The last six months has seen explosive growth in new partnerships between Universities and OPMs, Bootcamps and Pathway Providers. As many Universities make the transition to online learning, we expect to see continued growth and innovation in this segment, led by University demand, differentiation of offerings and new entrants.
The first half of 2020 saw 85 new OPM Partnerships (51 in the US), a further 47 Bootcamp Partnerships (39 in the US) and 5 International Partnerships (3 in the US) representing a sharp increase in ‘Academic PPP‘ arrangements and further growth of the OPX Meta Category.
The first quarter of 2020 delivered just under half of those new partnerships, and the second quarter was stronger again, despite being dominated by the impact of COVID and the shift to emergency remote teaching. Conservatively, we expect the second half of 2020 to at least meet the first half growth in partnerships. Given some breathing space over the summer break, the 2021 academic year is likely witness further partnerships of this type as Universities globally ‘bake in’ online delivery to their business as usual operations going forward in an environment of constrained funding and increased competition for students.
The chart below shows the growth of partnerships in 1H 2020 compared to the preceding decade’s growth in OPX Partnerships around the world. OPX is still a relatively small part of the $36B Online Degree Market which we forecast to reach $74B by 2025. Online Degrees only represent approximately 4% of the Global Higher Education Market at today’s levels so we expect OPX to have a very bright future supporting Universities around the world in delivering online higher education.
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