Solving the quantitative skills gap: A flexible learning call to arms!

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a growing literature bemoaning the level of quantitative methods provision within the UK Higher Education sector, noting its negative impact upon the subsequent skills of graduates and their preparedness for the workplace. The present paper documents and evaluates an attempt to counter these issues via the introduction of an increasing element of flexible learning on a business and financial forecasting module. Using a mixture of empirical methods, it is shown that flexible learning results in improvements in student performance and ability across a range of metrics. It is argued that ‘broad’ forms of flexible learning can be employed to overcome the concerns of an increasingly negative literature on quantitative methods provision and the subsequent skills levels of students.