Amy Otchet
Online learning is revolutionizing education as computer and telecommunications
companies seek to develop this new market.
‘Globalization is a term that gets used a lot,
but just like trade and commerce, education is becoming more and more integrated
across national borders’
It is difficult
to justify tax dollars spent on education
if the private sector
can do the job
as well as
the public sector
|
Brazil Young Brazilians can no longer be content with learning
only English; they have to learn Spanish as well. This view, advocated by Senator
José Forgaça of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), has
been supported by the upper chamber of Congress, which approved a draft law that
will make it mandatory to teach Spanish in all the country’s government secondary
schools. |
The sleek towers and domed halls of Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic offer the services students dream of–state-of-the-art libraries and data bases, easy course registration, tutorials, study guides, financial advice for tuition and more–all without hours or energy wasted waiting in line. If seeing is believing, why not wander over to the students’ centre for a quick visit? A few keystrokes on the Internet and you are there.
Welcome to the world of online education. Students around the globe can enrol in classes like Temasek’s, which cover everything from engineering to tourism and even an introduction to Japanese Katakana characters. Time and distance are no longer an obstacle to learning, as students download specially designed courses according to their own schedules, with tutorials and extra materials available via e-mail, CD-roms and electronic libraries open around the clock. Exams, papers and even private consultations with professors or other students are all done within the comfort of home.
In the last year, virtual classrooms of all shapes and sizes have been under construction around the world, offering very real solutions for universities and training institutes threatened by dwindling public resources and students needing more flexible course materials and schedules to compete in today’s job market. Mexico’s Monterey Institute of Technology, for example, is developing online courses and importing them from universities north of the border. Even the World Bank is getting involved with plans for a virtual university in Africa. And while it is natural to find traditional distance education providers such as UK Open University breaking into this new field, prestigious brand-name schools are also investing. Duke University of the United States has proudly opened its “Global Executive MBA” to a hand-picked class of mostly international businesspeople with tuiton at $85,000.
This new distance education is a far cry from the lowly correspondence courses of the past, seen as a “second-chance” for those who couldn’t make it in or have access to regular educational channels. It also represents not just another learning opportunity but a promising new market for telecommunications and computer corporations, vying to provide the “piping”–satellite systems, computer platforms for administration or “smart cards” offering access to electronic libraries–to deliver services far and wide. From Germany to Malaysia, telecommunications and computer giants are negotiating “wiring” costs with public and private learning institutions, now seen as new partners for computer companies like Microsoft and Apple.
Consider the case of Western Governors University (WGU) formed in 1997 by a group of governors from the western United States. Convinced that education was failing to meet the needs of employers and students alike, they created a virtual university which distributes services (courses) developed by associated universities and corporate training programmes. The real surprise lies in its National Advisory Board, a powerful mix of state representatives and business leaders from companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM and above all AT&T, (one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies), which has donated more than $750,000. With backing like this, the governors are broadening their horizons, moving beyond the local market by brokering co-operative agreements with overseas “suppliers”–universities and telecom companies–in Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and China.
“Globalization is a term that gets used a lot, but just like trade and commerce, education is becoming more and more integrated across national borders,” says Reidar Roll of the non-profit International Council for Distance Education (ICDE), which includes learning institutes and corporations in more than 130 countries. “We are beginning to see a more global education market.”
Roll doesn’t seem to question the rise of this “market”–a battle cry for those who see education as a public responsibility and not a commodity. Yet in this new electronic age of distance education, the fine line between the private and public sectors has been blurred from the start. While universities did much of the research and development making online learning technologically possible–often with corporate support–it is the private sector which supplies the pieces needed to build the virtual campus.
Even the course content is market-based. Online students are for the most part not looking for philosophy or art history classes but professional training in areas like business management, financial services, English, information technologies, teaching and health sciences.
In short, the incredible potential for online learning lies in the insecurity of today’s job market as the ever-shortening shelf-life of knowledge forces the “professionally fit” to continually upgrade their skills. In Finland, for example, 45% of employed adults between the ages of 25 to 64 take part in some form of career-related continuing education and training during a year, according to a 1997 survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Even Canada’s low rate of 28 per cent still represents considerable demand.
“People want to acquire the skills that are applicable and enhance their mobility,” says John Mallea, a Canadian expert in the field and consultant for the OECD. “In Eastern and Central Europe, professionals are studying international trade, European law, financial services, computer training and English in numbers we haven’t seen before. Until last year’s currency crisis, Asia was a huge growth area, with more than 50 MBA programmes being offered in Hong Kong alone, many by distance means.”
At the same time, regional trade agreements in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia are opening the door to free trade in educational services, particularly in professional training, which is considered less sensitive than primary or secondary schooling in terms of national autonomy. “Education is considered a service like any other,” says a legal officer of the World Trade Organization, who points out that 30 countries, from Ghana to Norway and Rwanda, have signed on to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) with specific commitments assuring foreign providers fair access to their educational markets.
A new market in grey matter
For better or worse, free trade in online education is still far from a reality. A battery of barriers or buffers–depending on your point of view–is firmly in place. To begin with, academic accreditation systems are still the preserve of national authorities and so vary greatly from one country to the next. The lack of technological standards is another obstacle in delivering education from one country or region to another.
At the same time, financial questions remain on issues like taxation and intellectual property. For example, should an Australian company pay local revenue taxes for courses sold in Malaysia? Or consider the case of Mexican students attending a Canadian university. They usually pay higher admission fees than local tax-paying students. Should the same rules apply to their online compatriots? Finally, how can teachers protect their intellectual property rights on courses and materials beamed around the world?
A long list of task forces and forums is working in universities and international organizations to tackle these thorny issues. At the same time, the private sector is more than willing to help, by offering grants, technical advice and other forms of support to ensure a free flow of services.
While it is too soon for any accurate forecasts of the online education market–estimates vary from one to four billion dollars for the year 2000–there are growing fears that companies will eventually take over the role of learning institutes. “If Microsoft wanted to, they could create a university to compete,” says Roll of ICDE. “Or if Harvard wanted to, they could enter alliances to offer them (the companies) a brand name on the international market. I think the plans are there.”
Not so fast, says Jim Kuhr, manager of Microsoft’s worldwide education activities. “We don’t see ourselves as an educational company–we are not experts in curriculum or pedagogy. Our focus has been to work with partners who are specialists in that. But we do have an interest in providing the infrastructure pieces–like network operating systems, share files and e-mail–needed to make distance learning successful.”
While Kuhr recognizes brand-name universities as obvious marketing targets, the real heavyweights may lie in developing countries in Asia and Latin America. “The enrolment potential is going up so dramatically that the governments cannot afford to build the brick and mortar campuses to meet the demand. These governments see online learning and other opportunities in the information society as a way to radically move their countries ahead–that is, if they find the initial investment for infrastructure.”
In fact, “wiring” is becoming less of a financial burden as telecom prices fall with deregulation. And with the current spate of mergers transforming the industry, new markets like online education are becoming all the more competitive.
AT&T’s interest in online education is “multi-layered”, according to Marilyn Reznick of the telecom giant’s philanthropic foundation. “We have a responsibility to make sure that people can understand the technologies we develop. It is also in our interest to send our philanthropic dollars to universities where we do business, recruit people, train our employees and do our R&D.”
“We might also go to a university with which we have relations and ask, ‘are you going to provide the workers we need?’ If not, we will help provide the resources to develop that training. But we would never dream of telling them how to teach. We are not competing with them.”
A sigh of relief from the ivory towers? “I am not sure that any corporation will tell you their strategy,” says Tony Bates, director of the Distance Education and Technology unit of Canada’s University of British Columbia. “And if they did, that strategy may change. For instance, we are actually making a profit on some of our online courses. Who knows what will happen once that gets out.”
The secret to the university’s success lies in cherry-picking and niche-marketing. “To offer a basic microbiology course, we would need some competitive advantage over the rest of the world, like a Nobel Prize winner, which we don’t have. But with our contacts in the forestry department, we are offering courses in wood science, for example, in Indonesia and Australia, where there is an emerging regional market in secondary wood products.
“All of this sounds like someone trying to run a business, and I am surprised to find myself liking this role,” says Bates. “This is in response to a government which tells us to be less dependent on taxes. This is not an inevitable result of market forces but a political decision.”
However, there is a fine line between profit-making and becoming profit-driven. “You have to ask, ‘what is the role of a publicly funded college?” says Bates. “It is difficult to justify tax dollars spent on education if the private sector can do the job as well as the public sector. But I think the public needs some independent critique and analysis of the government and private sector policies. Somebody has to have the independence to ask who is benefiting in a society.”
There is also a question of equity. “There are areas that you just cannot make money on, like education for the handicapped or social work courses. That is where the government has to step in to ensure that all sectors of society are served as much as possible.”
Useful websites:
Temasek: ole.tp.ac.sg
Open University: www.open.ac.uk
Duke University: www.fuqua.duke.edu
WGU: www.westgov.org
ICDE: www.icde.org
Microsoft: www.microsoft.com/edu
The UNESCO Courier