Page 53 - EW February 2023

most people want to work or live in ‘better’ cities or colleges
and universities,” says Zhang Youliang, associate professor
at the Institute of Higher Education at Beijing University
of Technology.
A 2018 study examined career mobility among 3,234
junior academics, based on data from the National Science
Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (DYS) between 1994
and 2014. It found that 405 academics proactively changed
their workplaces. The provinces of Shanxi, Jilin, Gansu, Lia-
oning, Fujian and Anhui (mostly in the mid-west and north
east) lost more DYS scholars than they brought in.
The authors wrote that the “talent crisis” in the north-
west and the north east is caused by a “serious talent defi-
cit and insufficient attraction for high-level talent, rather
than the scale of outflow”. They concluded that boosting Indian students Down Under: accommodation crunch
resources for regions suffering outflow would be the best
measure in response, and that “hindering” mobility “is not NORTH AMERICA
in accordance with the market logic and innovation”. edX sale fallout

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND AST YEAR’S SALE OF THE NON-PROFIT ONLINE
Student housing crisis Lvalue, with buyer 2U still hunting for paying custom-
course platform edX has left both parties short on
OOSTING HOUSING STOCKS COULD BE Austra- ers, and vendors Harvard University and the Massachusetts
lian governments’ “biggest” contribution to allevi- Institute of Technology (MIT) still mulling how the pro-
Bating ‘student poverty,’ a widely reported phenom- ceeds will boost remote teaching.
enon Down Under. Eileen Baldry, deputy vice chancellor of Scientists at the two universities created edX in 2012 as
UNSW Sydney, says that if government quarantines social a means of making courses freely available on the internet,
housing for students, it would help them weather an accom- and for giving other institutions the software to create simi-
modation squeeze and cost-of-living crisis. lar platforms. 2U, founded in 2008, is a private company
Students could face weekly rents of A$200 (Rs.11,400) that creates online courses for universities. It bought most
instead of the A$500 typical of many Australian suburbs, or of edX in July 2021 for $800 million (Rs.6,400 crore) in
rents could be capped at 25 percent of income — as happens the hope that a fraction of its fee-free learners might find
with other social housing schemes — leaving money to cover enough value to start paying for it.
food, transport and education costs. But 2U’s stock price has dropped nearly 70 percent this
While students are not specifically excluded from social year, provoking extensive lay-offs and glum assessments by
housing, waiting periods often vastly exceed the time re- industry analysts who argue that the company was mistaken
quired to complete degrees. And while the federal govern- in betting so heavily on the prospect of profitably converting
ment has committed to bankroll 40,000 new affordable edX students. “The primary focus of the non-profit has been
dwellings through its Housing Accord and Housing Aus- CEO search,” acknowledges Catie Smith, interim chief op-
tralia Future Fund, Baldry says this will merely scratch the erating officer of the year-old organisation, which Harvard
surface. “It needs hundreds of thousands of new dwellings and MIT have named the Centre for Reimagining Learning,
to come on to the market.” or tCRIL. As for how it will use the online course sharing
Students are facing an accommodation crunch point, software it has retained, tCRIL is still “laying the ground-
with rental housing in short supply and priced beyond work towards a strategy” for accomplishing that.
reach. Many purpose-built student accommodation blocks The transaction has drawn criticism from many in higher
are nearing capacity as international students return to Aus- education who argue that edX had a founding mission to
tralia in greater numbers and compete for rooms with their serve disadvantaged students around the world, and that
domestic peers. Current residents, who tend to move into the two elite universities have abandoned that commitment
less structured living arrangements after a year or so, are by selling edX to a private company charging high fees.
staying put because of the lack of rental accommodation. But 2U is not alone in its struggles. Coursera — the online
Universities are examining the feasibility of re-building education platform created in 2012 by two Stanford Uni-
their own accommodation, a year or so after many boosted versity computer science professors as a rival to edX — an-
their Covid-depleted finances by selling off-campus resi- nounced its own sweeping payoffs in November. Coursera’s
dential blocks that were short of tenants amid lockdowns market value has fallen by nearly three-quarters from highs
and border closures. in early 2021.

FEBRUARY 2023 EDUCATIONWORLD 53