For centuries, if not millennia, higher education has stuck to a model that involves keeping students cloistered for some years, passing knowledge on to small groups of them at any one time ... and then presenting the ones who've stayed the course with a piece of parchment granting them entry into the professional world. Well, that's how it used to be, and until recently, it seemed to work quite well in most cases. However, things have started to change, and are beginning to change more quickly than anticipated in certain quarters.
Tuition fee rises, student visa reductions and the sheer cost of travelling to and living within reach of a university campus are just some of the elements leading to a significant drop in student numbers this year. And there's also the question of what happens after that piece of parchment is handed over. It no longer gives a person guaranteed access to the position in the working world they've been studying for and expecting to find within a matter of weeks of graduation. In short, physically attending a university for x number of years may offer certain advantages, but distance learning in this internet age could well offer more advantages to many, many more people.
Distance learning is the future! The internet is your campus! (You'll still have to study in your own time too)
Back in those pre-internet days, when the postal system was both predictable and affordable, distance learning establishments like the Open University would send students their coursework, and receive their assignments in the mail. Obviously, there was a bit of a time lag, but today, that time lag is history. Distance learning gives students the opportunity of gaining knowledge and qualifications at their own speed, in their own time and wherever they choose. They can study at home ... or at work ... or even travelling between the two. Now, for those studying towards qualifications, whether work-related or otherwise, there is a price to be paid. Or, in more positive terminology, an investment to be made - one that should reap future dividends when it comes to improved job prospects. But there are more reasons for studying than the potential for a bigger paycheque: there's interest in a subject - even a passion for it, and up to now the costs of distance learning can make that interest or passion an expensive form of entertainment. However, people are prepared to pay that cost. If they can.
But now the virtual gates have been thrown wide open - in the form of MOOCs - Massive Online Open Courses. Or, in simple terms, free distance learning for the masses. Free? Indeed - but only if you're interested in studying for your interest or enjoyment. Some MOOCs do offer valid qualifications, recognised throughout the world, but for those you'll have to break out your credit card. And as for distance, because it’s online learning can happen on the other side of the world from whichever educational establishment is offering the MOOC in question.
So a new higher education model is coming towards us over the virtual horizon, and because the number of potential students is limitless, more knowledge will get passed to more people at any one time than ever before. And as MOOCs develop, that piece of parchment awarded at the end of so many years' offline study could end up being the PDF output of a file held on a computer on the other side of an ocean ... or the other side of the world.
