What’s needed to successfully scale higher education?

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Sara Custer: Meeting the surging demand for higher education around the world was a challenge for universities before the pandemic. But has the expansion of online teaching and learning in the past 18 months laid the groundwork for scaling higher education? And is it just technology that will help build the capacity of higher education? Or are alliances and partnerships in both the public and private sectors part of the equation? And what exactly do we mean by scaling? Is it increasing access to a wider pool of students, expanding teaching and learning infrastructure, or offering lifelong learning opportunities that will allow more people to have some kind of tertiary education? I’m Sara Custer. Welcome to the Times Higher Education podcast. Joining me as always is Miranda Prynne. Hello, Miranda.

Miranda Prynne: Hi there. How are you doing?

Sara Custer: Very good. Nice to hear from you. I can hear your boat creaking in the background. So it’s almost like a third host that we’ve got with us today.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, you’ll just have to bear with me on that one. Hopefully the River Thames will calm down and the noise will subside.

Sara Custer: We would like to thank Amazon Web Services for sponsoring this episode.

Sara Custer: Miranda, tell us who you spoke to this week.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, so I spoke to Ian Jacobs, president and vice-chancellor of the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He’s a great person to speak to about scaling because he’s led UNSW through a very exciting, very challenging period in which he’s overseen some pretty dramatic growth at the university. The budget of the university, I believe, went up by 40% under his leadership, and they welcomed about a thousand more staff as well as 10,000 additional students. So some pretty amazing figures. Obviously, then COVID struck, which, like all higher institutions, it’s been a very challenging period, particularly a university which has a huge amount of international students. But Ian has been quoted as remaining quite optimistic actually about the long-term effects of COVID. He has cited its potential acceleration of things like online learning, lifelong learning, more equitable provision of education across society. And all of these could potentially feed into this idea of scaling that we then spoke about.

Miranda Prynne: Now, we’re here today to discuss how to successfully scale up higher education. And based on your work at UNSW, Ian, you seem uniquely well placed to talk about this topic. So, the first thing I’m interested to hear from you is simply why scale up higher education? What are the drivers and potential benefits?

Ian Jacobs: Thank you, Miranda. It’s a pleasure to join this podcast and chat with you. What a great question. Why scale up higher education? Well, for me, this is about delivering educational opportunities to more people, many of whom may not have had those opportunities in the past. And my starting point is that the 19th century was the century of delivery of primary education to most people across the globe. In the 20th century, secondary education was delivered at scale to over, I think, 80% of people around the world. And the 21st century is the century of tertiary education. There are billions of people around the world who want access to education because it gives people greater opportunities, better health, better living conditions, greater life expectancy, better opportunities to contribute to society, more secure jobs, better income, all of those things. We know that the evidence is there, and there are so many people, whether it’s in OECD developed nations, who still don’t have access to the education opportunities that they would like, or in the developing world where the demand is growing exponentially for education and for higher education particularly.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, so you would see it very much as essentially extending kind of access and the kind of social good that can come with that. With, I mean, the talk around scaling at the moment, certainly, I guess partly off the back of the pandemic, has been very focused on the kind of digital education side. Do you think this is the primary vehicle, or do you think in-person learning can be a part of it?

Ian Jacobs: Well, if we’re talking about scaling as increasing access as a social good, about changing people’s lives and giving people opportunities, there are a number of components to delivering it. And some of those do involve technologies, but there are a whole raft of things that we need to do to reach talented individuals in all societies who’ve been excluded from the opportunities that higher education could provide for socioeconomic or geographical reasons, even if they’re in developed countries. We need to build capacity for higher education and reach people in developing nations where the scale of higher education is currently limited, but the demand is enormous. And we also need to reach people at different stages in their lives as they go through their careers with lifelong learning. So, some of the solutions there to delivering it are about new technologies, but it’s about much more than that. It’s about selection and access, it’s about capacity as well as the use of technologies.

Miranda Prynne: That actually brings me on very nicely to the next point I wanted to discuss, which is this issue of can we do more with less? Because, yes, you talk about the need to increase capacity, but you know, it’s been well documented that funding and resources at universities in many parts of the world are being squeezed for a number of reasons. So, is scaling up an option for most or indeed all institutions? How can they navigate this kind of push and pull?

Ian Jacobs: Well, I think there you’re referring to the pressure on universities and higher education institutions in affluent countries like the UK, USA, Australia. And there is no doubt that university budgets have been under pressure prior to the pandemic and, of course, as a consequence of the pandemic. But that is an experience that universities have had many times over many years. And I have no doubt that universities will deal with that. I see that as a real issue, but a short-term issue. In the broader context, it just doesn’t make sense to any nation or any society not to invest in higher education. And I mean invest in higher education for the social and the economic return that it brings for society. And that applies whether we’re in developed nations or developing nations. It is absolutely clear that the benefits for the individual and for society more broadly are there. So I would see public and other investment in higher education as an investment for the future. And I am absolutely convinced it’s going to happen as all of the estimates and assessments of demand for education globally show that it will continue to grow. Some of the estimates I’ve seen, since 1990, there’s been a five-fold increase in the number of individuals globally entering higher education per 100,000 people on the planet. And the estimates are it will increase another threefold by 2040. So the demand is there and it is really important for all societies to respond to that. I don’t see this about doing more with less. I see this about delivering more education to more people to generate all the benefits that that brings for society. And part of that is economic return. And it doesn’t matter which way you look at it, if you are financially biased, then look at the finances. And every dollar invested in higher education in every nation around the world yields an enormous return over time. But if you’re interested in other things, and I’m interested in people’s well-being, social opportunity, um, the way they experience their lives, their health, higher education also delivers in that context as well. So it’s it’s it’s pretty obvious that it is worthwhile investing in. Of course there are pressures on budgets in the short term, but but it from my my expectation is that the scale of higher education is going to grow everywhere in the world, and and more and more people will get the benefits of the opportunities that it can provide. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be provided in exactly the same way that we’ve been providing it for the last 10, 20 or 30 years and perhaps that’s something we should turn to.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, of course. And that brings us back to the points around sort of the impact of the pandemic actually on higher education models and the opportunities that may have created for change. I mean those figures are astonishing in terms of the increase of just student numbers. It sounds like if nothing else it simply will be driven by burgeoning demand and that if nothing else would lead this expansion. Would you say that’s true?

Ian Jacobs: Absolutely. The demand has been there for a long time and it’s continuing to grow and the technology and approaches to respond to that demand have been available to us. The pandemic perhaps provides an opportunity to step back and think in a different way about how we apply the opportunities that we have. And I think that we’re in a very early stage in using the extraordinarily powerful technologies that are available to us. And you can think about MOOCs as being an early experiment, was unlikely ever to be sustainable because they were largely delivered for no fee. And we now have opportunities to get more and more sophisticated in the quality of education that can be provided in a digital format. But advances in artificial intelligence and technology and communications are going to transform the way that we deliver this. The opportunities to get this out to people who would otherwise just not have been able to get anywhere near a high-quality education and to start delivering it in a way which will be different to the classic face-to-face on-campus experience, but can compensate for some of the limitations that we now experience in digital communication.

Miranda Prynne: That was something I wanted to ask about: if you felt there was a risk that by scaling up and using quite rightly these amazing digital tools, which are, as you say, undoubtedly going to become more sophisticated, but is there a risk that it creates a two-tier education system with arguably students from richer elites being able to pay for residential face-to-face learning on campus? And then others who, due to financial, economic or other limitations that mean they can’t do that, sort of miss out on some of the benefits of that particular style of education?

Ian Jacobs: Well, we already have a several-tier higher education access globally. And even in the UK or Australia, we’re getting to 40 or 50% of people getting access to higher education, but there are still sections of the population that are excluded because of their socioeconomic background or other reasons, even now. And we have very, very large swathes of the global population who just cannot access higher education because the capacity is not there in their countries. So I don’t think we’ll be introducing a two-tier system. I think we will be overcoming the limitations of providing higher education to all the people that can benefit from it and then contribute to society. But nevertheless, you’re absolutely right. There are some challenges in using digital technologies. And those of us of my generation who had a wonderful face-to-face university education on campus with all the social and other experiences that went with that, yes, it is very hard at the moment to reproduce those using digital technology. I think that more sophisticated use of artificial intelligence and the technologies will overcome some of that. Part of it can be overcome by hybrid, blended learning opportunities. It is possible to bring students together in what some would call a micro-campus and face-to-face, even in the context of education, which is largely delivered using digital technology. So I think that as we learn, as we improve the quality of what we’re providing online and we find other ways to bring people together, we need to be really creative and we won’t reproduce for everyone the classic, wonderful high-staff-to-student ratio face-to-face education that my generation experienced. But we will provide something that is at least as good and in some ways better using digital and blended technologies.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, just moving away from the technology. I mean, I know at UNSW you work with, for instance, King’s College London and ASU under the PLuS Alliance, which is sort of a collaborative project where you provide courses and research. This is obviously a really good example of three leading global universities pooling resources. Do you think under this umbrella of scaling up the offering that higher education institutions can provide, that these sort of collaborations will become more common and more prominent? Do you think they’re part of the solution?

Ian Jacobs: I yes, I think they are part of the solution, I hope, to delivering higher education of quality at scale and across vast geographical distances. And the PLuS Alliance, as you say, involves King’s College London, UNSW in Sydney and Arizona State University in the USA and has come together with the intention of using in an intelligent, thoughtful way, but at scale technology and introducing new approaches to education. One of the early things that’s come out of it is TEDI, the Engineering Design Institute in London, which is a new approach to engineering undergraduate education. It’s intended to attract students that are very much looking for the technical knowledge, but also an applied vocational training. It is applied right from the outset, and it is a novel and exciting approach to engineering education, which we think starting in London could be rolled out in slightly different formats, but in many places around the world. And it links the expertise in engineering and in educational delivery in Arizona State, in UNSW Sydney, and King’s. So that is one example of universities working together, which I hope is creating a platform which can have a global impact. We also have another important alliance in Sydney, and there’ll be many other examples of this around the world. But we have an alliance between four universities in Sydney called the NUW Alliance, NUW. It involves Western Sydney University, Wollongong, Newcastle, and UNSW, which is about the four universities coming together to add value for our state and our community. And one of the first developments there is what we call the Multiversity in Western Sydney, which is an area of Sydney with great demand for education with a very fast-growing population. And it’s where the new airport in Sydney is being built. And what we’ve done is create a Multiversity curriculum, which we think responds to the needs of that growing population. And it is the four universities working in partnership, importantly, with vocational education and the TAFE system in Australia to deliver an integrated, vocationally based higher educational opportunity. Yeah, which is very flexible. People can come in and out of it at different points. It does link vocational training with more conventional university education, and it’s very much linked into industry.

Miranda Prynne: Those are two really good examples because one obviously is a collaboration on a global scale, and the other is a collaboration kind of focused on the region in which UNSW Sydney is based and working on a day-to-day. I suppose, from the way you describe it, it sounds like both these collaborations have also provided opportunity for innovation in the way that higher education is being provided, which is an exciting prospect if collaborations can be a vehicle for that. Do you think there might actually be some institutional mergers as a result of scaling?

Ian Jacobs: On the topic of exciting opportunities, they also create challenges. And of course, we have a university system which, by and large, has worked in a particular way. And we have academics who’ve delivered really high-quality education, but in that conventional way of delivering it. So, these sort of ventures are exciting. They’re creating new opportunities, but they’re creating challenges which don’t necessarily suit all of the academics who’ve spent most of their careers in a conventional type of educational offering. I liken it, I’m by background, I’m a surgeon. And when I think of this, I think of the transformation that many surgeons had to go through learning keyhole minimal access surgery. And they’d been trained to do conventional surgery through an incision. And for many of them, including myself, it was a difficult, challenging and sometimes painful experience having to relearn how to deliver education. But for many others, it’s really exciting. So there’s an opportunity here to bring in another group of academics who want to and are excited about delivering education in a different way.

Miranda Prynne: And of course, as we’ve seen with the pandemic, an ability to adapt and be sort of flexible in one’s approach is increasingly important across many industries, but higher education definitely being one of them.

Ian Jacobs: So you asked about mergers. I don’t think that this necessarily requires or needs to lead to merger. And merger is not always a useful or easy thing to do. I do think it needs an exceptional level of partnership and collaborative intent and a sense of generosity and partnership because many of these things take time to mature and yield their benefits. And during that time, some people in the organizations that are involved will be asking questions about whether the investment that’s needed is warranted, whether the time and attention that’s needed to make them successful is justified. So I think it needs a commitment to partnership, collaboration and generosity and partnership, which is driven by that greater good of a real desire to make higher education available to people who would not otherwise access it. And if you look at the history of most of the universities that I’ve been associated with or know people in the UK or Australia or many countries in Europe or North America, they were all about, they were created to provide that sort of opportunity. And we shouldn’t stop at providing that sort of opportunity to a limited, highly privileged part of the global population. We should be thinking about how can that be provided to more people.

Miranda Prynne: You mentioned we’ve already seen early attempts to scale higher education and increase access to courses through MOOCs. The like retention and completion rates for those particular courses were generally quite a lot lower than in-person university teaching. I just wondered if you felt that issue could be tackled in the scaling up endeavour as it’s done in a more sort of planned strategic way.

Ian Jacobs: Yes, I always felt that MOOCs were an experiment and really an experiment in attracting people to look closely at universities rather than a real attempt to take them through an accredited educational opportunity. And the fact that they were largely free meant that it was always going to be difficult to make them sustainable, but they were a useful phase. And they probably do still have a role as an offering that can open up to people other opportunities. But we’re now at a phase where we can be much, much more sophisticated about the way that we offer the technology, the support around the experience, new ways of keeping students engaged and new ways of assessment. All of these things are developing very rapidly, and at their best, they can provide an outstanding education experience and they’ll continue to develop. So, I always thought that MOOCs would be an early phase in what can be achieved.

Miranda Prynne: Well, we’re pretty much out of time now, so I just wanted to finish up with one last question on what you felt the impact of these scaling endeavours might have on the public’s perception of higher education. Because one of the criticisms that is levelled is that by sort of scaling up these things, you could potentially lose quality, or the kind of value could be seen as being degraded in some way. Do you think there’s any risk there, or do you think it’s simply the job of universities and others to ensure that people realise there is still huge quality, whatever the scale of higher education?

Ian Jacobs: Well, I take the view that higher education really does improve people’s opportunities and people’s lives, and that there is no such thing as too many people having access to higher education. So I think that the most successful societies as we progress through the 21st century will be those where very large proportions of the population have access to higher education in some form. I don’t necessarily believe that that means a conventional undergraduate degree of the type that I had. I think there are all sorts of ways of delivering higher education. The education could be more vocational and applied. We haven’t talked, and I should perhaps have referred to this earlier, about opportunities for lifelong learning, for people to dip in and out of higher education as they go throughout their entire careers. And of course, there are societies around the world where a very small proportion of people still have access to higher education and it needs to be dramatically increased. But some people think that we’ve already reached the point 40, 45, 50% of people have an undergraduate degree and that’s high enough. I think that the most successful societies in 20, 30, 40 years’ time will be those where over 80% of society has some form of higher education experience. And that, I think, will get us away from this divisive thing where at the moment, somewhere approaching half of society do have a university experience or a higher education experience, and the other half don’t. So, we have very much a them and us society. I think in the future, we will move beyond that. And most people, just as most people around the world, literally around the world, have a primary and secondary education, most people in our societies will have some form of tertiary education as well. I believe that the people around the globe will be better off for that in every way, and our societies will be more prosperous. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Miranda Prynne: Brilliant. Well, that’s a great point to end on. Thank you so much for talking to me today, Ian. It’s been fascinating getting your insight on this very topical issue. I know you’re leaving your role at UNSW next year, so we wish you all the best for what awaits you.

Ian Jacobs: Thank you. Well, thank you, and I’ll see you and lots of old friends and colleagues back in the UK in 2022.

Miranda Prynne: I think it’s a pretty amazing aspiration that Ian stated there around 80% of society having some form of higher education experience. And that point he makes around the fact that could, well, firstly, hugely improve living standards across the globe, but also remove a lot of potential divisions in society. It may seem to many like that’s a very kind of lofty aspiration, but as Ian points out, the reason he clearly thinks that is an achievable one is due to these new technologies and other vehicles through which we can deliver higher education. So, whether it is online, you know, flexible learning, he referenced lifelong learning there. And of course, there are many other options which through technology-enhanced learning, institutions can lean on for this.

Sara Custer: Yeah, the tech question and kind of the tech capacity is a big one. And to help us understand that further, the digital infrastructure that can support scaling higher education, I spoke with Jude Sheeran, who is the principal for international education research at Amazon Web Services.

Sara Custer: Jude, hello. Thanks for joining us today on the Times Higher Education podcast.

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me again.

Sara Custer: So, let’s talk a little bit about the sorts of systems that universities would need to deliver higher education at scale. I’m talking about kind of the tech infrastructure behind that from learning management systems to chatbots. If we’re talking about universities reaching a greater number of students with their education?

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, well, above all, access to secure, scalable digital platform that gives them access to a full range of technologies that they can use to quickly and safely build their futures. That is what we saw a lot of demand for during the pandemic, and we’re seeing no mass regression back to the way things were. We’re seeing innovation on our platform in just about every facet of higher education, from recruitment, teaching, learning, research, all the way through to alumni networks and lifelong learning, and just about everything in between. Assessment, for instance, is a big area of focus. And so, I think, in particular, for exporters, universities that attract foreign students and transnational educators that the UK has a fair number of, things like security, assurance around identity, and assessment, remote assessment are critical. But it’s a massive question, Sara, and we could answer it in every facet of education and through the lens of every technology. If you think about chatbots as an efficient way of providing information to students and parents and faculty and other stakeholders, LMS systems holding all that data that can be leveraged to glean insights that enhance success here and overseas. And both are examples, therefore, of scale enablers, but far from exclusive.

Sara Custer: One thing you mentioned there was assessments. And I know that that’s something that a lot of of universities are grappling with, and it’s certainly something that a lot of students struggle with as well, depending on what the, I guess, the model of the assessment is, which brings me to my next question, which just is about the student experience, that learning experience. And I’m wondering if you think mass delivery, if it can ever be of the same quality as on-campus, face-to-face teaching and learning, does it really matter if it’s not? I mean, is it pretty clear to students that they’re getting a different thing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a less of a thing?

Jude Sheeran: Yes, I like the way you put that. Um, I I speak as a former university tutor and also the father of a daughter who’s just had a very strange first year at university, and I’m not sure it’s terribly useful to compare sort of one with the other on a on a binary basis. Um, you know, they’re complementary. They have been for many years, the physical campus and technology. But it is true that at one end of the scale, digital technology enables educators to reach people that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. We saw that during the pandemic. And as I said earlier, we’re seeing no regression. Backs are sort of shutting down that new capability. They’re just using it in different ways, reaching more people in more corners of the world that couldn’t otherwise attend university. But the other, it also offers opportunities to augment the campus experience. So if you think about the use of virtual reality on campus or the use of personalized education on and off campus, technology is playing an important role in the way that higher education evolves. As I say, during the pandemic, technology enabled educators to continue their critical work, and we’re helping them now figure out how to put that same technology to work for their students and staff in the future in different ways. I think, therefore, just to summarize, I think the question is probably: you know, what can technology do to reach more people and to augment the on-campus experience rather than is it a plausible alternative?

Sara Custer: Let’s talk about AI. You mentioned VR there. I feel like VR and AI usually go hand in hand together when they really don’t often have anything to do with each other. What role do you think AI and machine learning would play in any sort of mission to scale higher education?

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, well, there’s a huge question. But in fact, there was a letter published this morning in The Times in the UK from David Davis and Robert Halfon talking about the role of AI in education. And, you know, put simply, online and flexible learning enables educators to reach more people. If you think about, most generally, if you think about lifelong learning and people already in their careers accessing education as they continue through their careers. But I think that the most obvious example of AI and machine learning at work in combination with data analytics is the whole movement, the advent, as attractive as it is, of personalized learning, where we’re able to offer individuals individual experiences that play to their capabilities. It may be that they learn differently, it may be that they learn at a different pace, it may be that they need to catch up, or indeed that they’re bored and losing interest because they are more capable than the work that’s been given to them. And so, most often, I think these days, in most parts of the world, when we think about the classroom and what machine learning in particular has to offer, there’s a lot of focus on the promise of personalized learning.

Sara Custer: And what do you think that that would result in? I mean, you mentioned bored students there. What would be the outcome of more personalized learning, do you think?

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, well, it certainly promises better results. It’s not a new idea, but technology has brought it to life in the last few years. And so the promise of personalized education is that you get more continuous engagement and an appropriate level with students, therefore leading to better results, better outcomes. I mean, if you take flexible learning in general, World Economic Forum recently reported that it may be up to six times more effective in terms of retention and between 40 to 60 percent more efficient in terms of the speed at which that retention happens. If you look at the letter that I mentioned just moments ago, although that’s more in a K-12, sorry, a school setting, the promise is just better outcomes because, you know, as I say, I used to be a teacher, I turned up, I spoke to hundreds of students at the same time in the same language and the same method and expected them to turn up the next day and repeat the experience, regardless of their individual capabilities or interests or optimal modes of learning. And so ultimately, it’s about better, faster results.

Sara Custer: I guess that’s another related question. Whenever we look at MOOCs, and I guess that’s kind of our main set of comparison that we’ve got when we’re talking about scaling higher education is just looking at kind of how people have interacted with MOOCs, which I appreciate would be a different thing to scaling higher education. And when we look at things like retention and completion rates and mass online higher learning, they’re pretty low. Is personalization part of solving that problem? And what other tech solutions do you think could help with that?

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, I think you’re onto something there, Sara. I really do. Ultimately, education requires commitment, determination from the learner. But assuming that’s in place, and I’ll come back to how technology can help put it in place, but assuming there’s this broad commitment, I think the same results that we see on campus are applicable online when deploying this personalized approach. So essentially, predictive analytics and machine learning that offer these personalized experiences and increase the likelihood of completion. And so, if you think about, for example, Arizona State University in the US, long lauded as an innovative institution, what it has managed to do, what they’ve managed to do at ASU, is to develop models that predict when a student is likely to go off track academically and intervene before that happens. So, in addition to offering personalized experiences, what the system is doing is learning what the signs of a student’s potential to go off track are and intervening beforehand. And sometimes that can be as bold a move as suggesting alternative course. Again, the model has learned that in the past, students switching from, I don’t know, veterinary science to nursing or something tend to do well given the position they’re in. It’s always a student decision, but if you take the same thinking and apply that online, there’s no reason why completions online couldn’t be augmented by the dynamics and the competition and the nudges that I mentioned earlier, and also these insights that promise more engagement and better outcomes.

Sara Custer: Let’s get out our crystal ball and look into the future. And I’d like for you to just paint us a picture of what the scaled modern university might look like in 15 years’ time and what sort of tech infrastructure would be supporting that scaled online teaching and learning.

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, yeah. Well, I suppose in some ways we’ve come back to the first question. What is it that these institutions need in order to scale, to scale operations and to grow, to reach more people, to fulfill their mission broadly? And our cloud, for example, enables educators to scale safely, truly globally, using the broadest and deepest range of technologies. And what that does, and we’re seeing this more and more from senior leaders in higher education, registrars, vice-chancellors, presidents, and so on, is give them the confidence that they can innovate safely at lower cost and certainly more quickly. They can respond to students’ needs, to governments’ needs, to funders’ needs, to employers’ needs much more quickly than ever before. And so having access to almost infinitely scalable sort of, you mentioned infrastructure, so the basics, compute, storage, database, connectivity, and so on, is a good start. But a platform that can give you that on demand, as well as access to a full range of AI and the other technologies on similar terms, enables these institutions and indeed ed techs to experiment, as I say, safely, at low cost, quickly, deploy new capabilities much faster than ever before. And it’s becoming sort of, it’s becoming difficult stroke, increasingly impossible for individual organizations or even entire nations to match the investment that we’re able to put into things like security, advanced technologies, global scale. And so we consider ourselves allies, partners of educators in building and offering these technologies that they can combine in different ways anywhere in the world on demand, as I say, safely on behalf of their students in order to build their own futures. And we are here to hold their hands all the way through that process.

Sara Custer: So, Jude, you obviously work for Amazon Web Services and you’ve described a bit of how Amazon Web Services could support a modern scaled university. I know that we would all probably recognize that name, but perhaps couldn’t say exactly what it is, what you guys do, and what kind of role you play in supporting the tech infrastructure of institutions. Can you just explain that for us?

Jude Sheeran: Yeah, sure. So, Amazon Web Services is a cloud platform. It happens to be the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We offer over 200 fully featured services out of our data centers globally, and millions of customers, including startups, ed techs, I’ll come back to that in just a moment, large enterprises, leading government agencies are using AWS to innovate faster, lower their cost, become more agile, and secure their data. So, this call, for example, via Zoom sits on AWS. We are using right now AWS infrastructure for this call and ed techs worldwide, such as Blackboard, global players, and then niche players. We mentioned AI and machine learning during our talk, personalized learning. Think about organizations like Century Tech in the UK. They’re all using AWS to combine those technologies I mentioned, over 200 fully featured services to build new solutions for educators and the like.

Sara Custer: Wonderful. Thank you so much for that, Jude, and thanks for your time today.

Jude Sheeran: Pleasure as always. Thanks again.

Sara Custer: Well, that’s all we’ve got time for today. Thank you so much to Ian and Jude for joining us in their interviews, and again to AWS for sponsoring this episode.

Sara Custer: And if you’d like more information and insight around scaling higher education, we have put together a spotlight collection of advice resources from academics all over the globe offering advice on how universities can use technology and other tools to extend their teaching and learning to wider populations. You’ll find that under the spotlight called Think Big: Successfully Scaling Higher Education, and that is at www.timeshighereducation.com/campus.

Sara Custer: Thanks, Miranda. What was your boat called, Miranda?

Miranda Prynne: It’s Houseboat Periwinkle.

Sara Custer: Excellent. Thanks, Miranda. Thanks, Periwinkle. And we’ll see you next time.

Miranda Prynne: Thanks. Bye-bye.

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