By Dr Sanjaya Mishra
Education Specialist, Technology-Enabled Learning, COL
When educational institutions are concerned about the ‘bottom line’ and ‘financial sustainability’ of everything they do, advocating for open education that needs understanding and financial support is challenging.
Despite early recognition of education as a human right by the United Nations in 1948, today, “there are still 773 million illiterate adults around the world, most of whom are women.” Nearly 250 million children are out of school worldwide. Nigeria alone has 10.2 million out-of-school children at the primary level and another 8.1 million at the junior Secondary level. Globally, just 58 per cent of youth complete secondary school. In 2021, about 220 million students were enrolled in post-secondary education. While this figure has nearly doubled since 2020, the tertiary gross enrolment ratio in sub-Saharan Africa is only 9.4% compared to the global average of 38%. Even for the most populous country in the world, India, the gross enrolment ratio (GER) is 28.4 per cent in 2021-22 with aspirations to achieve 50 per cent GER by 2035. It is important to note that the median age of the African continent is 19 years.
While the access issue is manageable with adequate infrastructure, preparation, and planning, the cost of education to learners, along with the lack of learning materials, negatively influences the quality of learning. In the United States, post-secondary students, on average, spend between USD 628 and 1,200 annually for books and supplies. A Commonwealth-wide study conducted by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in 2019 revealed that learners in post-secondary institutions spent about USD 164 per year on learning materials alone. Another report from Malaysia indicated that 76.4 per cent of students do not buy textbooks because of high cost. In a Global Education Monitoring Report policy brief urging that every child should have a textbook, it has been reported that textbook access by school children in Cameroon, Paraguay, Philippines and Togo is abysmally low, and lack of textbooks hinders learning. In Bangladesh, while students are dependent on photocopies of textbooks, they also spend about 2.3 million USD in today’s exchange rate for buying textbooks.
With the advancement of technology, one would expect that access to education, and the cost of learning resources would be less. On the contrary, the Covid-19 experience shows a vast digital divide among learners, and countries needed to prepare to face the challenge of school closure, resulting in learning loss. A World Bank estimate predicts that “learning loss from Covid-19 could cost this generation of students close to $USD 17 trillion in lifetime earnings.” A McKinsey report said that by 2030, automation will potentially displace 800 million workers.
Over time, technology may create more jobs than it would destroy jobs. The World Economic Forum predicts that by 20203, only 3.3. – 6.0 million new jobs will be created. On top of this, the advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence as a common tool in late 2022 has further exacerbated the job challenge. It has been estimated that large language models will impact 40 per cent of all working hours.
Governments worldwide have to face these challenges creatively and design future-proof education systems that focus on flexible and open learning. In a recent book on Higher Education for Good, we make a case for open knowledge institutions. Established higher education institutions often depend on a financial model based on international students, which was shattered during the Covid-19. Governments must rethink and finance education differently as a ‘public good.’ Education is an investment not just for the future of a nation but for global sustainable development. What kinds of policies should governments then support and foster? Open Education as a model can create lifelong learning opportunities in a digital world. According to Class Central, by 2021, there were 220 million enrolments in massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by 950 universities. Open universities like the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India provide affordable quality education by adopting open education, a philosophy and practice based on fairness, flexibility, and freedom.
As governments and educational institutions are looking for sustainable models, adopting open education can support affordable education, as we have seen from the examples of zero textbook cost initiatives in British Columbia and elsewhere. A study by COL in Antigua and Barbuda showed that using open educational resources (OER) not only helped students save money but also improved scores by approximately 5.5 per cent. Considering the advantages of open education, international organisations like COL and UNESCO have been promoting the development of appropriate policies for using OER at all levels of education and training. The Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education and Science and Technology, Mauritius, adopted a national OER policy in 2022 with COL support.
More such adoptions are needed across the Commonwealth and globally to make open education a ‘public good’ – available for joint use and infeasible for the exclusion of many. Governments must invest in creating the needed digital infrastructure (platforms and repositories) to create an enabling environment for lifelong learning that fosters creativity and innovation in societies.
