As 2022 is drawing to an end, we have seen yet another year of change.
What trends are predicted for the education industry in the coming year?
Cost of Living Crisis
Many countries are experiencing a crisis in the cost of living. This will impact upon taxes, which in turn affect government funding. This, in turn, can affect the amount of funding received by traditional educational institutions, such as classroom-based schools, colleges and universities. Many countries globally have seen
- A reduction in the funding for classroom based learning, particularly for adults.
- A reduction in funding leading to a reduction in the range of courses offered to adults
This opens up opportunities to private education providers to fill the gaps. Online education providers can offer courses to students anywhere in the world, enabling students to study courses in their own home that are not available through traditional, classroom based learning due to funding cuts.
Transferable Skills
Many employers are pointing out that school, college and university leavers do not have the skills required by their businesses. The skills that they lack are often soft skills.
Hard skills are teachable and easy to quantify, such as marketing, planting a crop, project management, bookkeeping and plastering. We can tell that someone has got their bookkeeping figures correct or has planted a crop well.
But what many school/college/university leavers lack are soft skills, such as
We can see that a person has plastered a wall well.
- Problem solving
- Communication
- Adaptability
- Critical thinking
- Time management
- Team work
- Interpersonal skills
It is not so easy to quantify soft skills, but it is possible to train employees in soft skills, such as team work and time management.
Updated Skills
What a student learns today will be obsolete in a relatively short time. It is therefore important for education providers to regularly update and improve their courses to ensure that their students have up to date knowledge.
This also means that students are potentially studying throughout their working life time to continually update their skills.
A Degree is No Longer Necessary
Degrees are essential in some careers, but not all. We are seeing skills shortages in many different careers, such as –
- Digital skills
- Horticulture
- Agriculture
Degrees can be useful, but they are not always essential. Therefore, education providers need to ensure that they do not focus solely on degree qualifications, but also offer students the opportunities to study at many different levels and develop a range of skills that they need.
Increased Flexibility
Education providers need to be more flexible. Some students will want to study for three hours to learn a short insight into a topic, whilst others will want to learn something in more depth, perhaps studying for years. Education providers need to offer a range of options for their students.
Remote Working/Remote Studying
The global pandemic and the improvements in technology has meant that many people are now working remotely or in a hybrid way (home and in a work premises). This has benefitted many people improving their work/life balance. But it has also meant that they are freer to organise their time to study remotely too.
Experts
Another, apparently, new trend is that online technology has enabled experts to share their experience and knowledge through online courses.
At ACS, we don’t think that this is a new trend.
Or if it is, it’s one we started 43 years ago. All of our course writers and tutors have substantial educational and industry experience in their fields, are all enthusiastic, knowledgeable and are also experts in online learning. So, we think this trend is actually a bit slow in catching up with us. We always like to be ahead of the curve. All of our writers and tutors are experts. We only use experts to tutor and write our courses.
Buck the Trends
Are you looking for opportunities to be ahead of the curve, ahead of the trends in online education?
Do you want to be a trendsetter rather than a follower?
Just what does ACS offer to help you to get ahead of the trends?
- Our courses are available to be sold through private and public education providers alike. We offer an easy system of royalties payments for our affiliates. Help to increase the income of your educational institution by offering our courses.
- We offer courses in soft and hard skills that you can sell to your students!
- Our courses are regularly updated to ensure students are studying up to date, not obsolete, courses.
- We offer a wide range of courses to ensure that people can studying throughout their lifetime to meet their changing educational needs.
- We offer beginner to advanced courses enabling students to develop and progress through their careers.
- ACS offers a range of course from eBooks to 20 hour self study courses to 100 hour courses and extended learning bundles. We aim to meet the needs of the student.
- People can study remotely. Our courses are all studied by distance and online learning, so students can study from anywhere in the world and whenever they want to.
- Our tutors and writers are all experts.
We have been here for 43 years, offering
- Online and distance education when it was considered the Cinderella of the education industry. Now look at online education.
- Using industry experts to write and tutor on our courses way before this was a “new” trend.
- We offer a wide range of skills to help people to start from the beginning, or to improve their existing learning.
We are experts. We are the trend setters!
If you would like to improve your course offerings or even start to offer courses, then get in touch. We will be pleased to hear from you.