2025 Wrapped: Online learning in UK higher education
This is my annual look back at the year in online learning in UK higher education. Thankfully, although I have appropriated the term “Wrapped”, this is not the performance review you did not ask for, delivered in pastel gradients and highlighting things you would rather not be reminded of. Unlike the quarterly reviews I have shared throughout the year, I have been highly selective in identifying what I think were the three most notable trends or interesting developments in UK higher education as they pertain to online learning.
This has been a big year for UK higher education in general. There has been continuing fallout as a result of the dire financial shape the sector as a whole finds itself in. The now not-so-new government has largely made its desired direction of travel for higher education more concrete and has responded definitively to key questions such as tuition fee levels. There have also been a number of notable themes that have dominated discussions in 2025.
These include greater scrutiny of franchising; expansion of transnational education (TNE), particularly through the opening of branch campuses in India; continued government changes that influence international student recruitment, including the new international student levy and changes to the graduate route; and, of course, continued debate about what developments in artificial intelligence mean for higher education across a range of dimensions.
There is always a mixture of things going on in any given year, combining events that actually happened, signals that point to what might be to come, and those developments that are taking place but are largely unnoticed because they either do not fit prominent narratives or are too practical or dull to translate into a news article.
One has to remember that online education tends to sit more comfortably in this unnoticed category, and I have to confess that I can only recall online education being featured in articles in UK higher education news outlets when they are essentially paid media from employees of online education companies. It is a far cry from the pandemic-era attention given to online education, but this is not to say that things are not happening, so let us get into that.
1. Increase in OPM partnerships coming to an end
I have been analysing the online programme management (OPM) market in UK higher education for more years than I care to mention, and one clear trend in recent years that has continued in 2025 is an increase in the number of OPM and university partnerships coming to an end. From the early to mid 2010s through to the beginning of the 2020s, we were largely only seeing partnerships being formed, at an average of around three to four per year. However, as we have progressed into the 2020s, the increase in the number of partnerships coming to an end has grown markedly.
Looking exclusively at the numbers only tells you what happened, and the “data” here is of little use in explaining why this has occurred. However, I think there are some clearly attributable reasons once you delve beyond the numbers. The first is the turbulence that several of these companies have experienced over the last five years or so. This has caused some universities to use the situation as an opportunity to exit partnerships, and it has also led companies to retreat from partnerships that are not profitable, in one particular case in significant numbers.
Other reasons include universities reaching a natural break point, for example after five years, and deciding to cut ties and go it alone. Lastly, there are a number of unhappy break-ups. I describe them this way because, depending on which side you speak to, the other is blamed for the issues that led to the split. Nevertheless, there is certainly evidence of underperformance from OPM companies, and in some cases they hardly help themselves by making facile and inflated enrolment projections to win bids.
One important thing to add, however, is that there is still an appetite amongst UK universities for OPM partnerships, and at least three new partnerships have been established this year. Although this is slightly below average for the 2020s, the partnerships that have been formed, along with the number being explored and those on the way to being established, clearly highlight that there is still demand amongst UK universities for partnerships that support moves into the online education market.
The key problem, as I see it, is not an absence of need for help and assistance, but the growing incompatibility of how that need and assistance is manifested in changing times. The OPM model is relatively simple, a company makes the bulk of the upfront investment, takes on the majority of the operations involved in running programmes, and the agreement is designed so the OPM recovers its costs and earns a return over time, typically over a ten-year period.
I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with this as a business concept, but its success depends on external and internal factors that are both within and outside the control of the company. There are clearly a set of external factors, mentioned earlier, that have challenged the model. These have been discussed more widely, such as increased costs of digital marketing, rising interest rates, inflation and growing competition. However, I personally think the OPM playbook has become one-dimensional and stale, and this, combined with other factors, has led to some companies in some partnerships being unable to deliver.
The new year will bring further cessations of partnerships to light and will provide additional supporting evidence of this trend. The challenge, as I see it, for OPMs is not solely in seeking to “market” the need for help, but rather to evolve a business model that simultaneously meets that need in a less orthodox manner while being profitable.
2. Increased emphasis on shorter and flexible provision
Shorter forms of provision have made higher education headlines over a number of years, whether MOOCs or microcredentials. In the case of MOOCs, they embodied, at least initially, an optimistic narrative of opening access to higher education and were not so exclusively tied to employment outcomes for learners. More recently, microcredentials have become the most discussed shorter form of provision, with advocacy focussed on a combination of employment outcomes and lower levels of time and financial commitment.
This year, these have felt somewhat superseded by the umbrella term lifelong learning. Clearly, this has not been a whimsical change, but one driven by the current environment, including the upcoming change to student funding in England through the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) and other policy directions that point to greater support for shorter forms of provision, such as apprenticeship units. This is all buttressed by the wider narrative that there will be an increasing need for people to upskill and reskill over the course of their careers and, as a consequence, the government wants to create an environment that enables this, particularly through shorter, flexible forms of provision.
In this sense, there has been a growing confluence between government priorities and wider narratives, leading to a nexus of greater confidence amongst providers to develop shorter forms of provision. Helpfully, this also offers a means of diversification in challenging financial times.
There have been some clear, and some less clear, developments this year that corroborate this. For example, Imperial College has established the Imperial Institute of Extended Learning and, as far as I know, is the first UK university to appoint a CLLO (Chief Lifelong Learning Officer). However, I reported earlier in the year that Cardiff University had advertised for a Director of Flexible Lifelong Learning and has made a commitment to setting up a similar unit, called the Institute for Flexible Lifelong Learning. This year has also seen the University of Oxford’s long-standing Department for Continuing Education rebranded as Oxford Lifelong Learning. Given the current environment and UK universities’ tendency to imitate one another, I would expect to see more lifelong learning units established in 2026.
Moves that focus more squarely on shorter forms of online learning have been somewhat less visible. However, the launch of Heriot-Watt University’s new Professional Academy, offering “over 50 university-credited courses designed specifically for busy professionals seeking to upskill rapidly in their current roles”, is one notable exception. In online education more directly, growing moves that support shorter forms of provision have largely remained under the radar, as they constitute an evolving offer rather than a showy new initiative to announce.
These evolutions include more institutions supporting disaggregated online provision, primarily at postgraduate level, with the University of London being the most notable example through its Global Digital Campus. This will deliver 30-credit postgraduate microcredentials in a new lifelong learning format, with new undergraduate and postgraduate taught degrees in this format to follow.
Under the iceberg, so to speak, there have been other institutions attempting to get their house in order to effectively support the delivery of shorter, flexible provision, adopting new platforms and seeking to better coordinate their existing portfolios of short courses.
While there has been a continuing number of UK universities entering the online education market through launching degrees, it feels as though, whereas online education was probably more en vogue in the aftermath of the pandemic, lifelong learning and shorter forms of provision have taken its place this year. The University of Manchester, through its 2035 strategy, embodies much of the current zeitgeist with the stated ambition to:
“Put our hybrid model into action, enabling half of our students to study online via Manchester Online or through workplace routes, balanced with our campus community and in-person experience.”
I expect to see the continued establishment of units focussed on shorter, career and employment-focussed forms of provision, alongside more behind-the-scenes efforts by universities to more effectively offer shorter and or disaggregated provision under the banner of flexible and lifelong learning.
3. Emerging activity in online undergraduate degrees
Those who know online education well understand that most universities running online degrees do so at postgraduate level, and this is largely viewed as the most viable market for online students. This, along with other factors, has meant that the overwhelming majority of moves by universities over the last ten years have resulted in an increase in the number of online postgraduate degrees available.
We have not seen a similar level of growth in online undergraduate degrees, and there remains only a small number of institutions that can be said to have a significant portfolio of online undergraduate provision. Although it would be easy to overstate this, and I would not say it has reached the level of a trend, there have been some small signals of an increasing number of institutions willing to develop and launch online undergraduate degrees.
There is, of course, a risk of availability bias here, as these announcements tend to catch the eye more than the latest announcement of a university launching an online MBA. However, I am interested to see whether this trickle continues and grows in 2026. I personally think some experimentation is both welcome and necessary, and I have been on record several times about how woefully limited the choice is for anyone looking to study an undergraduate degree flexibly and online in the UK.
Although this is an area that some institutions have not been prepared to venture into, and online undergraduate student demographics still map closely to those studying postgraduate degrees, there are some interesting developments further downstream, such as online schooling gaining more traction as an alternative for some pupils.
It is this very lack of alternatives for prospective undergraduates in the UK that makes this an interesting area of exploration. However, this clearly depends on an institution’s risk appetite and its willingness to explore new areas. A question I have for the year ahead is whether UK universities offering online courses have boxed themselves in when it comes to their portfolio choices, and whether this, along with continued market entries, is having a limiting effect.
Outlook for online learning in UK higher education
Looking ahead to next year, there is some anticipation about how university portfolios will evolve. With the Lifelong Learning Entitlement due to launch in 2026, the coming year is likely to reveal the extent to which universities are developing provision aligned with it. Similarly, wider efforts to develop provision under the umbrella of lifelong learning will be something I will be observing closely.
For online education as a whole, I cannot escape the feeling that we have reached, or are reaching, an inflection point that demands some divergence from the methods, tactics and common beliefs that have typified this area for some time. Whether others think similarly and act accordingly will be another thing to watch in 2026. See you on the other side…
