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| • Robin Mason, Globalising Education:
Trends and Applications, Routledge, 1998 |
The most common approach for universities to break into the e-learning universe has
been to develop courses specifically for a corporate partner
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If
the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education,
it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain
the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay
the school fees of the poorer classes of children.
John
Stuart Mill,
British philosopher
(1806-73)
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Prestigious universities are forging
alliances to conquer a share of the e-learning market and stand up to virtual competitors
 Just like airline companies, universities around the world
are forming partnerships and consortia in response to the pressures of globalization.
The World Education Market held in Vancouver last May was a timely sign: the fair,
expressly organized to foster relations between universities, training providers,
software companies and representatives from nations with large education needs, attracted
participants from over 60 countries.
This race to “partner up” is fuelled by a number of factors. In most industrialized
countries, government funding for higher education has decreased, forcing institutions
to look for new markets either to subsidize campus programmes or just to remain viable.
There is a growing need for lifelong learning as “jobs for life” vanish and the information
society drastically reduces the shelf-life of almost any educational qualification.
Technological developments, increasingly necessary for learners in all fields to
master, offer ever more innovative tools for supporting e-learning.
For business, online learning is “the” new market opportunity, with the need for
re-training and professional updating predicted to create an $11.5 billion industry
by 2003. Business is better able to develop and maintain the technological infrastructure
necessary to run large online systems and everyone, including the universities, recognizes
that it takes robust telecommunications technology to deliver education and training
on the scale demanded.
A host of companies has sprung up to help universities shape and package courses
for online presentation, while network providers are jockeying for position to deliver
online education.
The United States is the undisputed leader in the field, prompting governments in
the U.K., Canada and Australia to commission hefty studies on the danger of national
universities being eroded by U.S. ventures turned global. Canada and the U.K. are
in the early stages of setting up their own virtual universities. But what has become
clear is that the conservative and labyrinthine decision-making processes which characterize
most university procedures are being jolted by a race to get a share of the lifelong
learning market.
So far, the most common approach for universities to break into the e-learning universe
has been to develop courses specifically for a corporate partner or to form alliances
among themselves. Universitas 21, a company incorporated in the U.K., is a network
of 18 leading universities in ten countries. Earlier this year, it formed a joint
venture with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to provide premium higher education
programmes using new information technologies and learning methods. In October 2000,
Stanford, Princeton, Yale and Oxford formed “The Big Four Alliance,” aimed at offering
courses in the arts and sciences to 500,000 alumni.
Very often, prestigious universities have stayed clear of going fully online, seeing
a danger to their brand name. Many are limiting their offerings to continuing education
programmes and/or non-degree courses, and more often than not, they are aiming at
the corporate market. One company, UNext.com, has partnered with first-class institutions
such as the University of Columbia (U.S.) and the London School of Economics to create
online courses marketed under the name Cardean University. Their target: the Fortune
500 companies as well as individual adults. They’ve managed to attract Nobel laureates
to design courses and the universities receive royalties for their content. Other
universities have formed spin-off for-profit companies specifically to develop online
programmes. This facilitates the commercialization of software and other products,
and is a way to take a commercial approach to continuing and professional studies
without compromising the University’s academic standing.
Then there are the freestanding for-profit virtual universities, which are arousing
the ire of institutions that have prided themselves on a long history of public service.
The most quoted examplar is Phoenix University, the largest private outfit in the
U.S. Now owned by the Apollo Group, it operates the country’s largest online programme
with 12,200 students. The university tracks students’ progress and contacts those
who don’t submit assignments on time or fail to enrol in subsequent courses. Many
critics question Phoenix’s blatant commercialization, but few doubt the university’s
impact on continuing professional development provision.
Although e-learning is in its infancy, its impact can already by gauged. New providers
are coming on the market all the time and the trend is accelerating to the point
of upsetting universities’ virtual monopoly in educational accreditation. An Information
Technology training course offered or accredited by Microsoft has undoubtedly become
more valuable than a Bachelor of Science from a renowned university.
The more consumerist the approach of the education provider, the more what is taught
is influenced by demand. MBAs dominate e-learning provision and IT courses are a
close second. While the new consumer/learner demands flexibility, choice and just-in-time
learning opportunities, suppliers will inevitably arise who are focused on meeting
the demand at the expense of quality and value. And is the consumer really the best
judge of what course material to choose? Education is a more complex “product” than
toothpaste or washing powder. A totally consumer-driven education market is unlikely
to be in society’s best interests in the long term.
The commercialization of education usually goes hand-in-hand with desegregation:
course design, delivery, tutoring, assessment and accreditation may be carried out
by different organizations. Students might study courses or modules from different
universities or providers and then put themselves forward for examination and accreditation
by yet another institution. While most academics loathe marking assignments, they
regard this scenario with horror, and blame commercialization for the demise of the
“community of scholars” concept of a university. The death of the “course” has also
been predicted, with learners—especially corporate and on-the-job learners—demanding
short study modules. What then happens to the ability to get an overview of a field
when learning consists of the student selecting a whole series of unconnected learning
“bites”? Learners will be “zapping” between short sequences or presentations much
as they do between television channels.
But while some faculty view e-learning with alarm, technology-based learning is where
most of the pedagogical innovation is taking place in universities. Multimedia learning
resources and interactive simulations are being developed for the web. Collaborative
learning activities, new forms of online assessment and small group teaching technologies
are making online courses more stimulating, interactive and attractive than many
face-to-face taught courses.
Despite “doom and gloom scenarios,” most moderate observers of the scene see a continued
future for the campus university, especially at the undergraduate level, while e-learning
will above all cater to adult, professional and independent learners. Some commercialization
of education is good if it fosters innovation, concern for quality and responsiveness
to consumer demands. But if some is good, more is not necessarily better! Not in
education at least.
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