Marketing Education: Reflecting on Relevance

The challenges of face-to-face, online and hybrid teaching

As universities and educators were essentially forced, quite rapidly, to ‘go online’ with the delivery of content, lectures and Zoom tutorials or workshops in 2020, many of us may have struggled to keep up with the ‘best practices’ for online teaching and student engagement. Despite this, online education is here to stay. Prior to the rapid moves to digital delivery in 2020, some universities had already begun to demolish lecture theatres (UTS, 2014) in favour of more collaborative learning environments. In 2021, up to two-thirds of universities indicated they would not have on-campus lectures (Sankey, 2021).

Many reasons underlie the shift away from face-to-face delivery, including, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions, but also the realisation that learning can be supported in more effective ways, with the flexibility of engagement and flipped learning models outweighing required in-person attendance at specific times or locations (Sankey, 2021). Moreover, paedagogy plays an important role as universities move from a teacher-centred paedagogy to a learner-centred paedagogy (Vosniadou et al., 2021). This approach to paedagogy sees the increased application of technology-enabled learning approaches, blended learning, chunking of content into asynchronous ‘mini-lectures’, and flipped classroom models. The traditional lecture model can be replaced or enhanced with an array of features such as quizzes, polls, online synchronous activities, interactive learning artefacts, workshops, experiential project work and interactive online tutorials (as distinct from presentations).

With increasing workloads and the pressure to publish in top-tier marketing journals (as outlined in the lead paper of this special issue), many academics may argue, ‘We don’t have time for this’. Yet, if our universities do not provide intensive upskilling to lecturers to deliver online courses, we risk a lack of student engagement, lower teaching evaluations and increased dropout rates. Online students are 20% more likely to drop out compared with on-campus students (Bowen et al., 2014). Many academics may find themselves in a situation where they have had no experience of online learning and have not been sufficiently trained in online course design and paedagogy, posing a significant risk to the student experience and satisfaction. And so, academics need to be adequately trained and continually supported in virtual learning environments, video production quality, scriptwriting and storyboarding, curriculum design for online learning, content scaffolding, assessment alignment and various opportunities for delivery (e.g. podcasts, webinars, live Q&A) (Bowen et al., 2014). However, universities all over the world also need to acknowledge that eager academics need to be adequately rewarded for taking on such additional training which may benefit the student experience and learning outcomes but do little to enhance the individual academic’s promotional credentials.

The changing nature of our competition

As online education grows, so do the list of international competitors with whom all universities may compete. Online certificates and courses offered by the likes of Google, Hubspot and Facebook pose a threat to the traditional marketing degree with students favouring the ‘on the tools’ approach to learning digital technologies. These certificates, courses and programmes sell themselves with the appeals of real world skills, shorter time and a fraction of the cost of a university degree. For example, Google recently announced they would ‘change the future of work and higher education’ with the launch of professional courses that teach candidates how to perform in-demand jobs. These Google Career Certificates, which can be completed in just 6 months, claim to help individuals find employment (Google, 2021). Certificates in a range of topics, for instance, data analytics, project management and UX design require no experience, allow flexible, at-your-own-pace study, 100% online delivery, and are highly accessible for a meager $39 monthly subscription. The Google Career Certificates are just one avenue for higher education around in-demand technical marketing skills. Globally recognised certification provider Hubspot Academy also offers an array of certification options, including digital advertising, social media marketing, business analytics and media strategies (Hubspot, 2021). Some marketing courses in Australia and New Zealand have integrated these courses into their assessment models. For instance, at AUT in Auckland, New Zealand, the Digital, Social Media and Mobile Marketing course embeds a Google Dual Certification of Fundamentals of Digital Marketing into their assessment, worth over 25% of the students’ grades, positioned as ‘self-directed learning via Google online modules’ paired with a written reflection. Integration of such modules into our courses is appealing to students, as they gain industry-recognised qualifications and learn practical skills. However, questions remain about the role these certifications have in a university course (Langan et al., 2019). If lecturers are outsourcing content or assessments to a Google, HubSpot or Facebook programme as self-directed learning, are we undermining the value of the content the academic can deliver? Careful thought needs to be given to how we can best find the balance between industry tools, programmes or certificates and content delivered by our own academics.

Our colleagues may argue that one fundamental point of difference, which universities may be able to capture in the education space, is that our courses are built upon a foundation of ‘research-led’ teaching. We would agree, if this were truly the case. ‘Research-led’ teaching is indeed a unique selling proposition of university taught courses. Unfortunately, much of the content delivered at the undergraduate level (at least in Australasia) seems to be curricula sourced from standardised text books, with very little ‘research-led’ content. Indeed, at the postgraduate level, ‘research-led’ teaching becomes more accessible to the students. Perhaps, this goes back to one of our original arguments that academics focussed on a research career would rather be ‘doing’ and ‘writing up’ their research than teaching undergraduates about it. This might be because teaching preparation is time intensive, and once a course ‘works’, there is very little incentive for research focussed academics to rehash their teaching materials to include their continually changing research portfolio, particularly if such updates mean re-designing new assignments for very large classes in order to take into account the new ‘research-led’ teaching material. Often, it is easier for both the academics and their teaching assistants to utilise the standardised teaching materials provided by publishing companies for the bulk of their curriculum or to stick with assessments that have worked in the past, then (and only then), would they consider throwing in a few ‘research-led’ topics or guest lectures to keep things fresh. The reward for this nominal effort will be the inevitable question from students ‘Is this in the exam?’

Thus, while university education is supposed to be defined by ‘research-led’ teaching we argue that in business schools true ‘research-led’ teaching occurs far less frequently than it should, especially in the large undergraduate classes. Nevertheless, just because it is not occurring does not make it okay, and certainly the analytical skills, critical thinking and intellectual capacity to understand research content would be a point of differentiation for our graduates, provided that the link between research skills and workplace requirements is made more obvious to both students and employers (Vriens et al., 2019). Furthermore, the additional time it takes for an academic to rehash their teaching materials to include their latest research should also be taken into account as ‘new preparation’ even if they have been delivering the same course for many years. If the time it takes to incorporate ‘research-led’ teaching is not acknowledged in terms of workload, then research focussed academics will simply continue to teach using standardised textbook materials and well worn assessments.

Relevance and innovation in content

There is remarkable similarity and standardisation of all degrees across Australian and New Zealand universities. Standardisation makes choices less confusing, more comparable and easier to understand for the consumer. As such, all marketing degrees will cover the traditional core courses of marketing management, marketing research, consumer behaviour and advertising. Slight variations may then include sales, retailing, business-to-business marketing, digital media, data analytics and sustainability or social marketing added to ‘future-proof’ content. Universities should be applauded for at least trying to remain relevant through the introduction of more recent content. However, the issue is that such content which evolves very quickly cannot be effectively delivered by researchers who are promoted on the quality and quantity of their research rather than by the relevance of their teaching (Vriens et al., 2019). Therefore, any technical content delivered runs the risk of becoming outdated quickly, unless the educator invests substantial time into remaining current. Unfortunately, this investment often does not translate into promotional criteria. Even the student evaluations that play a role in continuation or promotions measure student satisfaction rather than how work-ready they feel at the end of their degree. Additionally, even if our evaluations attempted to measure work-readiness, how valid would students’ responses be if gathered at the end of our courses (when they are most commonly conducted) rather than 3 months into their first job (where this rarely occurs)?

The what, why, when, how and where of university curriculum

Even if we could agree on the issue of content relevancy, the current university curriculum is designed to teach students ‘what’ various concepts are, ‘why’ they are important theoretically, and ‘when’ various tools might prove useful. The issue, then, becomes how ‘research-led’ universities struggle with teaching graduates ‘how’ to do something and ‘where’ such tools belong in the broader industry (Rohm et al., 2019). The former, we feel, are the realm of vocational institutes, while the latter requires teachers, often academic specialists, to think beyond their research specific silos. This is an issue since most of our graduates will enter jobs requiring them to know ‘how’ to do something and ‘where’ their job tasks fit into the broader business.

Essentially, while the ‘what’ that we teach is easy to assess, content is becoming less relevant in the modern age with ubiquitous access to content knowledge, even if the ‘why’ and ‘when’ of our teaching is important from a long-term career perspective. After all, understanding ‘why’ and ‘when’ something is important is vital to senior executive decision-making. The reality is that very few graduates will be in a position to utilise this higher level knowledge in their first few years of employment (McArthur et al., 2017).

Is an undergraduate degree enough?

Calls for both content and skill redesign may help to ensure that all universities remain relevant (Cheng et al., 2016; Crittenden & Crittenden, 2015). However, an overall critical question remains, and that involves considering what the added value of a university-level education truly is when the financial and time costs are considered and if the most sought after skills are those that may be acquired in the workplace. Put another way, if an employer was asked to choose between hiring a person with 3 years’ work experience and no university qualification versus a person with a 3-year university qualification and no work experience, who would add more value to his or her current operations?

Perhaps, many of our students, and ourselves as academics, already know the answer to this question, explaining their desire to seek part time employment despite many students being officially classified as full-time students. This employment also serves to assist students in coping with increased living costs, ensuring financial debt and a career off-ramp are not the main things to which their university degree leads. A common response to the pressure that students and society place on universities to produce work-ready graduates is the argument that, ‘We are not vocational training institutes, nor should we be competing with them’. Indeed, the research infrastructure and culture around which universities are built does make it difficult for us to compete with vocational polytechnics. However, this does not mean that students’, employers’, and society’s desire for work-ready graduates is any less valid (McArthur et al., 2017). In many developed economies as well as in Asia, a university degree is no longer a luxury or personal passion project. It has become an informal and occasionally formal necessity for employment. When a product becomes a necessity, cost and benefit tradeoffs become a more critical component of one’s decision-making process.

Indeed, it often seems to us that many of our undergraduate students are extrinsically motivated to approach their Bachelor’s degree as a stamp of approval required to compete in the workplace (sort of like a warrant of fitness or certificate of roadworthiness required for a car) rather than an intrinsic journey of self-improvement and knowledge discovery. Popular professional Master’s degrees fulfil the same stamp of approval for many of our international students, where an undergraduate Bachelor degree in their highly competitive homes is merely a hygiene factor and no longer sufficient as a recruitment differentiator. While the two behaviours exhibited by domestic and international students appear quite different (i.e. gaining experience by working part-/full-time vs. gaining additional credentials by completing a Masters degree), both are motivated by the perception that our traditional undergraduate degrees are no longer adequate on their own to secure a job for a new graduate (McArthur et al., 2017). Also, let’s face it, the majority of business graduates enrol in a business degree as a means to an end, that end being a job.

Compounding this problem of extrinsic motivation is also the fact that many students are encouraged or feel ‘forced’ into university by their parents or societal pressure, rather than because they are truly committed to a university education. Some students would be far better pursuing other equally valuable careers through other non-tertiary institutions. Apprenticeships and work experience can provide equal, if not better, on-the-job learning outcomes. Yet, the number of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees being pumped out of the global university factory continue to rise. A tertiary education has become a necessity for many, and with that comes the fact that not every university student is cut out for nor fully embracing of university-styled paedagogy. Yet, when course directors, departments, faculties and institutions are measured to a certain degree by completion rates, there will be an inevitable incentive to minimise failure rates. Many of our colleagues on the front line of teaching have faced what sometimes appears to be a dumbing down or reduction of content. As long as the number and variability of student populations increase, as long as student evaluations hold some level of influence during promotions, and as long as any failure rates higher than 30% raise the eyebrows of university executives, there will be a constant and perverse pressure for teachers to ease up on rigorous intellectual standards.

Diversifying programme offerings

Whilst adding on an additional 12 to 18 months for a Masters degree seems a straightforward solution for one group of highly lucrative students, particularly for academic institutions where the core competencies lend themselves to creating and delivering degrees, such an approach does lead to a sort of degree inflation. In fact, many business schools are already dabbling and implementing the next logical step in the evolution of degree inflation, the professional PhD. Nevertheless, creating and delivering more degrees is relatively easy for universities as it falls within our skill set, and there is an infrastructure in place to cope with such an offering. What is more challenging is dealing with the perception that a student with anything beyond an undergraduate degree is someone who is overqualified and under-experienced, hence, once again, the desire for many students to gain their own work experience while simultaneously studying at university.

One alternate way universities are diversifying their programmes and offerings to go beyond the traditional structure of the lengthy degree is through the use of micro-credentials. For example, the University of Melbourne introduced Melbourne MicroCerts, described as ‘Aligned to industry and workforce needs, these small, highly accessible courses equip you with in-demand skills and knowledge for your job now and help you build a diverse skill-set for the future. As the world of work continues to evolve, Melbourne MicroCerts keep you relevant’ (The University of Melbourne, 2021). The benefits for students from micro-credentialing seem substantial, with flexible online study options and a low-risk pathway into the post-graduate education space. Torrens University also offers 6-week micro-credentials stating, ‘Our courses are “stackable”, which means that you can take your time and just do one for now, but at a later date, you could come back and use what you’ve learned towards a higher qualification’ (Torrens University Australia, 2021). Thus, with the realities of working while getting a university degree comes the pressure for more flexible and inclusive degree pathways. This may explain a new desire to design the modular systems above, which enable students to nominate work or training experience (deemed equivalent to tertiary assessments or courses) in order to piece together a ‘degree’. Indeed, many of these extracurricular or co-curricular activities might be far superior for employability to content learnt from a university lecture or textbook. Thus, another pertinent question that could be asked is, does work experience complement a degree or can it substitute a degree? And if the answer swings in favour of the latter, then, we need to also ask what the role of the university becomes. Does our main value reside in the ability to provide an official stamp of approval? Perhaps, it does. Rather than teaching outdated or seldom utilised theoretical content, are we better off acting as a figurative auditor of work experience and vocational short courses? The idiosyncratic nature of work experience means that the standard across individuals might be incredibly varied. Therefore, instead of teaching outdated content or attempting to update our own content, perhaps, we could be integrators and auditors of the various bespoke experiences out in the ‘real world’ (McArthur et al., 2017). What if, instead of producing graduates, universities of the future focussed on establishing equivalence and stamping their seal of approval on the idiosyncratic or unique graduates stemming forth from such ‘degrees’? In such a scenario, the role of universities would shift from teaching to approving. Would this be better use of our strengths? Perhaps a related solution, then, is to teach our students how to think about or approach problems, since critical thinking is a core attribute of a university level education. We can do this without getting bogged down in the vocationally specific technicalities of ‘how to do something’. Indeed, academics already do this through our willingness to over-analyse case studies and pay more attention to various business maladies than the businesses themselves do. We believe this approach may enable universities to retain their legitimacy without the need for constant updating of technical vocational skills.

Enhancing soft skills and developing ‘work-ready’ graduates

In addition to the issue of technical and content relevance, many marketing educators are also calling for a redesign of university curriculum from a soft skills perspective. This involves more emphasis on projects, use of transdisciplinary teams and the teaching of skills, which employers and organisations often consider as critical as academic achievement (Cheng et al., 2016; LeClair, 2018; McArthur et al., 2017; Rohm et al., 2019; Vriens et al., 2019).

Soft skills are not only in demand in business and marketing, but also in traditional pure sciences (Börner et al., 2018). This demand for graduates able to think creatively and critically as well as collaborate with colleagues and communicate with stakeholders is emphasised within the industry across sectors (Börner et al., 2018) and in most cultures (Seetha, 2014). Currently, university courses evaluate students on their aptitude to remember and define concepts and in some cases, their ability to apply those concepts to hypothetical scenarios within a closed book or an individualised, secure examination or test. The external validity of such assessments, which may make up to 60% of any given course, is low when we consider the global work environment into which our graduates will be entering. Thankfully, some courses incorporate group projects and real-world assignments partnering with real-world businesses, yet there are centralised university limits imposed on such group projects that still reflect a preference for traditional individual secure assessment structures. For instance, at one major NZ university, group projects may not be worth more than 30% of any course. The reasons for such policies are understandable, since high-performing students do not wish to be disadvantaged (or regressed to the mean) by lower-performing teammates. Similarly, there is also a tendency for students to feel aggrieved when social loafers benefit from group work, thus, diminishing their satisfaction scores on student evaluations. Yet, the problems with group work summarised above are inevitable aspects of the ‘real world’.

Therefore, instead of sheltering our students from the realities of work, which involves collaboration with colleagues of varying abilities and motivation, we should perhaps evaluate students on their ability to work collaboratively. However, one important point to consider is that if we insist on evaluating soft skills such as group work (because we recognise the importance of collaboration in employability), then we cannot simply assess group work without teaching students how to collaborate. Just as we would not assess a student’s ability to define a marketing concept without first explaining what the concept is, we should not be evaluating collaboration without first having taught, or at least, explained what we mean by collaboration.

Curriculum content questions

Curriculum delivery questions

Posing these questions in this paper is one thing, but asking them of ourselves regularly at an individual, departmental and school level is something more challenging indeed. In short, if industry and students are satisfied with the knowledge and skills that we are delivering, within reason, we are succeeding as marketing educators. We can find this out by taking student surveys seriously and going further to undertake focus groups with key student groups. More than that, we can properly involve industry advisory groups looking at our curriculum, feedback from employers of recent graduates or even comments from guest lecturers. We must respect and act on their perspective (i.e. market research).

Ironically, the COVID-19 pandemic has given business schools the opportunity to consider what content they deliver and how they do so. However, strategic reflection during a pandemic was always going to be unlikely, and so it has proven. We have shifted many courses online, and some of us have innovated but, in most cases, reactionary, piecemeal approaches have left us no better placed in the marketing education industry. Further, we must take our competition very seriously. With the shift to online, competitors such as LinkedIn Learning and Google, among many others, pose a significant threat to the perceived value and necessity of university education.

In the course of developing our paper, the review process encouraged us to think about taking a meso-approach to curriculum development (i.e. asking questions at the department and institutional level) rather than just the micro-approach as seen above, that is, we are asking the individual teacher or academic to think about what and how they teach. However, as we thought about some questions that could be posed at the meso-level, we quickly realised that many already exist in the form of accreditation reviews and other faculty- or institutionally-related quality assurance processes. These are the broader questions of what a graduate profile should look like for an entire degree or programme, like the BCOM or MBA graduate profile. Thus, even if we did propose some new questions directed at senior management, which might lead to widespread changes of entire programmes, did we really think that line of questioning would lead to real change from the top down? Consequently, while we agree that there are also opportunities for change from above, what often occurs when questions are posed at the senior leadership level is that the questions become formalised as yet another compliance process with arduous documentation that front-line academics are then forced to endure. Our intention here is not to add to the bureaucracy but, instead, to pose some questions that individual teachers can use to take stock of what and how they teach immediately before they design the next iteration of their course. We believe that such an approach might lead to more fruitful change at the coal face rather than merely providing a list of questions that risk becoming institutionalised as a series of course reviews or reflections that take place after the fact to be filed away on the university server only to be consulted for the purposes of accreditation every 5 to 7 years.

In saying that, we do, however, acknowledge the seriousness of shifting more responsibility to the individual academic who may already be overworked trying to maintain their research output, which is seen as the fastest way to job promotion and job security. Therefore, rather than pose questions to the senior leadership, we conclude with some thoughts about the cultural change that needs to occur at marketing departments. A serious introspection of the type of departmental culture that would enable (and reward) front-line staff, who do feel passionate about teaching relevance, to take the time to answer some of the bottom-up questions we pose with their actual teaching would be helpful, rather than them merely answering top-down questions in a way they believe university management would like to see the questions answered.

Thus, there is a need to foster a culture where the questions we outline above can be part of a regular and strategic approach to the development of marketing education. As mentioned earlier, this is something very different from business schools being drawn into the periodic and highly bureaucratic AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accreditation review processes. Instead, we are advocating for a culture where the accreditation processes or, more importantly, the reflective part of it becomes a seamless part of marketing education.

We believe that there are several ways to foster such a culture. Here are some examples:

In all, we need a culture where we all feel empowered to have open, frank and honest discussions about where we feel marketing education is headed. At the moment, these discussions happen in the hallway, but never make it to the decision-makers. Until that culture changes, nothing will change.