Distance is still distant

• Article 1 of 15
• EducationInvestor, July 2010

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It seems an obvious solution to a growing problem. More and more people, both in the UK and overseas, want to study undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at UK universities. Campus and staff resources are already overstretched, though, and the combination of soaring demand and shrinking budgets mean that as many as 200,000 look set to miss out on places this year.

But what if the campus were virtual and all the students remained at home for most or all of their degree courses? Costs could be kept lower and there’d be the potential to increase student numbers. And if a course were to prove popular, universities would no longer have to turn so many students away because of lack of places. This – and the fact that successful distance learning organisations such as Kaplan in the US can earn billions in revenue – is why many universities are looking to shift their teaching model to include more distance and remote learning.

Looking, but not yet moving
The model already has proponents in the UK, the Open University (OU) being the most obvious example. The new government, too, seems keen. In a recent speech university minister David Willetts was openly pushing the idea that students should be able to study for a degree at any university in England, by attending lectures at their local college.

Even before Willetts spoke up, the OU’s vice-chancellor Martin Bean was already suggesting that other universities may soon be following in his own institution’s footsteps. “We might be different but the rest of the sector is coming our way now,” he told the education technology conference JISC 2010. “We might have been looked down at historically but I think we are the trendsetters now where most of higher education needs to go.”

The Online Learning Task Force (OLTF), of which Bean is a member, was created by the government last year to look at ways to foster online learning. The OLTF, which reported in June, says that the government understands that the market for online learning has “huge potential for international growth in UK market share over the next five to 10 years, for both existing and new models of HE”.

Making the shift is not going to be easy, however. The University of London’s External System has been awarding degrees to remote learners for over 150 years and currently has 49,000 students studying for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees off-campus. Professor Jonathan Kydd, dean of the system, says distance learning requires a strong infrastructure and considerable expertise. “It has high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs.”

To generate enough content for a purely online degree course takes considerable time and money. As a result, many online educators have focused purely on vocational courses, in particular business courses. John Holden, executive chairman of Resource Development International, says, “We’re definitely market-drive and business courses represent 80% of demand”. His company had to make a considerable investment three years ago to adapt its systems, content and staff to true online learning.

BPP, which was the first private company to be able to award UK degrees, had similar obstacles to overcome. Its blended learning model allows students to move from purely online learning at the same speed as the rest of the class, to face-to-face learning, to mixed learning at whatever speed they want. Such a complex system, though, means it’s had to invest millions of pounds in computer systems and course materials.

“We’re in this for the long term and we want to offer maximum flexibility,” says Peter Crisp, chief executive of BPP Law School. “To achieve that, there has to be a long-term investment case.” He adds that a lot of the investment has been in ensuring the quality of the teaching materials and resources available for students, as well as training tutors: the skills necessary to lecture to an audience are different from those needed to lecture to camera, for example.

The University of London’s Professor Kydd says the resources and investment required to start offering online learning are too high for individual departments and colleges to “commit to distance learning on a scale that allows them to do it well and in a way that makes it financially viable”. In other words, for most universities to make distance learning viable, they’ll have to work together in groups.

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