Distance Education in Transition - Master of Distance Education ...

The Educational Paradigm Shifts
them fit for global competition. This establishes another strong link between
education and industry.
� A dramatic shift in financing education. In many countries there was always
agreement that education is a public utility. Therefore the state paid for the schools
and universities. Now the idea is being propagated that individuals should pay for
their education and that industry should be committed to financing the institutes
of higher learning because industrial companies profit from them.
� A deplorable shift in the way of looking at education. Increasingly, the realm of
academia is being permeated by the concepts and practices of business. Students
are becoming »customers«. Hence, teachers are expected to be “customer-friendly”
and to seek “customer satisfaction”. Teaching, which was once a sacred ceremony,
has turned into a commodity, which can be sold in order to make additional money.
What is even worse, universities are evaluated empirically in order to find out
whether the input of money corresponds to the output of graduates.
� A shift from academic exclusiveness with regard to research and teaching to
competition with other providers of intellectual power emerging in large supranational
industrial companies which are establishing universities of their own.
All these shifts (and others) join and merge and bring about and reinforce a feeling of
insecurity and profound irritation. If we want to overcome this, we must be determined
to act as agents of change. We should argue as follows.
� If we speak up for lifelong learning and want to stress continuing education for all
and higher education also for adults,
� if we are really convinced that the rapid technological, economic and societal changes
make continuing education absolutely necessity and a precondition of economic
survival,
� if we really wish and even have to open our schools of higher education to larger
groups of new students who have up to now been neglected, for example elder and
vocationally experienced persons, housewives, members of minority groups,
� if it is true that a university degree has become the critical asset for getting into
employment,
� if we have to produce more mind power in order to survive economically as a nation,
and finally
� if the universities really have to compete with industry-based providers of education,
we will have to think the unthinkable, namely that our traditional system of education in
school and university buildings, in face-to-face classes and lectures, cannot possibly
cope with the tasks ahead of us. This system cannot be expanded further by building
additional physical facilities and cannot be financed. This means that teaching and
learning at university level must be organised in another way, in a way which is more
flexible, variable, convenient, cheaper and geared to many different kinds of students,
including the large group of employees in the professions. We must be ready for and
accept the idea of mass higher education.
In a situation like this it is more than fortunate that the new information and
communication media have become available for devising, designing and developing new
systems of learning and teaching. They allow for techniques of teaching and learning
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