A new day in higher ed: HyFlex Universities

Abstract

ABSTRACT As COVID-19 continues to impact various business sectors, university administrators have steadily pushed for all academic units to resume on campus operations and activities; conversely, faculty and students have expressed increased interest in continuing online teaching/learning. We aim to mitigate this “tug-of-war” between administrators, faculty and students and develop an academic ecosystem that accommodates varying preferences. We piloted a hybrid flexible (HyFlex) Business Statistics class that combined face-to-face, synchronous online, and asynchronous online delivery modes into a single course. Survey results revealed that the majority of the respondents found access to recorded lectures and flexible ways to attend class extremely useful. We also analyzed enrollment trends to ascertain the potential impact of offering HyFlex courses at one of the authors' institutions. In spring 2022, over 64% of course enrollments and 72% of overcapacity classes were offered asynchronously online. Conversely, 89% of on campus classes were under capacity. Additionally, we examined tuition/fees for online vs. face-to-face courses for 50 universities in the US. Seventy eight percent of the schools had varying tuition/fees for online vs. face-to-face students, which led to revenue deficits ranging between −171,683,736.00 to 22,727,259.00. The adoption of HyFlex courses could positively impact the aforementioned issues.