The slow emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) over the past few years was likely to cause disruption, in the long term, of the existing R1.5-trillion global tertiary education market, professional services firm Deloitte technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) consulting industry leader Arun Babu said on Tuesday.

The 'Deloitte TMT Predictions 2014' report, published on Tuesday, revealed that there appeared to be a “perfect storm” of conditions brewing that could make MOOCs a major player in higher or post-secondary education by 2020.

In the near term, online courses were unlikely to cause a stir, with less than 0.2% of all tertiary education-equivalent courses completed through MOOCs in 2014.

Currently, there were between 100-million and 125-million students globally enrolled in traditional tertiary and corporate education, many of which were taking and completing the equivalent of eight to ten courses a year, resulting in around one-billion non-MOOC courses completed each year.

By 2020, MOOCs would represent more than 10% of all courses taken in tertiary and enterprise continuing education, as uptake in student registrations continued to grow.

Babu noted that, by the end of this year, it was expected that enrolments for MOOCs would jump 100% to over ten-million courses compared with 2012.

“They [MOOCs] are massive, with potentially millions of users. And they are open; available to anyone, often for free or at minimal cost, much less than a traditional university or college course,” Babu pointed out.

And the growing awareness of online education would likely force educational institutions to increase investment in this area, drive more acceptance of online education as it becomes accredited and increase adoption by corporate training groups.

Currently, most universities and colleges offer some courses online for registered students, while many governments offer training courses over the Internet and more than 75% of large organisations use online courses as part of their ongoing employee training processes, Deloitte showed.

But despite students ranking their MOOC as “good, very good or excellent”, and saying that the subject matter was taught well enough, 93% of the students registered for an MOOC failed to complete their prescribed course of study.

Deloitte attributed this to students whose “number-one aspirations” were to learn more about a single subject area, not to complete a prescribed curriculum, and students “trying out” the MOOC format or just being “curious”.

Further, completing a MOOC course and receiving the course credit currently carried less weight than passing a traditional or university-sponsored online course.

“MOOC course credits need to be fully recognised by government, employers and educational establishments,” Babu said.

The perception that MOOCs delivered inferior educational outcomes was the biggest impediment to the online educational courses being “credentialed”, and resolving this issue “might be all” that was needed for MOOCs to achieve their disruptive potential, particularly with the ever-rising cost of education – the single biggest driver of MOOCs.

“The cost of public four-year college tuition and fees is rising faster than the average earnings of full-time workers aged 25 to 34 with a Bachelor’s degree,” Babu explained.

Further, the pace of technological advancement was shortening skills life, with some skills likely to be obsolete by the time they graduate four years later, while the skills delivered through MOOCs could be monitored and updated on a real-time as-needed basis.

“We are likely to see students embrace MOOCs that allow them to learn what they want, when they want,” the Deloitte TMT Predictions 2014 report noted, pointing out that the percentage of students over the age of 25 was increasing faster than the percentage of students under the age of 25, as life-long learning becomes a requirement for continued employment.

“MOOCs seem well placed to meet the needs of the next generation of learners, who are increasingly disillusioned with the idea that a degree is necessary for success, more comfortable with multimedia-content delivery, and increasingly averse to student debt.”

As the fast-growing MOOCs become larger and "better credentialed", they could become a disruptive force, but might not actually become a long-term threat to traditional tertiary education providers, Deloitte reported.

“People whose primary learning motive is certification or in-person networking might still pay the higher cost of traditional programmes,” the report pointed out.

But colleges and universities needed to take MOOCs seriously and learn how to harness them, much like traditional media and music companies have benefitted from embracing digital content.