this issue wasn’t about throwing money at the problem. It was about setting a clear benchmark and making it happen. We worked with the institution to rethink its processes, reassign its teams’ responsibilities, and streamline every single step of its transcript review.  

    The effectiveness of every touchpoint you have with a potential student and every handoff between your admissions, financial aid, and academic advising teams affects your ability to deliver an overall positive student experience. Deep operational insights aren’t just nice to have; they’re the key to uncovering bottlenecks so you can clear the way for real, measurable growth. 

    How We Help: The Growth Enablement Assessment

    At Archer, we don’t do guesswork. We help our partners make sense of the current state of their online learning infrastructure through our Growth Enablement Assessment — a no-stone-left-unturned look at every department and operational variable. From enrollment workflows to marketing execution, we get into the details that others overlook to help you figure out where you are and make a plan for where you want to be.

    Our approach is anchored in our Good, Better, Best methodology:  

    This isn’t just an audit. It’s a road map. By pinpointing exactly where you stand and where you need to go, we equip you with the insights and strategies to move your online learning operations from functional to thriving. 

    Why It’s All Worth It

    Yes, this takes time. Yes, it’s hard work. But the payoff is undeniable.  

    Fully understanding the current state of your online learning infrastructure isn’t just a box to check — it’s the foundation for every initiative that follows. It gives you the clarity to enhance not only your online learning programs but also the overall health and effectiveness of your institution.  

    When you commit to this process, you’re building something bigger than just operational efficiency. You’re creating alignment across departments, fostering innovation, and embedding collaboration and continuous improvement into your institution’s culture. When every team is in sync, bottlenecks disappear, every touchpoint matters, and your processes deliver on the promise of a strong student experience.  

    It’s not just worth it. It’s transformative.  If you’re ready to take the first step toward long-term success and scalability, contact Archer Education. Let’s build the online learning infrastructure your institution deserves, together.

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    John Goodwin

    John Goodwin is Archer Education’s EVP of Online Growth Enablement. Archer revolutionizes the student experience by supporting partners through change, helping institutions achieve sustainable growth while fostering self-sufficiency.

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  • Deep Internationalization & Infrastructure – GlobalHigherEd

    Deep Internationalization & Infrastructure – GlobalHigherEd

    Note: this entry is also available via Inside Higher Ed here.

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    Over the last several years, it has been interesting to see the development of some new and relatively deep collaborative models of institutional (or ‘commercial,’ using GATS parlance) presence in territories outside of universities’ main campuses. These new models tend to be research- and graduate or professional education-oriented, with relatively strong interdisciplinary inclinations. Some examples include:

    These new models are formal joint ventures (in full, or in a significant way) vs stand-alone branch campuses; they involve significant medium-term commitment and investment; they are associated with the development of new purpose-designed buildings and broader institutional infrastructure; they involve the creation of new governance and organizational structures; they involve a concerted effort to produce innovative forms of new knowledge, impact, and sometimes service; and they are located in global cities.

    While there are 250+ branch campuses around the world, including somewhat similar models (e.g., the campuses at Education City in Qatar), as well as dozens of international university research ventures (IURVs), the above developments are not as singularly research-oriented as those described by the Georgia Tech team several of us engaged with at a 2016 workshop on IURVs. Rather, the above examples differ from typical branch campuses and IURVs given their graduate/professional education focus, their intertwined research and education agendas, and especially the de jure nature of the joint venture structure that exists on multiple levels.

    Why has this relatively deep form of internationalization emerged and fueled the development of new forms of higher ed infrastructure? It’s certainly the opposite of the ‘ghost MOU’ approach to internationalization where symbolic representations of internationalization are signed but lead to little but the creation of document after document buried in international unit filing cabinets.

    For some ideas on thinking through the complex nature of deep internationalization associated with these developments, I think it’s worth turning to Gabriel Hawawini‘s recent book The Internationalization of Higher Education and Business Schools: A Critical Review (Springer, 2016). Hawawini is a professor of finance and former dean of INSEAD (2000-2006). He is the key architect of INSEAD’s highly successful transformation into a genuine international business school via a strategic planning process that spurred on INSEAD to refashion its organizational structure in a manner that led to to the development of commercial presence in Asia (in Singapore) and the Middle East (in Abu Dhabi). Now while INSEAD did not adopt the above joint venture via physical infrastructure model, the thought process behind their multi-campus model is still relevant, hence my argument that leaders and analysts interested in options for deep internationalization strategies should read Hawawini’s book. I also referred to aspects his argument in a recent course I taught on Cities, Universities and the Development Process and found that the framework Hawawini developed is clear and coherent to those new to the internationalization of higher education debate. Of course his is a business school-derived perspective but it’s a remarkably clear headed one that can be usefully used to foment debate and decision making regardless of the nature of the higher education institution as it is derived out of an actual (vs hypothetical) strategic planning process that led to positive and sustainable outcomes for INSEAD (and Singapore). And it’s a book that, despite the title, is more about the internationalization of higher education institutions than business schools.

    What I like about Hawawini’s argument is that he wears an institutional political economy hat when thinking about internationalization of higher education. By this I mean he is cognizant of the role of different types of firms and states, as well as variable state-society-economy relations, in shaping the modern knowledge economy. This is a geographically uneven economy, and a very urban one (a theme raised last week in an interesting article by Emily Badger in the New York Times). Given this, and given Hawawini’s role as a higher education decision-maker and leader, he confronts what this evolving context means for higher education institutions that are grappling with the internationalization challenge.

    In this short book, Hawawini first outlines what he defines as internationalization (p. 5):

    Internationalization is an ongoing process of change whose objective is to integrate the institution and its key stakeholders (its students and faculty) into the emerging global knowledge economy.

    Note the integrative element to this definition, as well as the ’emerging’ dimension to the global economy. Hawawini then discusses the academic and economic motives for internationalization, and as well as the obstacles shaping how the internationalization of higher education can be realized. He then moves on to delineate the organizational model options to realize internationalization. These options can be visualized (see below from a 2014 MOOC I taught with Susan L. Robertson) which helps, I find, when facilitating debate with diverse audiences (from students through to council/board members) about the critically important relationship between motives (why internationalize), mechanisms (how to internationalize), and structural change (how to institutionalize internationalization).

    Further to the above models, Hawawini makes the critically important point that the dominant model (the Import model) adopted by most Western universities, including public research universities, is becoming increasingly problematic with respect to the production of regionally and globally relevant knowledge, not to mention educational programming. Why? Economic growth, infrastructure, global production/value chains, and so on are binding together cities and regions, with some regions (e.g., Pacific Asia, the Gulf) developing as much more important and powerful spaces in their own right. Thus the creation of solely- or jointly-developed institutional infrastructure in key nodal cities is required to adequately understand what is happening within these regions, how cities and regions are being bound together, and what is needed to develop and circulate relevant forms of knowledge. As Hawawini puts it (pp. 25-26):

    An alternative view is that the global economy is being transformed into an increasingly complex network of interconnected but different economic areas each of which is endowed with the capacity to innovate and create knowledge. According to this multipolar view of the world, knowledge is increasingly being dispersed throughout the globe. In this case learning from the world becomes an imperative, particularly for research-driven higher education institutions. This is why higher education institutions should be present abroad: they need to acquire that dispersed knowledge and meld it together to create new ideas and more advanced knowledge.

    Shifts in the spatial structure of economic activity, as well as in emerging growth patterns, are creating new regional economic geographies and political economies and if this is the case, sitting back and resting upon past laurels is not enough IF a university seeks to become a “truly global institution” (p. 76). Committed and aspiring global institutions need to refashion their organizational structures to ensure they can realize their visions and generate an impact. This is, arguably, a key part of the rationale for why four of these eight institutions (Technion, Tsinghua, Duke, Imperial College) have taken the big step and allocated considerable time, effort and resources to developing a formal institutional presence in the cities of New York, Seattle and Singapore. Each university needs to be located within these cities and each has contributed to the development of the infrastructure (broadly defined) needed to become more regionally and globally relevant. They are, as Hawawini puts it, internationalizing “to learn from the world” in order to “create knowledge” in an increasingly “multipolar world.”

    While Gabriel Hawawini’s book does have many strengths, I recommend that it be read in conjunction with other books and articles that focus on particular geographies and sectors. For example, in my Cities, Universities and the Development Process course I assigned Aihwa Ong’s excellent book Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life (Duke University Press, 2016) which focuses on Singapore and the leading edges of bioscience. As the book description states:

    In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical centers in Singapore and China scientists map genetic variants, disease risks, and biomarkers, mobilizing ethnicized “Asian” bodies and health data for genomic research. Their differentiation between Chinese, Indian, and Malay DNA makes fungible Singapore’s ethnic-stratified databases that come to “represent” majority populations in Asia. By deploying genomic science as a public good, researchers reconfigure the relationships between objects, peoples, and spaces, thus rendering “Asia” itself as a shifting entity. In Ong’s analysis, Asia emerges as a richly layered mode of entanglements, where the population’s genetic pasts, anxieties and hopes, shared genetic weaknesses, and embattled genetic futures intersect. Furthermore, her illustration of the contrasting methods and goals of the Biopolis biomedical center in Singapore and BGI Genomics in China raises questions about the future direction of cosmopolitan science in Asia and beyond.

    Ong’s book is a deep dive in the complex role of the state, universities, firms, research stars, and knowledge about genetics in shaping the development of Singapore, in particular, as a key space in the development of scientific knowledge. After reading it you can better understand why universities like Duke and Imperial College seek (and need) to have a formal institutional presence in Singapore, and in association with key national partner universities like NUS and NTU. The Ong book, thus, provides insights on the geographical-, historical-, and sectoral -specific developments that these universities are currently navigating.  The Ong book has its weaknesses, but this is not the space for this discussion.

    Clearly not all universities have the ambition, connections, stature, and resources to refashion their organizational structures to help enable deep internationalization. This is, of course, fine. As Hawawini puts it (pp. 76):

    I have sketched out the contours of the truly global higher education institution and argued that any attempt to transform an existing higher education institution into a truly global one is unlikely to succeed because of historical and organizational barriers rather than insufficient resources or a dearth of leadership. …

    In the light of this conclusion, I believe that most higher education institutions should refrain from claiming their aim is to become truly global institutions.

    He argues that “most higher education institutions are firmly grounded in their local and regional environments” and given this it is illogical to seriously pursue the kind of development initiative evident in the case of, for example, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. There are plenty of alternative mechanisms, including student/staff/faculty exchanges, partnerships, and curricular transformations (internationalizing the curriculum & internationalization at home). For the ambitious or curious, though, it’s worth reflecting on these experiments in deep internationalization via the development of outward-facing forms of city-based infrastructure.

    Kris Olds

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