Impersonal or practical? Prerecorded, online business education — the kind where you don’t have to meet your lecturers or fellow students — is booming.
In a world where people can have thousands of social media friends but few, if any, real ones, education traditionalists say it’s not surprising that there should be a shift towards a system that eschews personal engagement.
That’s not altogether fair. Prerecorded courses, better known as asynchronous teaching, are the solution for many students with neither the time nor the money for a traditional education.
Instead of having to cope with demanding classroom and examination timetables, as well as travel commitments, asynchronous students — who may include working professionals, students in distant countries, or simply some who can’t afford the price of traditional business education — can learn at their own pace, in their own time and in the place of their choice.
That’s why you can buy a short executive education programme from a fully accredited South African business school for as little as R2,999. In a market where programmes can cost just shy of R100,000, that’s quite a bargain.
Market research for this cover story, conducted by Lodestar Marketing Research, shows that the growth of online, asynchronous programmes at participating business schools is outpacing that of both in-person classroom teaching and synchronous teaching, in which students attend live, online sessions involving real-time interaction with lecturers and other students.
It’s not just individuals making the switch but companies too. South African Business Schools Association chair Cobus Oosthuizen says it can make sense for those with globally dispersed offices. “Once, these companies had facilitators and trainers travelling around the world,” he says. “Now it’s not necessary.”
He adds that the shift is not irreversible and there will always be demand for live teaching. “Asynchronous is not a replacement but an alternative. There are so many business variables like time and accessibility.”
Asynchronous is not a replacement but an alternative. There are so many business variables like time and accessibility
— Cobus Oosthuizen
Peet Venter, an academic at Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership, talks of “a post-Covid reluctance to go back to classroom teaching”. Eliminating the need to travel or adjust to international time zones, asynchronous teaching allows foreign business schools to poach South African students who may believe an overseas qualification is more marketable to employers.
Between 2023 and 2025, the number of asynchronous programmes at South African schools more than doubled. There is a catch, though. While asynchronous learning is cheaper, students may find it harder to achieve qualifications. It’s the loneliness of the long-distance student. Exam pass rates are considerably lower than those for synchronous and in-person study.
“Learning on your own requires discipline,” says Morris Mthombeni, dean of the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs). Without deadlines and lecturer oversight, “not everyone has it”.
Alongside teaching methods, the rise of AI is also changing education. Despite questions about its future influence, Gibs deputy dean Louise Whittaker says: “AI is an enabler and it will be ubiquitous. People have to learn how to live with it.” The question is, how?
“How do we understand it and bring it into management?” says Whittaker. “What does it mean for the design and the business and product? What is the purpose of the business, and how does AI enable that?”
Mthombeni says there is unnecessary angst about AI. “It is simply the latest transformative technology. There will be another one along next week.”
Not everyone is taking the impersonal study route. Unisa executive education director Nellie Swart says there is growing demand among clients for “hybrid” education, offering a combination of in-person and live, synchronous sessions. “We are finding that more students want to engage with others.”
Milpark Business School director Frikkie Herbst, whose school operates exclusively online, observes: “We generally get better student engagement on our synchronous programmes.”
It’s not just in teaching format that business schools are preparing for the future. Swart says Unisa wants to rethink its whole executive education offering and be more active in the sector. It will pursue new programmes and clients, notably in the power and energy sector. Though student numbers are already up this year, she says the full effect of the change will be seen in 2027.
Mthombeni says Gibs is preparing for more fundamental change. Business schools and universities no longer have a monopoly on knowledge. Nor do traditional consultancies. “Our competitors today include anyone with access to the internet. There is so much public knowledge. Our competitive edge is how we use that knowledge.”
He wants the school, which already offers an entrepreneurship-focused MBA, to increase its executive education emphasis in the same direction. “We want more of our students to become entrepreneurs, to start their own businesses, to grow the economy.”
He also wants Gibs, which recently marked 10 years of its joint executive education programme with Harvard Business School, to increase engagement with foreign business schools. It already has relationships with schools in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
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