Abstract:

The higher education environment has been disrupted not only by Covid 19, but also by the intensification of globalisation and advancement in technology. Such a disruption has created a dynamic environment that requires a new lens to understand the critical factors required not just for survival, but for high performing higher education institutions. In recent works scholars have started to conceptualise customer centredness as a dynamic enterprise capability which is closely related to organisational performance. Merging two theoretical strands, customer centredness and enterprise capabilities, this paper introduces a framework for harvesting value throughout the student walk from application to graduation by integrating student centeredness and higher education performance with higher education enterprise capability indicators including, collaborative partnerships, as well as timely and agile development and deployment of entrepreneurial and human capital skills. This paper seeks to expand on the extant view of customer centredness taking into consideration that higher education institutions operate in a dynamic environment that is continuously being disrupted by global forces and technological innovations. The key question around which this study is focused is: what are the enterprise capabilities required from the application stage to graduation in the student walk, that enhance university performance? Given the changed higher education environment post the Covid pandemic, and given the new ways of being, living and working, the higher education sector can no longer rely on the limitedness of primary data collected using surveys and interviews. The study presented in this paper thus addresses this gap by using Power BI data which is characterised by its volume, velocity, variety, and variability to map out a process for building and strengthening a student-centred dynamic capability in a higher education setting.

Using the University of South Africa as a case study, the paper draws on secondary data generated from the Power BI Application detailing performance of a business school in the higher education sector in South Africa. Power BI is a Microsoft software product that enables users to connect to various data sources, integrate such data into a single platform and allows for descriptive data presentation and data visualisation. The findings show a link between student centeredness, entrepreneurial mindset, and dynamic capabilities. The findings show that dynamic capabilities are illustrated by the extent an institution’s revenue source is sufficiently diversified and linked to industry. The student centric framework developed for this study has nine interconnected components with customer centricity featuring in each of the nine components. The findings show a link between poor student centeredness, entrepreneurial mindset and human capital development with respect to reflexivity which literature refers to as “learning to learn”. The introduced framework provides opportunities for further research on higher education performance and student centricity concerns.

Keywords:

Student Centredness, Customer Centricity, Higher Education Performance, Enterprise Capabilities, Student Walk Value Chain.