Addressing students' perceived value with the virtual university concept

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation has significantly accelerated in many industries, including somewhat slow-changing higher education. The epidemic situation pushed students, faculties, and administrators to experiment to a much greater degree with online classes, digital cooperation, and virtual student services. For the majority of the academic community, this situation created a completely new reality. Indeed, the digital experience in higher education was for some community members quite challenging, if not traumatic. Fairly soon, however, the digital experiment proved successful in many areas. In some cases, even more effective than conservative practices. The Virtual University Concept (VUC) has been a topic of debate for quite some time, but only now has it found a receptive audience in all sectors of the academic community. In the following articles, the authors will attempt to conceptualize the virtual university as an innovative way to address contemporary challenges for Higher Education Institutions (HEI), specifically their ability to identify, create and capture value for students. The concept of the VUC is grounded in a literature re