Uni Degrees Could Be Shorter and Mostly Online In Just a Few Years

You might not need to make the commute to university soon.

Australian universities will look to offering shorter degrees, on-demand courses and moving a lot of coursework online, according to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of NSW (UNSW).

Ian Jacobs, UNSW's Vice-Chancellor, told the Herald that universities will need to adapt in the future to the changing education environment.

"Universities need to evolve and one of the challenges is the changing work environment and the need for people to have [a] lifelong education... we're already thinking about short courses that fit with what industry want," Vice-Chancellor Jacobs told the Herald.

"We're changing the way we do face-to-face learning so we will, like many other universities, be having [fewer] big lecture rooms full of students, a lot of that will be delivered online."

These changes come in the form of more flexible and relevant courses that will cater to those trying to find skills they can use directly in the workplace.

UNSW has already begun offering some of these courses and pro-vice-chancellor Geoffrey Crisp told Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) that if multiple are taken, they can contribute towards a master's degree.

"We're talking three units of credit, which is the equivalent of 75 hours of effort, which includes all the learning, assessments and reading," Pro-Vice-Chancellor Crisp told SMH.

"Participants can stack those to get a master's degree... and the things they do in [those courses] are designed around them, immediately incorporating them into whatever their workplace activities are."

The need for this change is, in part, due to current course content across Australia not matching the work that graduates will actually complete in their desired fields of work; a reality that could be contributing to higher levels of graduate unemployment.

What isn't mentioned, however, is whether the cost of these reformed degrees will remain proportionate to their current cost. These changes are expected to take place from 2025 at the earliest, which will mean that the changes to university funding and consequently, the cost of each degree, will come into effect.

It begs the questions: How much is your degree really worth?

Header Image: iStock.com/Steve Debenport