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Higher Education Design: Big Deal

Partnerships, Technologies and


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Coates
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Higher Education
Design
Big Deal Partnerships,
Technologies and
Capabilities

Hamish Coates
Higher Education Design
Hamish Coates

Higher Education
Design
Big Deal Partnerships, Technologies and
Capabilities
Hamish Coates
Institute of Education
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China

ISBN 978-981-15-9215-7 ISBN 978-981-15-9216-4 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9216-4

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Preface

In July 2020, my nine-year-old daughter picked my 1968 edition of


Funny Jokes and Foxy Riddles from the shelf and asked me “Why did
the girl catch a plane to school?” I paused, wondering if this was fantasy,
folly, fantastic, foresight, fortune, futuristic, or just funny. “So she could
get a higher education”, my daughter answered, signalling how comfort-
able today’s children of faculty have grown up feeling about international
university study. My mind wandered.
In 1968, the idea that millions of young middle-income people mainly
from Asia would swirl around the globe for undergraduate study, finan-
cially turbocharging research at major universities, was fanciful. A one-
hour trunk call might cost more than a 2019 trans-pacific plane ticket, the
747, the monumental whale which lifted globalisation, was fresh from the
hangar, only very high elites in largely developing Asian economies were
thinking about university, and such study was barely a prerequisite for a
fantastic and fulsome or even a professional life.
In the last two decades ‘international students’ have fuelled not just
jet streams but new teaching buildings, faculty wages, research budgets,
huge diasporas, and the foundations of what many foresee as the ‘Asian
century’. But has such travel been folly, or at least what has been the
folly in such venturing? Though many researchers, university leaders,
and politicians have tried, few have come to grips with the dynamism
and innovation during this period. The real changes to universities, and

v
vi PREFACE

to the people who have learned and worked at them, remain far from
understood.
It has surely been a fantastic experience for people engaged in the
world’s largest ever growth of higher education. Global collaborations
and science have boomed, mountain-loads of cash and armies of talented
graduates have advanced knowledge-driven jobs, and industry along with
governments have rethought universities as core socioeconomic contrib-
utors. The sage on the stage has become the facilitator on the corporate
and policy boards, entrepreneurial industry ‘co-creation’ has been woven
widely into undergraduate experiences, and academic leaders have forged
novel kinds of multinational higher education institutions.
Was that 1968 joke marvellous foresight? Having spent the morning
listening to the leaders of major universities set ‘24-hours’ as the time-
frame for pivoting between teaching online or on campus, I wondered
about the value of expensive and highly consulted-on strategic plans, of
‘leadership methodology’, and of the value of joking about planes and
higher education in today’s era of sophisticated online learning. Why burn
kerosene when you can learn from the lounge? Why build concrete lecture
theatres when silicone cell phones can deliver so much more?
Flying to school reflects wonderful fortune. It has become an ‘acces-
sible super-rich’ kind of thing. It conveys all kinds of social, financial, and
personal wealth. It blends professional formation with early adulthood
fossicking in foreign lands, and it has piped billions into fortunate and
evermore prestigious universities.
These ideas and more flashed through my mind before my daughter
pitched the punchline. But one gnawing anxiety pulsed stubbornly in my
imagination. In this year of pandemic-induced accelerated global transfor-
mation, with 747s scuttled, billions carved from university budgets, and
14-day hotel quarantine dwarfing the pain of even 14-hour flights, what, I
thought, would higher education be like in 2030 for my daughter’s gener-
ation? The nomenclature of qualifications and credentials proliferates but
scares about ‘over-education’ and diminishing returns from degrees have,
paradoxically, led to more people spending more time in more study.
Promulgating the promise of technology has seen the campus flourish
into sacred learning places. Higher education will continue to grow in
value. I have learned that forecasting the future is fraught with failure,
but also that failing to plan means planning to fail.
PREFACE vii

These observations carve out the contours which tone and focus this
book. The point is not to dramatise contentious political contingen-
cies, polish pedagogical pedantries, earmark technological solutions, or
cast policy prescriptions. The point, rather, is to clarify multidimensional
tectonic rumbles, make clear often hidden but non-ignorable innovation
underway, and frame constructive narratives and perspectives for consid-
ering the shape of things to come. Given that higher education does
change, slowly, then suddenly, let’s get ready and be prepared.

Beijing, China Hamish Coates


Acknowledgements

Education is all about people. Thousands of people have helped shape my


thinking and this book. Often a brief chat at a conference helps cement an
idea. Other conversations go on for years. I am very thankful to everyone
who has helped imagine, construct, and refine the ideas in this book.
Particular thanks to all my colleagues at Tsinghua University.
Many people made more contributions through specific projects and
publications. I am forever grateful to family Sara Bice, Imogen Bice,
Annabel Coates, and Wendy Coates, and to colleagues (in alpha order)
Victor Borden, Patrick Brothers, Brendan Cantwell, Fred Chalupa, Jon
Chew, Lauren Conn, Gwilym Croucher, Nick Dirks, Jacob Dreyer, Peter
Ewell, Michael Fung, Xi Gao, Steven Godinho, Leo Goedegebuure, Fei
Guo, Jie Hao, Ellen Hazelkorn, Xi Hong, Wanqi Hu, Futao Huang,
Joan Kaufman, Paula Kelly, Adrianna Kezar, Roger King, Sue Kokonis,
George Kuh, Huiqin Liu, Liu, Lu Liu, Yang Liu, William Locke, Vin
Massaro, Bill Massy, Kelly Matthews, Alex McCormick, Lynn Meek,
Tatiana Melguizo, Ken Moore, Stephen Nagle, Sid Nair, Damian Powell,
Zhen Qiu, Rob Sheehan, Yee Zher Sheng, Jinghuan Shi, Zhongying
Shi, Jung Cheol Shin, Marie Spies, Bjørn Stensaker, Haitao Sun, Johnny
Sung, Bill Tierney, Tom Van Essen, Frans van Vught, Robert Wage-
naar, Chuanyi Wang, Gang Wang, Harvey Weingarten, Michael Wells,
Wen, David Wilkinson, Enoch Wong, Huanhuan Xia, Weihe Xie, Jiale
Yang, Donglin You, Shijie Yu, Chuanjie Zhang, Dan Zhang, Li Zhang, Yu
Zhang, Zhou Zhong, Lu Zhou, Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, and David
Zupko.

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As the citations and references convey, this book draws ideas from many
papers, chapters, opinion pieces, and reports. I am particularly grateful
to McGill-Queen’s University Press for permission to use material from:
Coates, H. (2018). Postsecondary Punters: Creating new platforms for
higher education success. In: Weingarten, H., Hicks, M. & Kaufman,
A. (Ed.) Beyond Enrolment: Measuring Academic Quality. Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press. The analysis of doctoral education
uses text from: Coates, H., Croucher, G., Weerakkody, U., Moore, K.,
Dollinger, M., Kelly, P., Bexley, E. & Grosemans, I. (2019). An education
design architecture for the future Australian doctorate. Higher Education,
79, 79–94.
Working with outstanding colleagues at Tsinghua University and
globally, I am fortunate to have led research which has revealed
insights and ideas. The work which has shaped this book has included
contributing to Tsinghua University’s Shenzhen International Grad-
uate School, exploring the social impact of education technology with
Schwarzman and VIPTeach, interviewing global university presidents,
evaluating Tsinghua University’s emergency online education, designing
indicators for graduate education quality, developing an education quality
model for the world’s third-largest MOOC, constructing and piloting
next-generation assessment, developing doctoral programme designs and
a derivative global website, designing double world-class university eval-
uation indicators, analysing the formation of elite universities across Asia,
analysing university, academic, and workforce productivity, researching
lifelong learning with Skills Future Singapore, and characterising global
faculty experiences for Chinese higher education.
Contents

1 Higher Education Design 1


Emerging Field 1
Why Design Now 5
The Storyline 8
References 10

2 EdTech Establishes 13
Solutions Grow 13
The Money Scene 16
The Platform Ecosystem 19
Creating Educational Value 23
References 26

3 Campus Options 29
Wriggling Free 29
The Conditional Campus 30
Charting Blended Futures 34
References 39

4 International Connections 41
Imagining Futures 41
Designing Guiding Frames 43
Sampling History 44

xi
xii CONTENTS

Framing Connectedness 50
References 56

5 Education Economy 61
The New Dance 62
Circumstantial Misalignments 63
The New Education Economy 65
Articulating New Arrangements 66
Spurring Required Reform 68
References 71

6 Articulating Success 73
Better Bets on Tertiary Futures 73
Buying Higher Education 75
Craving Confidence 76
Revealing Success 78
Next-Generation Platforms 81
Where to Next 88
References 89

7 Reforming Assessment 91
Anticipating Future Assessment 91
Reimagining Current Contexts 93
Creating Perspectives 95
Documenting Insights into Practice 99
A Useful Assessment Architecture 103
Projecting Steps Ahead 110
References 112

8 Redesigning Institutions 117


Building Structures 117
Partnership Parameters 118
Service Partnerships 124
Partnership Stances 127
References 133

9 Curating Public Value 135


Net Positive 135
CONTENTS xiii

Unbinding Publications 136


Imagining Difference 140
Public Value Indicators 142
Beyond Number One 149
References 150

10 Constructing Cultivation 153


Future Characteristics 154
Cultivating Scholars 154
Leading Uncertainty 158
Clarifying Spaces 165
Regulating Regulation 170
References 175
List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 The storyline: formations and futures 8


Fig. 2.1 EdTech growth phases 14
Fig. 2.2 Global education stocks 2000–20 by subsector (US$
Billion) 17
Fig. 2.3 Global education stocks 2000–20 by (US$ Billion) 17
Fig. 2.4 Global education venture capital 2010–20 by (US$
Billion) 18
Fig. 2.5 Global EdTech learning landscape 20
Fig. 2.6 OPM firms and MOOCs 20
Fig. 2.7 OPM firms 2019 22
Fig. 2.8 Value-creating constellation 24
Fig. 3.1 Facets of the campus shock 32
Fig. 3.2 Difference in average scores between online
and on campus 35
Fig. 3.3 Education spaces, formats, and arrangements 37
Fig. 3.4 Blended learning design template 38
Fig. 5.1 Addressing the misalignment problem 64
Fig. 7.1 Assessment redesign logic 96
Fig. 7.2 Assessment phases and activities 98
Fig. 7.3 Assessment architecture models 103
Fig. 7.4 Assessment architecture processes 107
Fig. 8.1 Zones of partnership 119
Fig. 8.2 Four-phase academic value model 120
Fig. 8.3 Traditional university and firm partnership depiction 124
Fig. 8.4 Blended university and firm partnership depiction 125

xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.5 Innovative university and firm partnership depiction 125


Fig. 8.6 Australian university and firm partnership depiction 126
Fig. 8.7 Chinese university and firm partnership depiction 126
Fig. 8.8 University–firm partnership stances 128
Fig. 9.1 Higher education value indicators 144
Fig. 10.1 Competing values leadership framework 160
Fig. 10.2 Framework of China’s Double World-Class scheme 166
Fig. 10.3 AUA member universities 169
List of Tables

Table 4.1 International higher education design framework 45


Table 4.2 Summary of Australian university international student
fee revenue 50
Table 4.3 Framing forms of international higher education 52
Table 5.1 Dimensions of university change 67
Table 6.1 Nine qualities of a successful student experience 79
Table 6.2 Data sources for the nine qualities 82
Table 7.1 Articulating three eras of assessment 95
Table 7.2 Indicative assessment standards with prompt questions 106
Table 8.1 Parameters and investment questions 129
Table 9.1 Social contribution indicators 147
Table 10.1 Doctoral design architecture 155

xvii
CHAPTER 1

Higher Education Design

Abstract This chapter outlines the urgent need to design future higher
education institutions, resources, and services. It charts this emerging
and constructive field of inquiry and activity, locates it among system
and institution practices, positions it as a field of research and innova-
tion, articulates rationales for design-infused inquiry and innovation, and
maps the book’s structure and narratives. It is argued that now is the time
for informed, critical, and constructive discourse about cultivating future
higher education.

Keywords Higher education · Design methods · System


transformation · Institutional change · Education innovation

Emerging Field
This book advances new views on higher education design, stepping
beyond prevailing problems and perspectives and stimulating broader
contributions. The 2020 pandemic has shocked already fragile busi-
ness and academic models, and the time is ripe for innovating global
online learning, shifting towards Asia and lifelong learning, and investing
in twenty-first-century institutions and partnerships. Rather than dwell
on dystopian discontents, the book charts narratives for developing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1


Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
H. Coates, Higher Education Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9216-4_1
2 H. COATES

the industry and the field. It is written for commercial, governmental,


and collegial communities to inject major research-driven insights into
contemporary transformations and research.
Overall, the book makes three main points. First, universities are
creating substantial educational and commercial innovation, forging novel
partnerships, generating broader contributions, and serving broader
missions. Second, the distribution and flow of talent development is
changing, flowing across the lifespan, rebalancing globally, and embracing
larger populations. Third, now is a critical time for higher education
leaders to invest in inventing productive narratives to create future higher
education.
Broadly, this book creates ideas to engage people who can benefit
from investing in higher education. This includes hundreds of millions of
people who seek to study, research, lead, or reform higher education. It
also includes the billions who may be yet to think about devoting time and
effort to achieve a worthwhile return. It includes grandmothers who have
nurtured generations, billionaires who fund infrastructure, and millions of
teachers. At a minimum, it seeks to inspire a clutch of experts to energise
the next phase of higher education’s transformation.
Not all investments play out with the same rhythm. Higher education
grows in lumpy and uneven ways, almost inevitably given the complex and
entwined mechanisms at play. Bringing online learning technology to reli-
able scale has taken around 25 years of plug-and-play solutions. Building
a mature doctoral education system seems to take at least 40 years.
Building transnational student flows and pathways happen more swiftly.
Global university reputation can be generated in two decades, though
deeper prestige takes 50–60 years. A professoriate can be purchased, but
in any genuine sense takes 30 years to mature. Cultivating one person
from school leaver to tenured professor takes 20 years. Campus building
programmes reach out two decades but often stick for 50 years. Faculty
can fly-in and fly-out of any global teaching location in around 72 hours.
In the last few generations people have spent four years at university then
sallied forth into 40-year professional careers.
How then to approach the productive advance of higher education?
Normative prescription rarely translates into worthwhile advance, often
even despite regulatory power and financial lubrication. Institutions and
systems implement incremental advance, but such progression is almost
intrinsically muffled by the negotiation of interests, contextual particu-
larity, and the relativism of resistant discourse. Big thinkers and reformers
like to nourish history-sized narratives with decadal patience. A useful
1 HIGHER EDUCATION DESIGN 3

approach, advanced in this book, is to bundle together principles, perspec-


tives, research, and momentum into the fresh field of higher education
design.
Higher education design is about creating systems, institutions and
resources. It builds on contemporary design science research and prac-
tice which has grown way beyond graphics, software, and objects to
enrich a host of diverse industries, stakeholders, and systems (Buchanan,
1999; Kelley & Kelley, 2013; McKinsey, 2020; Plattner, Meinel, & Leifer,
2016). Springing from ‘design thinking’ (IDEO, 2020), ventures begin
by building understanding through research, observation, consultation,
and reflection. Having these foundations in hand makes it possible to
delineate ideas, systems, roles, constraints, and experiences. This analyt-
ical work underpins the creation of options, solutions, and scenarios.
Prototypes can constructed and tested. Finally, storylines and business
and implementation models can be curated and launched. This design
perspective focuses on solutions rather than problems. It is theoreti-
cally and methodologically eclectic rather than formulaic. It embraces
insights residing within the scholarly discipline, but also and importantly
in surrounding research and practice ecosystems.
In certain respects, higher education design may be seen as a successor
to university evaluation. Evaluation, in theory though rarely in practice,
tries to determine how well an implementation conforms with a plan to
prescribe remedies for remediation and improvement. Typically, fuelled
by verve for organisational learning, this pushes evaluators to snatch
glimpses of experience and attempt to retrofit or attribute these glimpses
to removed, distanced, superseded, or even buried forecasts. In 2020 a
global expert may gather data for a 2021 review of education practice
in 2016 which was shaped by a 2014 agenda. This is a fraught venture
in higher education, given so many complex and difficult and moving
parts. Often, it reduces to evaluators conducting Rorschach-like analyses
of spurious decimal-inflected evaluation reports with hopes of distilling
patches for fissures in already dated forms. In essence, the evaluator tries
to grab onto long wobbly tails with hopes of ‘closing the loop’ by linking
these back to re-imagined heads.
Higher education design is much more dynamic, nimble, and engaged.
An array of recursive sizing up and solving is located much nearer to prob-
lems being identified, created, or solved, resulting in more direct action
plans and improvements. Rather than segregate planning, action, evalu-
ation, and improvement, the same people are engaged in checking and
4 H. COATES

tinkering experiences. The experiences themselves are modified through


ongoing checking and tinkering. Planning is taken much closer to prac-
tice, often being blended into it. Indeed, as the above methods reveal,
design often happens by co-creating plans with experiences. As such,
design focuses on constructive and intellectually infused progression. It
targets energy on organisational remaking. It is positive. Higher educa-
tion design resonates with the way institutions, people and ideas behave
as thy ingeniously negotiate stress and innovation.
These are not whacky ideas from the edges of any field, but rather
informed insights which build on research and expertise. A significant
amount of higher education design is already underway, and this book is
an early effort to capture and extend this work. United States researchers,
for instance, are advocating the sixty-year curriculum (60YC) to ‘develop
new educational models that enable each person to reskill as their occupa-
tional and personal context shifts’ (Dede, 2018). Related innovation puts
emphasis on the design-based engineering of learning (Dede, Richards,
& Saxberg, 2019). Stanford2025, the effort to build an ‘open loop
university’, is a fascinating effort to explore the ‘future undergraduate
experience’ (Stanford, 2020). Arizona State University has the ‘Univer-
sity Design Institute’ (ASU, 2020). The Georgetown Futures venture
aims to ‘accelerate educational innovation that allows higher education
to more effectively and equitably benefit society’ (Georgetown, 2020).
SkillsFuture Singapore focuses on reconfiguring education to help people
‘develop their fullest potential throughout life, regardless of their starting
points’ (SkillsFuture, 2020). Georgia Tech has committed to ‘Lifetime
Education’ as the ‘next’ in education (Georgia Tech, 2018). Spanning
diverse contexts, the Minerva Project works from the science of learning
to ‘partner with leading institutions and organizations to design and
deliver customized learning and talent development programs that are
more agile and effective than traditional approaches’ (Minerva Project,
2020).
As these introductory examples convey, designing higher education
charts a fresh frontier in sector-specific research and development. The
field of higher education studies flourished from the 1990s as Anglo-
spheric and European universities grew large. Education and research
programmes, centres and communities formalised around topics such as
student affairs, policy and leadership, teaching and learning, and inter-
nationalisation. Many warning lights have been flashing, however, that
this work has been dissipating and failing to deliver. Research centres
have scrambled for scholarly grants as university presidents have turned
1 HIGHER EDUCATION DESIGN 5

to commercial consultants for reconnaissance and advice. Brilliant 1970s


theories have been depleted from anxious and unproductive overmilking.
The field struggles to distinguish a corpus of theories which give founda-
tion and genuine ‘discipline’. Major research centres have been closed,
major projects defunded, and substantial evidence-bases unnourished.
The workforce has aged (Coates & Goedegebuure, 2012) and many
experts have retired while doctoral students and global networks have
withered. Talented graduates have turned to commercial firms. Anglo-
centric researchers have become increasingly separated from the over-
whelming and growing majority of higher education practice, particularly
in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A range of meta-analyses has tried
to make sense of the ‘scattered field’ (Daenekindt & Huisman, 2020:
571). These ominous indications of distress must be taken seriously as
inducements for reform and rejuvenation.
Who should care about creating and investing in the next few decades
of higher education? More and more people who care about higher
education year by year (Coates, 2019). As tagged in the opening para-
graph, obvious participants include university leaders, faculty, students,
and industry partners. There are also new and growing communities
of financiers, service providers, regulators, and co-owners. To address
these diverse interests the book’s storylines stem not just from research,
but grab onto conversations with participants and commentators, media
reports, ethnographic observation, and imaginary formulations. Overall,
the book seeks to articulate principles, perspectives and proposals for
future higher education design.

Why Design Now


Intersecting forces are fuelling the need for higher education design.
These are worth unpacking as they position the book’s narrative and
perspectives. They reveal the compounding urgency driving the following
analysis.
There is of course an ongoing need for informed and accessible
dialogues about higher education. Many people who work in higher
education, even experts, lack basic knowledge of key areas and major
issues. This is partly due to the lack of systematic training and the
complexity and breadth of the field. It is also a field which touches many
but captures the deeper interest of only just a few. As the book reveals,
different people are starting to engage in higher education, include a
6 H. COATES

new generation of university and government leaders, commercial service


providers and finance partners, and national communities which are only
just starting to grasp the sector’s potential.
There is an urgent need for fresh and useful narratives in higher
education. Anyone familiar with the field is aware of the new worlds
charted by signature epochs in California, China, Europe, and the Anglo-
sphere. Today, higher education seems to flourish beyond the reach
of system-wide policy designs, with even government ministers viewing
traditional policy handles as too greasy, vaporous, and dynamic. This
does not mean that dour and dystopian discourse needs to rule, rather
that alternative theories and methodologies and perspectives might better
serve tomorrow. Resetting around constructive narratives and game plans
is essential to ensuring a prosperous and productive future for higher
education.
There is an urgent need to reinvigorate higher education research,
and to clarify research frontiers. Since the 1990s the tectonic plates
which undergird higher education have transformed while much schol-
arship has become befuddled by the fascinating relativism of pedagogical
epistemologies, silicone solutions, and identity. Topics like this are impor-
tant, but their emphasis has left major issues languishing. In countries
with major higher education systems it is hard to find research experts
or publications on core topics like finance, governance, regulation, or
management. As a result, existentially important fractures have emerged
between university-based research and actual education practice. This has
meant that people doing higher education, such as leaders, teachers,
researchers, and students, have turned to management consultants and
even loquacious journalists for insight and advice. It has meant that many
highly trained researchers have moved into personally comfortable and
indulgent conceptual spaces which are blinkered or insulated from the
messy machinations which surround them.
This book asserts the need for steady awareness, analysis, and reform
of core facets of higher education. While planned over three years,
this book was written during a major global crisis which tipped many
slow-brewing discretionary reforms into urgent priorities. The panicked
existential screams of many big players dissipated to reveal the signifi-
cance of higher education and the urgency of accelerating key reforms.
For how much longer, if at all, can universities parlay research reputations
into tuition revenues without solid evidence of graduate success? How can
universities persuade uninterested stakeholders of their value and impact?
1 HIGHER EDUCATION DESIGN 7

How can universities seduce a broad range of stakeholders to invest and


co-create amazing knowledge futures?
The analysis is propelled by the need to understand Asia, and partic-
ularly China. This is critical because countries across Asia are likely to
account for two-thirds of higher education enrolments by 2030, because
not much is known about Asian higher education, and because Asia is
at the forefront of major domestic innovation and global development.
Research for the Asian Universities Alliance (Zhong, Coates, & Shi, 2019)
revealed the widescale and timely need to report and learn more about
higher education in Asia. The book presents helicopter insights from the
apex of the world’s largest education system, and individual stories from
across the region.
Major developments have started bumping into each other in non-
ignorable ways. Governments in major countries are using contemporary
economic perturbations to finally shake themselves free of fiscal, and
in certain respect regulatory, responsibility for higher education. Online
education technologies have become reliable, sophisticated, and useful.
Asia has matured as a serious third pole in higher education. While
doubtless not dead, globalisation is looking decidedly less beige and
nationally prescribed than in the preceding forty years. Demand for higher
education keeps swelling with more communities seeking learning across
their lifespan, putting enormous stress on traditional supply capabili-
ties. Billionaires are secreting private cash into high education, foreseeing
advanced skills as a new form of currency. Through this, skilled graduates
are gaining ground on publications as important contributions, opening
developmental frontiers for reconfigured kinds of institutions.
The ideas and practices which will pattern the growth of higher
education over the next twenty years will be shaped by paradoxical and
unanticipated factors. Hundreds of millions more people will participate,
rendering useless many elite-era academic rituals which persist today albeit
with dwindling salience and vigour. A substantial volume of new students,
particularly in the sunrise markets of Sub-Saharan Africa (Calderon,
2018), will need to be flown to a university, have a university built nearby,
or engage with a mobile university, or have virtual resources piped in.
Now is the time for informed, critical, and constructive discourse about
cultivating future higher education.
8 H. COATES

The Storyline
This book distils the fruits of several higher education design projects.
Loosely, the first part concentrates on contemporary formations. The
balance of the book paints important futures, concentrating on burrowing
out persistent pain points and reconstructing more productive and gainful
futures. Figure 1.1 depicts the narrative structure. Each chapter is an inde-
pendent contribution and they combine to contour important narratives
of future higher education design.
Future higher education will be constructed by mixing three everyday
chemicals, namely silicone, concrete, and kerosene. Chapters 2–5 focus
on these formations. Combined, these initial chapters compress substan-
tial analytical and empirical research to forge insights on contemporary
developments and the future state of play.
Chapter 2 focuses on technology. Servers and software have become
impossible to ignore, having sped beyond a jumble of unfulfilled silicone
‘solutions’ to finally extend reliable and creative educational services. This
chapter takes stock of the burgeoning education technology (EdTech)
scene and examines how it is creating new kinds of educational value.
Next, the campus, gardens of concrete brilliance. Rustling substantial
insights from one of higher education’s biggest ever shocks and transfor-
mations, the 2020 viral pandemic, Chapter 3 looks at campus optionality,
and the realisation of an inherently blended future.
Chapter 4 probes the international connections which will distribute
education structures and functions across communities and the world.

ArƟculaƟng success

EducaƟon economy
Reforming assessment

Redesigning insƟtuƟons
EdTech Campus InternaƟonal
establishes opƟons connecƟons

CuraƟng public value

Higher educaƟon design ConstrucƟng culƟvaƟon

Fig. 1.1 The storyline: formations and futures


1 HIGHER EDUCATION DESIGN 9

How much kerosene will planes burn moving millions of leaders,


students, and faculty to campuses, and what sorts of things will they seek
to do? Historical analysis helps parametrise a framework which is then
deployed to imagine the characteristics of a connected future. The anal-
ysis is structural in nature, delving beneath contemporary circumstances
and looking instead at broader tectonic shifts underway.
Chapter 5 pivots from looking at formation trajectories to instead
looking at the landscape in which it will play out. Swelling problems
matching education supply and demand are analysed to spotlight options
for what is characterised as a new education economy. The chapter
proposes transformations which involve reconfiguring education services,
and better understanding and supporting demand. Overall, the chapter
contributes a strategy for engaging universities in what is referred to as
the ‘new education economy’.
The balance of this book asserts that incremental reform or silent trans-
formation will not help higher education realise its promise to the places
and communities it must serve. Gnawing transformations need to be
shepherded into the mainstream futures. Change is required at all levels
ranging from individual, instructional, institutional, governmental, and
global.
Chapter 6 focuses on the individual student. It argues that substantially
improved guidance is required to help people punt on post-secondary
education. This means understanding how and why people invest in
higher education and producing next-generation platforms which facili-
tate more productive and successful encounters.
Recent decades have seen substantial instructional change to
curriculum and teaching, but largely unreformed assessment of student
learning remains a chronic pain point for higher education. This chapter
reimagines prevailing arrangements and advances a next-generation
design architecture to project important steps ahead.
Drawing on multi-country research education service partnership,
Chapter 8 presents a model for understanding and redesigning future
higher education institutions. This analysis delves beneath public policy
discussions about system and organisational diversity to instead reveal the
substantial and often confidential renovations which are already recon-
figuring higher education. This is essential to understanding kinds of
partnership which are in play and likely to prosper.
Chapter 9 targets the policy-level governance of higher education. It is
argued that to speed transformation, higher education must grow beyond
10 H. COATES

suborn infatuation with bibliometrics, imagine novel growth frontiers,


and chase valuable and diverse growth trajectories.
The final chapter winds up the exposition, clarifying steps required
to cultivate future scholars, leaders, spaces, and regulations. It charts
the trajectory of existing arrangements to spotlight the characteristics of
future global arrangements.

References
Arizona State University (ASU). (2020). University design institute. Accessed
from: https://udi.asu.edu.
Buchanan, R. (1999). Design research and the new learning. Accessed from:
https://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/material/DesResMeth09/The
ory/01-buchanan.pdf.
Calderon, A. (2018). Massification of higher education revisited. Melbourne:
RMIT.
Coates, H. (2019). Editorial: Eight tactics for engineering consequential higher
education policy research papers. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 3(1),
1–3.
Coates, H., & Goedegebuure, L. (2012). Recasting the academic workforce:
Why the attractiveness of the academic profession needs to be increased
and eight possible strategies for how to go about this from an Australian
perspective. Higher Education, 64(6), 875–889.
Daenekindt, S., & Huisman, J. (2020). Mapping the scattered field of research
on higher education: A correlated topic model of 17,000 articles, 1991–2018.
Higher Education, 80, 571–587.
Dede, C. (2018). The 60 year curriculum: Developing new educational models
to serve the agile labor market. Accessed from: https://evolllution.com/rev
enue-streams/professional_development/the-60-year-curriculum-developing-
new-educational-models-to-serve-the-agile-labor-market.
Dede, C., Richards, J., & Saxberg, B. (2019). Learning engineering for online
education: Theoretical contexts and design-based examples. London: Routledge.
Georgetown University. (2020). Georgetown futures venture. Accessed from:
https://futures.georgetown.edu.
Georgia Tech. (2018). Deliberate innovation, lifetime education. Accessed from:
https://provost.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/documents/deliberate_inno
vation_lifetime_education.pdf.
IDEO. (2020). Design thinking defined. Accessed from: https://designthinking.
ideo.com.
Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2013). Creative confidence: Unleashing the creative
potential within us all. New York: Crown Business.
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McKinsey. (2020). Growth by design. Accessed from: https://www.mckinsey.


com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/how-we-help-clients.
Minerva Project. (2020). Minerva Project. Accessed from: https://www.minerv
aproject.com.
Plattner, H., Meinel, C., & Leifer, L. (2016). Design thinking research: Making
design thinking foundational. Singapore: Springer.
Skillsfuture. (2020). Skillsfuture Singapore. Accessed from: https://www.skillsfut
ure.sg.
Stanford. (2020). Open Loop University. Accessed from: www.stanford2025.
com/open-loop-university.
Zhong, Z., Coates, H., & Shi, J. (2019). Balancing the scales: The urgent need
for leading educational innovation. In Z. Zhong, H. Coates, & J. Shi (Eds.),
Innovations in Asian higher education. London: Routledge.
CHAPTER 2

EdTech Establishes

Abstract Leveraging education technology (EdTech) is core to designing


future higher education. The chapter begins by clarifying the financial
dynamics shaping contemporary EdTech, which are critical to under-
standing the scene overall. This analysis reveals the massive influx of global
capital which has spurred the growth of sophisticated platforms. The
broad education technology ecosystem is surveyed, before diving into case
study analyses of online learning platforms and online project manage-
ment firms. The final part of this chapter unpacks how education service
firms are blending commercial with academic capability into growing
constellations which are creating and expanding educational value.

Keywords Education technology · Investment dynamics · Platform


ecosystem · Education service firms · Academic value

Solutions Grow
Education technology (EdTech) has solved sufficient software solutions
and matured in sophisticated ways that add integrated value to higher
education. While lagging ‘MedTech’ and ‘FinTech’, the maturation of
EdTech has been rapid in the last two decades and particularly in the last

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 13


Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
H. Coates, Higher Education Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9216-4_2
14 H. COATES

five years. This critical analysis opens out the field, revealing the flour-
ishing digital transformation of higher education, and furnishing a prelude
to later analyses.
EdTech growth can be distinguished into three educationally framed
phases. Adopting an educational not technological gaze means that all the
technology in the world is irrelevant unless it touches and transforms how
institutions and people create and share knowledge. Figure 2.1 depicts the
phases. While difficult to pigeonhole in terms of dates or technologies,
and playing out differently in different contexts, the analysis starts at the
turn of the century, shortly after the massification of the internet (Coates,
James, & Baldwin, 2005; Guro, 2019).
The first ‘distinct’ phase ranged from the turn of the century for
around a decade. The turn of the century was a formative moment for
IT given the Y2K scare, which engaged even people who had thus far
managed to avoid computers and the internet. Many people had email
and internet access, many acquired their first smart mobile phone during
this period, and universities adopted enterprise-level education platforms.
Certainly, technology was separate from education, and easily avoid-
able. Learning advisors were hired to help faculty transform overhead
transparencies into PowerPoint slides and upload these to rudimen-
tary learning management systems. Major global universities explored
the potential of the internet for open courseware and programmed
learning. Conservative analysts debated how universities should engage

Distributed
Unavoidable

EducaƟon

Technology

Technology
DisƟnct

EducaƟon
EducaƟon
Technology

Fig. 2.1 EdTech growth phases


2 EDTECH ESTABLISHES 15

with phenomena which posed an existential threat, writing books about


the death of the campus and traditional academics.
A more mature ‘unavoidable’ phase emerged towards the end of the
first decade of the century, maybe running for the next seven to ten years.
This second phase was epitomised by smartphones, massive open online
courses, video conferencing, and an abundance of online curriculum
materials. Major knowledge-relevant global firms grew up, particularly on
the internet but also in and around key education activities and condi-
tions. Universities relaxed as it became clear that higher education was
more than the sum of potentially solvable and codable parts. Acces-
sible knowledge resources did not deflate the value of the credential nor
dissuade people from enrolling in formal programmes. Coders found it
difficult to deliver on their promise to programme and automate teaching,
administration, and student support. During this time technology not
only became unavoidable but also swamped core facets of higher educa-
tion. Chief information officers wielded platforms with the potential to
‘solve’ and perhaps even supplant education.
The third and contemporary ‘distributed’ phase started somewhere
around 2015 when it became clear that education and institutions could
be enabled by technology, not the other way around. EdTech matured
in its capacity to help configure education in ways that help people learn.
The availability of powerful platforms and software was important, but
more important was finding ways to exploit these systems for educa-
tional and institutional advantage. Commercial capability and in particular
marketing techniques played a role in this development. This contempo-
rary phase signposts an important milestone in which large service firms
integrate technology which supports an array of conferencing, messaging,
scheduling, tracking, reading, and assessing. Embracing much more than
technology, these firms grew to coordinate human, physical, and virtual
resources into ecosystems which are genuinely starting to reconfigure
education reach, experiences, operations, and outcomes. The scale and
sophistication of this change also undergirds genuine promise of greater
transformation to come.
This three-phase depiction conveys how the maturation of EdTech
has meant that, particularly in the last five years, technology has started
focusing on education rather than the other way around. In the first
two decades of the internet, education technology tended to be led by
engineers and managers who understandably focused on technological
16 H. COATES

fundamentals and innovations rather than broader educational and insti-


tutional returns. The decades ahead look different. Rather than focusing
on technology, contemporary academic leaders have started leveraging
different platforms and experts to enable productive education. Education
and business leaders have seized this change and built substantial global
education service corporations which are of major relevance to higher
education.

The Money Scene


Contemporary EdTech spans local start-ups to global conglomerates, with
a plethora of firms each advancing a platform or application to service
any and every educational need. It is easy to get lost in the flux, even
for experts. There is an eternally merging array of incommensurate and
often competing brands, lots of flashy branding, and intricate knowl-
edge communities. Even technically literate busy people do not have
time to get into the details, and it is useful to explore the investments
and technologies being made. Clarifying the money side is critical to
understanding the scene overall.
EdTech investment is booming. Governments invest substantially in
higher education, which goes to direct though more often indirect invest-
ments in design and development. Lots of wealthy countries are spending
more than 4% of GDP on education overall (OECD, 2019). Many firms
have emerged from universities, particularly small and risky start-ups. The
scale and nature of these firms is hard to track as specific business and
technical activity often floats within boundaries prescribed by regulatory
and other instruments to compel broader disclosure.
Non-governmental investment is playing a massive role not just in
growing but also in consolidating and reshaping EdTech. The acceler-
ating role of private equity and capital markets is associated with declining
government investment, the scope for firms to turn cash and surplus
from education, and the rise of ‘grey-zone’ services which are impor-
tant within the total education ecosystem but sit beyond formal sectoral
and institutional structures. This ‘grey-zone’ is very colourful, and plays a
super-important role in helping people and institutions and even govern-
ments across boundaries. Examples include online pathways providers,
student recruitment platforms, and careers and internship providers.
Figure 2.2 shows the market capitalisation of education stocks from 2000
to early 2020, revealing the sustained growth in number and size of listed
2 EDTECH ESTABLISHES 17

Fig. 2.2 Global education stocks 2000–20 by subsector (US$ Billion) (Source
https://www.holoniq.com/notes/20-years-of-global-education-stocks)

higher education companies and the growth in other sectors, much of


which flows into higher education (HolonIQ, 2020a). Figure 2.3 shows
that China has played a significant and growing role in listed investments,
now being the largest single global market in terms of listed firms and
market capitalisation.
Private equity is also playing a huge role, both through start-ups
and buyouts. Figure 2.4 shows trends in private equity over the last
decade, revealing sustained increase. The acceleration of this money
has been fuelled by the global rush in early 2020 to build systems

Fig. 2.3 Global education stocks 2000–20 by (US$ Billion) (Source https://
www.holoniq.com/notes/20-years-of-global-education-stocks)
18 H. COATES

Fig. 2.4 Global education venture capital 2010–20 by (US$ Billion)


(Source https://www.holoniq.com/notes/3b-global-edtech-venture-capital-for-
q1-2020)

which support more distributed forms of education, persistent under-


investment in education relative to other major sectors, and growth of
education populations. China is the dominant market, fuelled by the
core value on education, substantial private wealth, huge internet use,
and enduring interest in innovation and success. Market analysts predict
that global venture capital will continue multiplying over the next decade,
with growth in emerging and underserved regions such as Africa, South
America, and Southeast Asia (HolonIQ, 2020b).
These figures portray an array of complex holding patterns. It is
complex even for experts to understand the dynamic, intwined, and
layered corporate flows reshaping contemporary higher education. Public
universities strike joint ventures with listed companies then together
supporting private companies which are investing in private firms. The
SEEK Group, for instance, started as an Australian job application website
which expanded internationally, invested in education institutions, spun-
off an online education services firm, then invested in global online
platforms. In 2020, the group holds ‘talent-related’ brands across several
markets and functions, and sports exposure to three billion people.
As these few charts convey, the last twenty years have spawned and
exposed opportunities for an influx of big global capital which has fuelled,
and in important respects transformed, core facets of higher education.
2 EDTECH ESTABLISHES 19

Obviously this is a really big and complex business, involving huge inter-
ests, thousands of super smart people, thorny politics, and tonnes of
confidentiality. The average university faculty and even most leaders prob-
ably have little idea about the shape of things coming. Not much is
written and in certain cases known about these matters, perhaps due
to the lack of analytical expertise, company allegiances, and commer-
cial sensitivities, and the fraught optics of public universities outsourcing
core academic work. But it is important, and this analysis attempts to
make modest progress by both revealing a few practical developments
and more generally articulating structures for making it easier for people
to understand what is going on.

The Platform Ecosystem


More money than ever before is flowing into education technology, and it
seems likely to keep growing. As education grows there remain substan-
tial opportunities to invest in platforms and services that will yield sound
and substantial returns. Where is this money going? The full answer is
likely into every nook of education, and it is necessary to narrow focus to
achieve greater clarity. The following analysis concentrates on technology-
related service firms in the field of higher education. The lines are blurry,
but the analysis does not focus, for instance, non-technology companies
which mainly address research or institutions’ corporate services. First, an
overview is provided, then a series of functional case studies.
Figure 2.5 presents ‘HolonIQ’s Global EdTech Learning Landscape’
(HolonIQ, 2020c). This depicts a suite of acronyms, each of which sign-
posts functional space inhabited by a suite of companies. For instance,
looking within new delivery models at ‘Mo’ reveal a suite of MOOC
providers and within ‘Op’ a suite of online project management (OPM)
firms (Fig. 2.6). These functional spaces can be unpacked and explored to
reveal dynamic insights into technology-related higher education service
firms. Two case studies are explored here, each of which flags an impor-
tant zone of the EdTech space and set foundations for subsequent
analyses.
Fully online learning is the most obvious manifestation of techno-
logically infused education. Recent surveying suggested that around
one-third of students are participating in some form of distance educa-
tion, though perhaps one half also engage in campus-based provision
(Seaman, Allen, & Seaman, 2018). The economies of online education
20 H. COATES

Fig. 2.5 Global EdTech learning landscape (Source https://www.globallearni


nglandscape.org)

Fig. 2.6 OPM firms and MOOCs (Source https://www.globallearninglandsca


pe.org)

are attractive, perhaps around US$5000 compared with US$24,000 for


the average student who takes less than one-fifth of their learning online
(Eduventures, 2020). The reduced cost obviously ties with the decline of
traditional faculty roles and less research work. Marketing is the bookend
to this equation, which drives up student engagement, tuition revenue,
and overall surplus. Sustaining the quality of materials, experiences and
2 EDTECH ESTABLISHES 21

outcomes renders purely online education an attractive option. Accord-


ingly, market analysts estimate that the online degree market could reach
US$74 billion by 2025, around 3% of the US$2.5 trillion global higher
education market (HolonIQ, 2020b).
Certain institutions have gravitated towards fully online provision.
The shift is not small and is often far from being shaped by financial
considerations alone. It can involve reconfiguration of underlying opera-
tional models. Starting in 2008, massive open online courses (MOOCs)
launched contemporary interest in online education. These platforms
made university curriculum and passive teaching available at scale, though
with lax assessment, minimal certification, and often appalling attrition
figures. Hyped by technozealots, they failed to deliver the ‘borderless,
gender-blind, race-blind, class-blind, and bank account-blind’ education
once envisioned (Agarwal, 2013: 3). Research into student engagement
has revealed that only a slither of a percentage of students ever complete
a course (Coates et al., 2019; Perna et al., 2013). Clearly serving initially
as sophisticated business cards for major global-brand universities, with
the help of university and business executives these platforms have been
nudged into the accredited programme space, with the most important
dividend being the promulgation of various micro-credentials. Backed by
large universities, many MOOCs are now mature platforms which are
starting to tiptoe into other areas, taking with them millions of interested
learners. To date, fully online provision has been particularly promi-
nent in the United States, with major prominent players such as Arizona
State University, Purdue University, Western Governors University, and
Southern New Hampshire University.
Education technology also contributes enormously to location- and
campus-based forms of education. The learning management systems
(LMS), which early in the millennium threatened to unbundle and disrupt
even the most stable universities, were most used on the campus (Coates,
2006). Such systems are still ubiquitous but focus deliberately on tech-
nology rather than education or broader services. The following case
focuses on professional education service firms referred as ‘online program
management’ (OPM) firms.
In the broadest articulation, an OPM is a for-profit firm which helps
a typically, non-profit institution such as a university re-engineer educa-
tion resources and services and scale programme delivery. These are much
more than technology firms, typically also incorporating marketing (e.g.
22 H. COATES

market research, student recruitment), management (e.g. course coordi-


nation, student administration, student retention, financial management,
helpdesk and technical support), and academic (e.g. course development,
curriculum design, faculty development) services and expertise (Helix
Education, 2019; HolonIQ, 2020d). As they embrace online as well
as blended education, OPMs are relevant to higher education students
across the globe.
The OPM market is young and dynamic. There are ongoing changes
in business models, academic services, and firm characteristics. It is
estimated that there are around 30–50 established OPMs, partnering
with hundreds of universities and generating billions in revenue (Zipper,
2016). Figure 2.7 depicts a sample of firms, dividing these into firms
which are generalist, specialist, MOOC-based, and university-based.
OPMs tend to be based in the United States, with a smaller number
in Australia, China, the United Kingdom, Europe, and India (Eduven-
tures, 2020; HolonIQ, 2020d; Navitas Ventures, 2017). These firms
have sprung from publishers (e.g. Pearson Embanet, Wiley Education
Services), university-based MOOCs (e.g. edX, FutureLearn, Coursera,
Udacity), and education service firms (e.g. Academic Partnerships, Online
Education Services (OES), ChinaEdu, 2U, Open Edutainment, China
Cyber, Academic Partnerhips, CEG Digital, Keypath, Bisk, Huike Group,
Laureate Partners, Navitas).

Fig. 2.7 OPM firms 2019 (Source https://www.holoniq.com/news/anatomy-


of-an-opm)
2 EDTECH ESTABLISHES 23

After several years of growth and consolidation, it appears that OPMs


have been successful in improving higher education. In the United States,
where the industry is most mature, OPMs have helped grow enrol-
ments by two-to-three times (Garrett, 2018; Legon & Garrett, 2017).
OPMs in China are already educating around 1.5 million learners in
partnership with dozens of universities. Several factors have propelled
such growth, including reliability, learner-centredness, change facilitation,
multi-institutional experience, teaching expertise, online expertise, speed-
to-market, full-service capability, and risk-sharing. OPM firms form an
evolving range of commercial and academic partnerships with universities.
The case of OPMs affirms that when looking into online education
it is vital to keep in mind that higher education is first and foremost
about people and learning, not technology and business. Earlier waves
of education technology were led by computer specialists and corporate
managers who understandably focused on technological fundamentals
rather than broader educational and institutional returns. But this facet
of higher education has matured beyond ‘talking big’ (Garrett, 2019). It
is now creating more nuanced contributions to administration, teaching,
learning, assessment, and student support (Riter, 2017). Future success
hinges on using a range of different platforms and education experts to
enable leaders and students to engage in more productive forms of higher
education.

Creating Educational Value


These mature technology service firms are creating new and often
expanded forms of educational value. The educationally flavoured
commercial orientation has assured this, along with sustained growth and
consolidation of the field itself.
The success of contemporary firms is that they put education first and
position technology and business as the enablers. Figure 2.8 depicts this
value-creating constellation in which commercial nous is the glue that
binds these ingredients in ways which yield additional revenue and return.
As Wong (2019) and Liu, Wong, and Coates (2019) clarified, contempo-
rary service firms have flourished not because they sell IT to universities,
but because they bring IT into commercial solutions which advance the
productivity of higher learning.
This analysis focuses on education and technology, but it is worth
delving a little further into the commercial facet of this value-creating
24 H. COATES

Educaon

Educaon value

Business Technology

Fig. 2.8 Value-creating constellation

constellation. These public–private partnerships are important to probe,


for while they are largely confidential hence invisible, they are the stimulus
and lubrication which underwrites the whole deal. The legal and financial
details are of course complex and contextualised, but the broad models
are worth unpacking.
OPMs tend to strike one of two kinds of deals with universities.
The first deal is a fee-for-service arrangement in which the university
pays the firm start-up and ongoing fees. The second type of deal is a
revenue-sharing model in which the firm limits service fees but instead
takes a revenue cut. These two deals have obvious and more interesting
consequences for universities.
The fee-for-service model is less common but more straightforward.
In this model the university forms a partnership with the firm which
involves paying for development and educational services. The limitation
of this arrangement for universities is the need to pay initial service fees
during start-up phase when enrolments may be small. The fee-for-service
model also hinders universities from accessing new forms of finance which
can be leveraged. The benefit for universities, however, is that it reduces
initial financial exposure associated with development costs, and there is a
proportional decline in fees with increased enrolment. Universities can
2 EDTECH ESTABLISHES 25

also park funds with the service organisation, opening greater oppor-
tunities than may be feasible in the more tightly regulated accredited
university.
The revenue-sharing model typically involves universities and service
firms forming some joint venture whereby both take equity in devel-
opment, and both take slices of the returns. This deal model exposes
financially regulated universities to potentially significant start-up costs,
and the distribution of surplus is usually tipped in favour of the service
firm. The arrangement enables universities to advance education capability
through new vehicles which can help shift cash into new spaces which
have few use constraints. This can yield further bonuses to universities,
not least sidestepping conservative industrial and regulatory arrange-
ments, shifting intellectual property into more contemporary and nimble
vehicles and, importantly, forming partnerships which provide access to
private and public finance.
These two basic deal models unfurl into rivers of educational,
commercial, and social complexity. Universities retain greater command
in the subcontracting arrangement, enabling finer specification of
product and service qualities. Conversely, joint ownership over products
enables reliance on more standardised materials which lowers customised
academic input though may boost baseline quality. The specifics depend
on programme and course mix, market nature and size, negotiation, and
a host of externalities associated with regulation, finance options and
broader institutional governance. Interestingly, governments appear to
have taken little interest in below-radar arrangements, even though they
signpost an obvious outsourcing of core business, prove that the costs
of higher education are lower than publicly claimed, and have immediate
and obvious implications for quality and diversity.
This field is substantial, already occupying a core part of higher educa-
tion. Estimates for the United States, the biggest market (Seaman et al.,
2018), suggest that one-third of non-profit online providers leverage
technology-related service firms (Busta, 2019), as do more than three
quarters of the colleges which engage in online education (Newton, 2016;
Wong, 2019). In other words, most of the online education, even at
non-profit public universities and colleges, makes use of a commercial
technology services firm.
Understanding the complexities of university and education firm deals
is of vital importance to understanding the future of higher education.
Sustained growth is projected for service-enabled learning across all levels,
26 H. COATES

fields, and institutions. This growth will be driven by declines with tradi-
tional revenue sources, confirmation of the productivity of alternative
education models, reconfigurations of core business and disruptions to
global hypertravel.
While sustained growth is expected with online service firms, partic-
ularly after 2020, the nature and ownership of firms could pattern out
in a range of ways. Service firms may continue to consolidate, forming
into larger, more global, and more professional aggregations. That is,
the service industry itself may form professional affiliations which float
for the most part underneath broader higher education accreditation
regimes. Alternatively, the firms may splinter into a host of smaller service
providers, each delivering and returning distinct value to specialist profes-
sional and public communities. This, ironically, would mean that the
service firms more closely resemble existing higher education adhocra-
cies. Firm characteristics will also pattern out in terms of ownership, be
this by universities, public shares, or private money. Ownership by univer-
sities may imply more fragmented firm structures but not necessarily if
more cooperative and collaborative commercial vehicles are established.
Of course, this is an innovative commercial field marked by high
volatility and substantial failure. The share price of the NASDAQ listed
firm 2U, for instance, grew from around US$14 on listing, soared to
around US$100, tanked in mid-2019 to around US$14, then realised
steady gains to around US$48 in mid-2020. The mid-2019 dip revealed
major challenges shaking the market, such as increasing competition,
greater costs associated with recruiting more challenging potential student
segments, retention issues associated with ‘non-traditional learners’, the
reduced appeal of coursework graduate study (particularly the masters),
the growth of formal and informal smaller (‘micro’) learning parcels, and
the need to navigate regulatory complexities.

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www.holoniq.com/notes/3b-global-edtech-venture-capital-for-q1-2020.
HolonIQ. (2020c). Global EdTech learning landscape. Accessed from: https://
www.globallearninglandscape.org.
HolonIQ. (2020d). The anatomy of an OPM . Accessed from: https://www.hol
oniq.com/news/anatomy-of-an-opm.
Legon, R., & Garrett, R. (2017). The changing landscape of online education.
Accessed from: https://encoura.org/project/chloe-2.
Liu, L., Wong, E., & Coates, H. (2019). Exploration on the reform of
online course operating mode in Chinese universities: Inspiration from
OPM provider-university cooperation model in Western countries. Distance
Education and Online Learning, 1, 122–128.
Navitas Ventures. (2017). Global EdTech landscape 3.0. Accessed from: https://
www.navitasventures.com/insights/landscape.
Newton, D. (2016). How companies profit off education at non-profit schools.
Accessed from: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/
for-profit-companies-nonprofit-colleges/485930.
28 H. COATES

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2019).


Education at a glance 2019. Paris: OECD.
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(2013). The life cycle of a million MOOC users. MOOC Research Initiative
Conference (pp. 5–6).
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cause.edu/…/five-myths-about-online-program-management.
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Zipper, T. (2016). The value of the online program management industry.
Accessed from: www.uncompromisingedu.com/2016/06/23/the-value-of-
the-online-program-management-industry.
CHAPTER 3

Campus Options

Abstract Harnessing perspectives on institutional and learning spaces,


this chapter reveals tectonic shifts which will shape the future of the
campus. Building on analysis of China’s Tsinghua University, the first
analysis shows that the campus has appeared to wriggle free from any
‘necessary role’ in higher education. Unshackling the campus, setting
it ‘free’, has unleashed an inevitably more blended future for even the
most traditional forms of higher education. The second analysis sets out a
framework for understanding this blended future. These analyses point to
a ‘bionic’ university which rests on substantial reconfiguration of campus
not just online infrastructure.

Keywords Campus sustainability · Tsinghua university · Pandemic


shock · Campus transformation · Asian education · Blended education ·
Re-engineering education

Wriggling Free
As has already been the case for many hundreds of years, deft design
and deployment of the campus will play an important role in future
higher education. The year 2020 has been the first-ever in which the
world relied heavily on remote online learning to support core education

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 29


Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
H. Coates, Higher Education Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9216-4_3
30 H. COATES

provision. This experience has made clear the importance of bringing


people together to learn. Online learning is highly functional, but
campuses give life to many of the more human, intangible, and trans-
formational facets of any educational experience.
It helps then to understand how the campus matters and what it may
look like in the future. Many thousands of universities shuttered their
campuses in 2020, driving a surge of volatile theories, opinions, and
visions about the future of the campus. It is prudent to look through this
flux to identify broader trends and developments. As Schleicher asserts
‘If universities stay closed down for the next academic year, I think that
will raise very serious questions over the value proposition they offer…
[students attend prestigious – and expensive – universities to] meet the
most amazing professors in the world [and] brilliant students from all
over the world [and] …if that gets lost, what will remain?’ (THE, 2020).
By harnessing perspectives on campus and learning spaces, this chapter
reveals certain tectonic shifts which will surely influence the future of the
university campus. The first analysis shows that the campus has appeared
to wriggle free from any ‘necessary role’ in higher education. Unshackling
the campus, setting it ‘free’, has unleashed an inevitably more blended
future for even the most traditional forms of higher education. The
second analysis sets out a framework for understanding this blended
future.

The Conditional Campus


Many thousands of articles have been written about the university
campus. They are enjoyable spaces, and often convenient. Increasingly
they are being rebuilt as ‘smart’ and ‘connected’ campuses, incorporating
technologies which enhance sustainability and efficiency (Deloitte, 2019;
Valks, Arkesteijn, & den Heijer, 2018). But higher education seems not
to rely on or require a campus. In most fields, plenty if not most of
the research and education happens outside a campus. Lots are already
done online or by distance. Hotels, planes, oceans, and deserts all serve
as locations for learning and discovery. This has led critics, particularly
around the turn of the century during the formative days of the internet,
even went so far as to portend the decline of the campus (e.g. Dutton &
Loader, 2002; van der Molen, 2001; van Dusen, 1997). The campus has
prevailed, however, seeing away the computer rooms which were fitted-
out to kill it, many lucrative offers for prime and often underutilised
3 CAMPUS OPTIONS 31

real estate, and ample evidence that large-group lectures are a costly
and ineffective way to learn. Indeed, many campuses have flourished
through extensive building programmes, and many major universities
have converted their campuses into islands of exemplary sustainability,
affirming its innovative potential.
Though it is often useful, important and enjoyable, recent experi-
ence affirms that the campus is neither necessary nor sufficient for higher
education. The novel coronavirus pandemic at the start of 2020 shocked
higher education around the world. To keep people apart, governments
implemented social distancing and self-isolation measures which emptied
and shuttered campuses, causing nearly all students and faculty to work
from home. This provoked a rapid shift to emergency forms of online
and remote learning by major education systems, institutions, faculty, and
students.
This crisis is likely the largest shock to higher education in living
memory. Coming at the peak of globalisation, it may be the largest ever.
There are estimates that more than 90% of the world’s learners, more than
1.5 billion people, have been confined to their homes (Giannini, 2020).
The world’s most eminent higher education scholars and leaders recog-
nise that universities are likely to be impacted so dramatically that they will
be fundamentally different after the pandemic. Review of any media outlet
conveys that every facet of higher education has been touched, from
student wellbeing and characteristics, to campuses and global research,
to faculty characteristics and work, to university funding and policy.
It is telling to examine the case of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Over the last two decades Tsinghua has grown into one of the world’s
most prestigious universities. It is gated, highly intensive, residential, and
research productive. Tsinghua is a high-tech university, though hitherto
without online education in its formal education programme. The campus
is particularly important part of the university. The campus has grown
around former royal gardens and includes many iconic buildings, lakes,
parks, sculptures, and forests. Around 45,000 students usually live on
campus, as do many thousands of professors, staff, and support personnel.
The canteens feed most people on most days and are augmented by
restaurants and markets.
In late January 2020 it became apparent to Tsinghua’s leaders that
the spreading coronavirus was likely to impact normal university opera-
tions. A university-wide academic leadership meeting was convened, and
it was decided that Tsinghua would become the first of the world’s presti-
gious universities to evacuate the campus and shift all coursework online.
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FRICASSEED FOWLS OR CHICKENS. (ENTRÉE.)

To make a fricassee of good appearance without great expense,


prepare, with exceeding nicety, a couple of plump chickens, strip off
the skin, and carve them very neatly. Reserve the wings, breasts,
merrythoughts, and thighs; and stew down the inferior joints with a
couple of blades of mace, a small bunch of savoury herbs, a few
white peppercorns, a pint and a half of water, and a small half-
teaspoonful of salt. When something more than a third part reduced,
strain the gravy, let it cool, and skim off every particle of fat. Arrange
the joints which are to be fricasseed in one layer if it can be done
conveniently, and pour to them as much of the gravy as will nearly
cover them; add the very thin rind of half a fine fresh lemon, and
simmer the fowls gently from half to three quarters of an hour; throw
in sufficient salt, pounded mace, and cayenne, to give the sauce a
good flavour, thicken it with a large teaspoonful of arrow-root, and
stir to it the third of a pint of rich boiling cream; then lift the stewpan
from the fire, and shake it briskly round while the beaten yolks of
three fresh eggs, mixed with a spoonful or two of cream, are added;
continue to shake the pan gently above the fire till the sauce is just
set, but it must not be allowed to boil, or it will curdle in an instant.
1/2 to 3/4 hour.
ENGLISH CHICKEN CUTLETS. (ENTRÉE).

Skin and cut into joints one or two young chickens, and remove
the bones with care from the breasts, merrythoughts, and thighs,
which are to be separated from the legs. Mix well together a
teaspoonful of salt, nearly a fourth as much of mace, a little grated
nutmeg, and some cayenne; flatten and form into good shape, the
boned joints of chicken, and the flesh of the wings; rub a little of the
seasoning over them in every part, dip them into beaten egg, and
then into very fine bread-crumbs, and fry them gently in fresh butter
until they are of a delicate brown. Some of the bones and trimmings
may be boiled down in half a pint of water, with a roll of lemon-peel,
a little salt, and eight or ten white peppercorns, to make the gravy
which, after being strained and cleared from fat, may be poured hot
to some thickening made in the pan with a slice of fresh butter and a
dessertspoonful of flour: a teaspoonful of mushroom-powder would
improve it greatly, and a small quantity of lemon-juice should be
added before it is poured out, with salt and cayenne if required. Pile
the cutlets high in the centre of the dish, and serve the sauce under
them, or in a tureen.
CUTLETS OF FOWLS, PARTRIDGES, OR PIGEONS. (ENTRÉE.)

(French Receipt.)
Take closely off the flesh of the breast and wing together, on either
side of the bone, and when the large fillets, as they are called, are
thus raised from three birds, which will give but six cutlets, take the
strips of flesh that lie under the wings, and that of the merrythoughts,
and flatten two or three of these together, that there may be nine
cutlets at least, of equal size. When all are ready, fry to a pale brown
as many diamond-shaped sippets of bread as there are fillets of fowl,
and let them be quite as large; place these before the fire to dry, and
wipe out the pan. Dip the cutlets into some yolks of eggs, mixed with
a little clarified butter, and strew them in every part with the finest
bread-crumbs, moderately seasoned with salt, cayenne, and
pounded mace. Dissolve as much good butter as will be required to
dress them, and fry them in it of a light amber-colour: arrange them
upon the sippets of bread, pile them high in the dish, and pour a rich
brown gravy or Espagnole round, but not over them.
FRIED CHICKEN À LA MALABAR. (ENTRÉE.)

This is an Indian dish. Cut up the chicken, wipe it dry, and rub it
well with currie-powder mixed with a little salt; fry it in a bit of butter,
taking care that it is of a nice light brown. In the mean time cut two or
three onions into thin slices, draw them out into rings, and cut the
rings into little bits about half an inch long; fry them for a long time
gently in a little clarified butter, until they have gradually dried up and
are of a delicate yellow-brown. Be careful that they are not burnt, as
the burnt taste of a single bit would spoil the flavour of the whole.
When they are as dry as chips, without the least grease or moisture
upon them, mix a little salt with them, strew them over the fried
chicken, and serve up with lemon on a plate.
We have extracted this receipt from a clever little work called the
“Hand-Book of Cookery.”
HASHED FOWL. (ENTRÉE.)

After having taken off in joints, as much of a cold fowl or fowls as


will suffice for a dish, bruise the bodies with a paste roller, pour to
them a pint of water, and boil them for an hour and a half to two
hours, with the addition of a little pepper and salt only, or with a small
quantity of onion, carrot, and savoury herbs. Strain, and skim the fat
from the gravy, put it into a clean saucepan, and, should it require
thickening, stir to it, when it boils, half a teaspoonful of flour smoothly
mixed with a small bit of butter; add a little mushroom catsup, or
other store-sauce, with a slight seasoning of mace or nutmeg. Lay in
the fowl, and keep it near the fire until it is heated quite through, and
is at the point of boiling: serve it with fried sippets round the dish. For
a hash of higher relish, add to the bones when they are first stewed
down a large onion minced and browned in butter, and before the
fowl is dished, add some cayenne and the juice of half a lemon.
FRENCH AND OTHER RECEIPTS FOR MINCED FOWL.
(ENTRÉE.)

Raise from the bones all the more delicate parts of the flesh of
either cold roast, or of cold boiled fowls, clear it from the skin, and
keep it covered from the air until it is wanted for use. Boil the bones
well bruised, and the skin, with three quarters of a pint of water until
reduced quite half; then strain the gravy and let it cool; next, having
first skimmed off the fat, put it into a clean saucepan, with a quarter
of a pint of cream, an ounce and a half of butter well mixed with a
dessertspoonful of flour, and a little pounded mace, and grated
lemon-rind; keep these stirred until they boil, then put in the fowl,
finely minced, with three or four hard-boiled eggs chopped small,
and sufficient salt, and white pepper or cayenne, to season it
properly. Shake the mince over the fire until it is just ready to boil, stir
to it quickly a squeeze of lemon-juice, dish it with pale sippets of fried
bread, and serve it immediately. When cream cannot easily be
obtained, use milk, with a double quantity of butter and flour. To
make an English mince, omit the hard eggs, heat the fowl in the
preceding sauce or in a common béchamel, or white sauce, dish it
with small delicately poached eggs (those of the guinea-fowl or
bantam for example), laid over it in a circle and send it quickly to
table. Another excellent variety of the dish is also made by covering
the fowl thickly with very fine bread-crumbs, moistening them with
clarified butter, and giving them colour with a salamander, or in a
quick oven.[90]
90. For minced fowl and oysters, follow the receipt for veal, page 231.
FRITOT OF COLD FOWLS.

Cut into joints and take the skin from some cold fowls lay them into
a deep dish, strew over them a little fine salt and cayenne, add the
juice of a lemon, and let them remain for an hour, moving them
occasionally that they may all absorb a portion of the acid; then dip
them one by one into some French batter (see Chapter V.), and fry
them a pale brown over a gentle fire. Serve them garnished with very
green crisped parsley. A few drops of eschalot vinegar may be mixed
with the lemon-juice which is poured to the fowls, or slices of raw
onion or eschalot, and small branches of sweet herbs may be laid
amongst them, and cleared off before they are dipped into the batter.
Gravy made of the trimmings, thickened, and well flavoured, may be
sent to table with them in a tureen; and dressed bacon (see page
259), in a dish apart.
SCALLOPS OF FOWL AU BÉCHAMEL. (ENTRÉE.)

Raise the flesh from a couple of fowls as directed for cutlets in the
foregoing receipt, and take it as entire as possible from either side of
the breast; strip off the skin, lay the fillets flat, and slice them into
small thin scallops; dip them one by one into clarified butter, and
arrange them evenly in a delicately clean and not large frying-pan;
sprinkle a seasoning of fine salt over, and just before the dish is
wanted for table, fry them quickly without allowing them to brown;
drain them well from the butter, pile them in the centre of a hot dish,
and sauce them with some boiling béchamel. This dish may be
quickly prepared by taking a ready-dressed fowl from the spit or
stewpan, and by raising the fillets, and slicing the scallops into the
boiling sauce before they have had time to cool.
Fried, 3 to 4 minutes.
GRILLADE OF COLD FOWLS.

Carve and soak the remains of roast fowls as for the fritot which
precedes, wipe them dry, dip them into clarified butter, and then into
fine bread-crumbs, and broil them gently over a very clear fire. A little
finely-minced lean of ham or grated lemon-peel, with a seasoning of
cayenne, salt, and mace, mixed with the crumbs will vary this dish
agreeably. When fried instead of broiled, the fowls may be dipped
into yolk of egg instead of butter; but this renders them too dry for
broiling.
FOWLS À LA MAYONNAISE.

Carve with great nicety a couple of cold roast fowls; place the
inferior joints, if they are served at all, close together in the middle of
a dish, and arrange the others round and over them, piling them high
in the centre. Garnish them with the hearts of young lettuces cut in
two, and hard-boiled eggs, halved lengthwise. At the moment of
serving, pour over the fowls a well-made mayonnaise sauce (see
Chapter VI.), or, if preferred, an English salad-dressing, compounded
with thick cream, instead of oil.
TO ROAST DUCKS.

[Ducks are in season all the year, but are thought to be in their
perfection about June or early in July. Ducklings (or half-grown
ducks) are in the greatest request in spring, when there is no game
in the market, and other poultry is somewhat scarce.]
In preparing these for the spit, be careful
to clear the skin entirely from the stumps of
the feathers; take off the heads and necks,
but leave the feet on, and hold them for a
few minutes in boiling water to loosen the
skin, which must be peeled off. Wash the
inside of the birds by pouring water through
Ducks trussed.
them, but merely wipe the outsides with a
dry cloth. Put into the bodies a seasoning of
parboiled onions mixed with minced sage, salt, pepper, and a slice of
butter when this mode of dressing them is liked; but as the taste of a
whole party is seldom in its favour, one, when a couple are roasted,
is often served without the stuffing. Cut off the pinions at the first joint
from the bodies, truss the feet behind the backs, spit the birds firmly,
and roast them at a brisk fire, but do not place them sufficiently near
to be scorched; baste them constantly, and when the breasts are
well plumped, and the steam from them draws towards the fire, dish,
and serve them quickly with a little good brown gravy poured round
them, and some also in a tureen; or instead of this, with some which
has been made with the necks, gizzards, and livers well stewed
down, with a slight seasoning of browned onion, some herbs, and
spice.
Young ducks, 1/2 hour: full sized, from 3/4 to 1 hour.
Obs.—Olive-sauce may be served with roast as well as with
stewed ducks.
STEWED DUCK. (ENTRÉE.)

A couple of quite young ducks, or a fine, full-grown, but still tender


one, will be required for this dish. Cut either down neatly into joints,
and arrange them in a single layer if possible, in a wide stewpan;
pour in about three quarters of a pint of strong cold beef stock or
gravy; let it be well cleared from scum when it begins to boil, then
throw in a little salt, a rather full seasoning of cayenne, and a few
thin strips of lemon-rind. Simmer the ducks very softly for three
quarters of an hour, or somewhat longer should the joints be large;
then stir into the gravy a tablespoonful of the finest rice-flour, mixed
with a wineglassful or rather more of port wine, and a
dessertspoonful of lemon-juice: in ten minutes after, dish the stew
and send it to table instantly.
The ducks may be served with a small portion only of their sauce,
and dished in a circle, with green peas à la Française heaped high in
the centre: the lemon-rind and port wine should then be altogether
omitted, and a small bunch of green onions and parsley, with two or
three young carrots, may be stewed down with the birds, or three or
four minced eschalots, delicately fried in butter, may be used to
flavour the gravy. The turnips au beurre, prepared by the receipt of
Chapter XVII., may be substituted for the peas; and a well made
Espagnole may take the place of beef stock, when a dish of high
savour is wished for. A duck is often stewed without being divided
into joints. It should then be firmly trussed, half roasted at a quick
fire, and laid into the stewpan as it is taken from the spit; or well
browned in some French thickening, then half covered with boiling
gravy, and turned when partially done: from an hour to an hour and a
quarter will stew it well.
TO ROAST PIGEONS.

[In season from March to Michaelmas, and whenever they can be


had young.]
These, as we have already said, should
be dressed while they are very fresh. If
extremely young they will be ready in twelve
hours for the spit, otherwise in twenty-four.
Take off the heads and necks, and cut off
the toes at the first joint; draw them
carefully, and pour plenty of water through
them: wipe them dry, and put into each bird
Pigeons for roasting.
a small bit of butter lightly dipped into a little
cayenne (formerly it was rolled in minced
parsley, but this is no longer the fashionable mode of preparing
them). Truss the wings over the backs, and roast them at a brisk fire,
keeping them well and constantly basted with butter. Serve them
with brown gravy, and a tureen of parsley and butter. For the second
course, dish them upon young water-cresses, as directed for roast
fowl aux cressons, page 272. About twenty minutes will roast them.
18 to 20 minutes; five minutes longer, if large; rather less, if very
young.
BOILED PIGEONS.

Truss them like boiled fowls, drop them into plenty of boiling water,
throw in a little salt, and in fifteen minutes lift them out, pour parsley
and butter over, and send a tureen of it to table with them.
CHAPTER XV.

Game.
TO CHOOSE GAME.

Buck venison, which is in season only from June to Michaelmas, is


considered finer than doe venison, which comes into the market in
October, and remains in season through November and December:
neither should be cooked at any other part of the year. The greater
the depth of fat upon the haunch the better the quality of the meat
will be, provided it be clear and white, and the lean of a dark hue. If
the cleft of the hoof, which is always left on the joint, be small and
smooth, the animal is young; but it is old when the marks are the
reverse of these.[91] Although the haunch is the prime and favourite
joint of venison, the neck and shoulder are also excellent, dressed in
various ways, and make much approved pies or pasties as they are
usually called. If kept to the proper point, and well dressed, this is the
most tender of all meat; but care is necessary to bring it into a fitting
state for table without its becoming offensive. A free current of air in
a larder is always a great advantage, as it assists materially in
preserving the sweetness of every thing which is kept in it, while a
close damp atmosphere, on the contrary, is more destructive of
animal food of all kinds even than positive heat. The fumes of
creosote are said to be an admirable preservative against
putrescence, but we have not ourselves yet had experience of the
fact. All moisture should be wiped daily, or even more frequently,
from the venison, with soft cloths, when any appears upon the
surface; and every precaution must be taken to keep off the flies,
when the joint is not hung in a wire-safe. Black pepper thickly
powdered on it will generally answer the purpose: with common
care, indeed, meat may always be protected from their attacks, and
to leave it exposed to them in warm weather is altogether
inexcusable in the cook.
91. It must be observed that venison is not in perfection when young: like
mutton, it requires to be of a certain age before it is brought to table. The
word cleft applies also to the thickest part of the haunch, and it is the depth
of the fat on this which decides the quality of the joint.

Hares and rabbits are stiff when freshly killed, and if young, the
ears tear easily, and the claws are smooth and sharp. A hare in cold
weather will remain good from ten to fourteen days; care only must
be taken to prevent the inside from becoming musty, which it will do
if it has been emptied in the field. Pheasants, partridges, and other
game may be chosen by nearly the same tests as poultry: by
opening the bill, the staleness will be detected easily if they have
been too long kept. With few exceptions, game depends almost
entirely for the fine flavour and the tenderness of its flesh, on the
time which it is allowed to hang before it is cooked, and it is never
good when very fresh; but it does not follow that it should be sent to
table in a really offensive state, for this is agreeable to few eaters
and disgusting to many, and nothing should at any time be served of
which the appearance or the odour may destroy the appetite of any
person present.
TO ROAST A HAUNCH OF VENISON.

To give venison the flavour and the


tenderness so much prized by epicures, it
must be well kept; and by taking the
necessary precautions, it will hang a
considerable time without detriment. Wipe it
with soft dry cloths wherever the slightest
moisture appears on the surface, and dust it plentifully with freshly-
ground pepper or powdered ginger, to preserve it from the flies. The
application of the pyroligneous or acetic acid would effectually
protect it from these, as well as from the effects of the weather; but
the joint must then be, not only well washed, but soaked for some
considerable time, and this would be very detrimental. To prepare
the venison for the spit, wash it slightly with tepid water or merely
wipe it thoroughly with damp cloths, and dry it afterwards with clean
ones; then lay over the fat side a large sheet of thickly-buttered
paper, and next a paste of flour and water about three quarters of an
inch thick; cover this again with two or three sheets of stout paper,
secure the whole well with twine, and lay the haunch to a sound
clear fire; baste the paper immediately with butter or clarified
dripping, and roast the joint from three hours and a half to four and a
half, according to its weight and quality. Doe venison will require half
an hour less time than buck venison. Twenty minutes before the joint
is done remove the paste and paper, baste the meat in every part
with butter, and dredge it very lightly with flour; let it take a pale
brown colour, and send it to table as hot as possible with gravy in a
tureen, and good currant jelly. It is not now customary to serve any
other sauces with it; but should the old-fashioned sharp or sweet
sauce be ordered, the receipt for it will be found at page 100.
3-1/2 to 4-1/2 hours.
Obs.—The kind of gravy appropriate to venison is a matter on
which individual taste must decide. When preparations of high
savour are preferred to the pure flavour of the game, the Espagnole
(or Spanish sauce) of Chapter IV. can be sent to table with it; or
either of the rich English gravies which precede it. When a simple
unflavoured one is better liked, some mutton cutlets freed entirely
from fat, then very slightly broiled over a quick fire, and stewed
gently down in a light extract of mutton prepared by Liebeg’s
directions, Chapter I., for about an hour, will produce an excellent
plain gravy: it should be seasoned with salt and pepper (or fine
cayenne) only. When venison abounds, it should be used for the
gravy instead of mutton.

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