There are four main reasons that prompt people in various parts of the world to join the virtual student fraternity. The first reason: today changes in the economy and industry are happening so fast that people are forced to constantly update their knowledge in order to keep up with the innovations in their field of activity. As a result, the need for a second higher education, training and professional development of adults has grown significantly. As a rule, it is often not easy for them to sit back at a desk. The alternative is obtaining a diploma through distance learning.
The second reason is related to the territorial vastness of many countries and the remoteness of small settlements from educational centers. As a result, secondary specialized and higher education can 'reach' people from the hinterland only in distance form.
The third reason is the desire of an increasing number of young people to get a diploma from foreign universities. Distance programs significantly facilitate the implementation of this intention. And finally, the fourth reason, which has to do with money: correspondence education is much cheaper than traditional education, especially since the latter is becoming more expensive worldwide.
By the middle of the century, believes Alan Gilbert, president of Australia's University of Melbourne, most people who have completed secondary school will receive further education via the Internet. Australia was one of the first countries where the idea of distance learning began to be implemented - almost immediately after the personal computer and modem appeared. Among the Australian leaders in distance education we can name the University of Southern Queensland. Its feature is the presence of numerous distance learning support centers in different countries. Other Australian universities are also catching up with the 'leaders', offering some of their academic programs online. Among them, for example, is Curtin Institute of Technology.
If Australia is considered a pioneer in the development of distance learning, the US is a recognized leader in this field. According to Business Week magazine, today half of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the US offer online courses or use virtual classes as a supplement to regular ones.
John Florence, who heads the U.S. Distance Learning Association, believes that by 2006, up to 5 million people in the US will use distance programs.
Conservatives surrender
Virtual education has reached a high level of development in Great Britain - suffice it to mention the world-famous 'record holder' in this field, the Open University. Of the 200,000 students at the university, 170,000 work online almost regularly, and among MBA students - all 100%. Distance education is developing by leaps and bounds in Sweden, Canada, and the Netherlands. According to some data, in Germany in just 5 years, every second student will use the services of 'virtual universities'; about 60 projects in this field are being implemented in the country.
More than a hundred universities and other higher education institutions around the world offer various options for 'distance learning'. With their help, one can obtain bachelor's or master's degrees, a specialist diploma, and even an MBA.
Some educational institutions join forces to jointly create a unified virtual university. Such is, for example, Western Governors University, created in 1997 in the USA. Students can choose one of the courses offered by 40 different universities from 19 American states. The cost of a two-year education is approximately $4.5 thousand. In Germany, Virtuelle Hochschule Oberrhein has united the interactive programs of the universities of Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, and Heidelberg. A full-fledged online course of study is offered by the Virtual University of Applied Sciences (Virtuelle Fachhochschule) - an association of 15 German and four Swedish universities. Even conservative Oxford, which resisted change for a long time, was nevertheless forced to offer several online courses as well.
The university comes to the student
Educational services are getting closer to people - this is the general trend observed throughout the world. There are such also in the near abroad - in Russia. Distance programs for obtaining higher education at various levels are now offered in one form or another by almost all Russian universities. In Russia, the most popular and in-demand fields of knowledge for which there is demand for distance programs turned out to be economics, informatics and computer engineering, foreign languages, law, management, psychology, and pedagogy.
A vivid example of the skillful use of distance methods for teaching, including full-time education, is the Modern Humanitarian Academy. In this educational institution, where more than 140,000 students study, a unique technology has been created based on a digital satellite communication system, including a transmitting teleport in Moscow and receiving complexes at each educational center (there are more than 30 of them in Russia and other CIS countries). The academy's educational technology reduces the cost of education by two to three times.
A step ahead
Work is currently underway to create the Russian Open University (by analogy with the British Open University), which already includes about 80 universities in the country. The point is that students will be able to choose the best courses at different universities, thus getting optimal educational opportunities. A concept has also been developed for the Virtual University of Europe and Central Asia, which Russia will join.
Distance education gives far-sighted people the opportunity, while taking care of their careers, to keep up with the times under the motto 'live and learn', which today sounds fashionable as lifelong learning. Moreover, the classes are virtual, but the diploma is quite real...