Risepoint’s 2025 Voice of the Online Learner: UK Edition arrives at an important moment for the sector. For more than a decade, the US edition of this report has provided valuable longitudinal insight into the motivations and realities of online students, but this is the first time Risepoint has produced a dedicated UK version. It comes at a time when universities here are navigating financial turbulence, shifting regulatory expectations, and the slow but undeniable mainstreaming of online learning. Yet what strikes me most about this inaugural UK report is not the numbers themselves, but the portrait they paint of a student group that is growing in size, complexity and strategic importance — and yet largely remains poorly understood within UK higher education.
These are not “non-traditional” learners. They are the learners the sector will increasingly depend on.
The report shows that:
- 91% are working while studying,
- 68% are balancing caring responsibilities,
- the average age is 34, and
- 73% would not switch to an on-campus programme even if their preferred one was unavailable online.
For these learners, online isn’t a modality choice. It’s often the only route into higher education, to in order to advance their careers (50%) and gain more marketable skills and/or certifications (44%).
I could, of course, list findings and charts. But the real value in this report lies in what it reveals about the direction of travel for UK higher education — and what universities will need to change, structurally and culturally, if they want to grow their online programme portfolios and serve this segment of students.
Rather than summarising the data, I want to draw out five insights that stand out to me from this inaugural report — patterns and signals that, in my view, reveal something deeper about how the sector is evolving. Taken together, they point to a system at a moment of quiet but significant change. For me, the question is no longer whether universities should invest in online learning; that debate has effectively passed. The real question is whether universities are ready to respond to what these learners are actually telling us.
Insight 1: Flexibility Is the Real Quality Issue
For me, one of the clearest messages in the report is that the greatest barrier to online student success isn’t academic rigour or teaching quality — it’s the ability to fit study around an already full life.
The report shows that 43% of online learners have previously started an online course and not completed it, with top reasons including:
- difficulty balancing work, study, and caring responsibilities,
- unclear expectations,
- and unforeseen life events.
These aren’t signs of disengagement. They’re the predictable realities of a student population that is 91% working and 68% parenting. Yet UK regulatory discourse — particularly around continuation and completion — still treats interruptions as a symptom of institutional failure, rather than an inevitable feature of the learner journeys of adults who are often working full-time, caring for dependants, and studying in the margins of their day. Their learning journey is episodic, not linear.
If universities want meaningful continuation and outcomes, then quality for online learners must include standards for flexible pacing and assessment windows, the ability to pause and re-enter without penalty, modular progression routes, and pastoral support that anticipates disruption rather than punishes it. Flexibility is not lowering standards, it should be standard. Flexibility is what enables adults to stay in the system long enough to succeed.
Insight 2: AI Has Quietly Become the New Front Door to Higher Education
One finding in the Voice of the Online Learner: UK Edition should make every university pause: 20% of UK online learners discovered their programme through ChatGPT or another AI tool — far more than in the US (6%), and already outpacing several traditional marketing channels.
This is a quiet but fundamental shift. AI is no longer something students use after they enrol; it is becoming the way they find, compare, and evaluate programmes in the first place. Instead of keyword searches, prospective students now ask AI conversational questions like:
“Which UK universities offer flexible online master’s degrees for working parents?”
And AI gives them curated answers — not ads, not rankings, not landing pages.
This creates a new reality: AI is becoming the first point of contact between learners and institutions. If universities do not design for this, they will be interpreted — and represented — by AI systems using incomplete or outdated information. Institutions with clear, concise, well-structured programme data will rise to the top. Those relying on legacy web content or opaque descriptions risk invisibility. AI isn’t just another recruitment channel. It has quietly become the new front door to higher education.
Insight 3: Online Learners Want Belonging — But Only on Their Terms
A recurring theme in both the UK and US reports is that online learners do want connection — but not in the way many universities assume.
The myth is that online students prefer to study in isolation or want real time contact hours. The reality is more nuanced:
- UK learners value feeling part of the wider university community.
- In the US data, around two-thirds would like at least one optional synchronous session per course, but only 24% want weekly live teaching.
- And a significant minority continue to prefer fully asynchronous study.
In other words: they want belonging, not timetable dependency. For students who are working, caring, and studying in the edges of their day, flexibility remains non-negotiable. Connection matters — but only when it respects the rhythms of their lives.
What learners want is choice-driven belonging: optional touchpoints, occasional live sessions, opportunities to meet peers, and the reassurance of a human presence behind the screen. Not mandatory attendance, not classroom mimicry, and not the rigid structures of on-campus provision transplanted online.
Designing for this means shifting from “replicating campus online” to building community around flexibility, not in place of it.
Insight 4: Global Appetite for UK Online Degrees Demands Reciprocity, Not Just Reach
The UK report clearly demonstrates that the demand for UK online degrees is strong across regions such as Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. But if UK universities treat this purely as a recruitment opportunity — a way to extend reach — they will miss the larger shift taking place.
Today’s global online learners are not looking for a UK education imported unchanged from the campus. They want programmes that feel relevant to their context, industries, and professional realities. That means universities must move from broadcasting to collaborating — from reach to reciprocity.
Reciprocity means:
- co-designing curriculum with regional industries
- embedding local case studies and labour-market needs
- building long-term partnerships, not one-way pipelines
In this context, universities should rethink how they deliver — or partner to deliver — pathway programmes. These routes are often the first step for international learners, yet many still assume on-campus attendance or traditional study patterns. To genuinely open doors for global online learners, pathways must adapt rather than merely go digital: fully online, flexible across time zones, modular, and contextualised for international professional realities. For many students, a pathway is not just preparation — it’s a test of whether the university understands their lives. A rigid, campus-shaped pathway signals they are an afterthought; a flexible, globally aware pathway shows they belong.
Insight 5: The Sector Still Risks Undervaluing Online Learners
One of the clearest messages in the report is that online learners are no longer a peripheral group — they are a growing demographic, diversifying enrolment, and enabling universities to reach working adults and international students who would never attend on campus. Yet, often, the structures of UK higher education still treat them as an add-on.
Despite being older, busier, and diverse, online learners often encounter systems designed for 18–21-year-old campus students: fixed calendars, rigid assessment schedules, limited flexibility, and support models that assume full-time availability. The average age of the online learner, 34, means they have been out of compulsory education for 16 – 18 years. This means for certain subjects such as Computer Science, Psychology, and Engineering students may need additional support and resources to develop skills in areas such as maths, statistics and academic practice required to study at a higher level. The profile of the participants in Risepoint’s research are precisely the groups universities claim to prioritise — yet online provision is rarely designed around their realities.
The consequence is a sector trying to expand online learning while still building on-campus assumptions into its policies, quality processes, and academic rules. If universities genuinely want to serve this audience, they must start valuing online learners not as a separate market, but as a central part of their educational mission — and redesign systems, expectations, and pathways around the lives they actually lead.
Conclusion
Having worked in UK higher education for more than 25 years, the insights in the Voice of the Online Learner: UK Edition feel both familiar and instructive. They confirm what many of us who have spent years designing, delivering, and supporting online learning already know: today’s online learners bring a different set of circumstances, pressures, and ambitions — and those differences matter.
Across my career, I’ve seen how consistently these students show commitment, resilience, and determination. They don’t ask for leniency or shortcuts; they ask for flexibility that makes participation possible, for a sense of connection that respects their time, and for programmes that are discoverable in the digital and AI-mediated environments they already rely on. These are reasonable, practical needs — and the report makes clear how strongly they shape learners’ decisions to enrol, persist, and succeed.
For international learners, there is an additional message: they want the credibility of a UK education, but delivered with reciprocity — with an understanding of their professional contexts, regional realities, and the pathways that will genuinely help them progress. This is an opportunity for the sector, not a burden.
What this report ultimately underscores, from my perspective, is not a prediction about the future of the entire system but a reminder of what thoughtful, responsive higher education has always required: listening to learners, understanding their realities, and designing in ways that reflect how people actually live, work, and study today. If we take that seriously, online learners — and all learners — will be better served.
Kate Lindsay Blogs 