The Internet will mean the death of the campus university

In his thoughtful article ‘Electronics and the dim future of university’ (1995), Eli Noam argued that:
While new communications technologies are likely to strengthen research, they will also weaken the traditional major institutions of learning, the universities. Instead of prospering with the new tools, many of the traditional functions of universities will be superseded, their financial base eroded, their technology replaced and their role in intellectual inquiry reduced. (Noam, 1995:247)

He outlines three main functions of universities: the creation of knowledge (research); the storage of knowledge (libraries); and the transmission of knowledge (teaching). He argues that the new communication technologies alter the economics of each of these functions, thereby undermining the role of the university. For instance, teaching will be undermined because, for the reasons mentioned above, online providers can offer cheaper alternatives. Noam claims that:

It is hard to imagine that the present low-tech lecture system will survive… If alternative instructional technologies and credentialing systems can be devised, there will be a migration away from classic campus based higher education. The tools for alternatives could be video servers with stored lectures by outstanding scholars, electronic access to interactive reading materials and study exercises, electronic interactivity with faculty and teaching assistants, hypertext books and new forms of experiencing knowledge, video-and computer-conferencing, and language translation programs. While it is true that the advantages of electronic forms of instruction have sometimes been absurdly exaggerated, the point is not that they are superior to face-to-face teaching (though the latter is often romanticized), but that they can be provided at dramatically lower cost. (Noam, 1995:248)


This does suggest an underlying model of education merely as information transfer, so again the idea that video lectures will make the face to face version redundant is proposed. However, Noam is arguing that it is not whether we think that this is a good form of education or not that is significant, but rather that it can be a much cheaper form which might be the deciding factor. There might be some truth in this,but students of such courses might soon find them unfulfilling.

The notion that the Net represents an infinite lecture hall, with no additional costs for additional students, is a mistaken one. I will discuss issues of scale in a later chapter, but in order to provide a meaningful educational experience, and one that is liable to be repeated by students, the provider needs to give guidance and support. So Noam argues that ‘a curriculum, once created, could be offered electronically not just to hundreds of students nearby but to tens of thousands around the world’ (Noam, 1995:248). While it is possible to offer such a course, if it is to be a meaningful education experience it will require a great deal of academic support, which many of the cheaper alternatives would not be able to supply.

What underlies much of Noam’s analysis is the physical aspect of universities. Much of their functionality is bundled with this physical realization. So universities were renowned for having a good library, or excellent laboratory facilities, or a pleasant campus—all physical attributes. As Noam points out, the very reason universities came into existence was because of this bundling of knowledge and its physical embodiment. When the early libraries stored knowledge in the form of books, the cost of reproducing books was high, so it
made financial sense for those people with an interest in a topic to congregate around these libraries. From this gathering of knowledgeable people universities grew, as others came to be taught by them.

Evans and Wurster (2000) argue that physical objects and information have different sets of economics. They have been forced to follow the same economic model, however, because they have been bound together physically. For example, in a supermarket the information about a product is in the product itself. If I want to look through the range of cereals offered I physically walk the aisle looking at the products themselves. The Internet allows these two aspects to become unbundled. I can browse through a vast collection of books at Amazon, while the actual books can be stored in an out-of-town warehouse.

In educational terms this can be seen as the campus versus distance education debate. Distance education has been implemented successfully before the advent of the Net, but it is with the Net that many universities and colleges have entered the distance education market. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of distance education courses and students over the past few years: for example from 1995 to 1998 there was an estimated 72 per cent increase in distance education programs in the US (Phipps and Merisotis, 2000). As with establishing private universities, the Net lowers the cost of entrance to this market. Delivering distance education used to require specially printed teaching materials, audio/visual components and a face to face network for support. These are costly to develop unless an institution is making a large-scale venture into distance education. The Net allows distance courses to be developed quickly and often on a small scale.

This ultimately leads to the question, ‘If all of the functionality of a university can be delivered at a distance, then is there the need for the expensive campus?’ In Evans and Wurster’s terms, if the separate information and physical economics are uncoupled, then they are free to follow their own paths. The ‘university’ no longer needs to have a large campus in the middle of a city. Instead it can have an administrative centre in a less expensive area without the need for halls of residence, lecture halls, libraries and so on.

Will all campus universities disappear, then? This depends on a wider social movement. In an interview published in Forbes, 27 February 1995, George Gilder predicted that information technologies would lead to the ‘death of cities’. His reasoning is much the same as I have outlined above—cities developed out of
economic necessity. Industry needed to be near a resource, such as a port, and then the people who worked in or offered services related to that industry needed to be in its close proximity. Now much of the work that people need to do in a knowledge economy can be done at a distance using the Net. There is less and less reason to be located physically near your employer (or even to have one single employer at all). Thus people will be free to live where they choose.

The reason I think this does not necessarily lead to the death of cities is that many people choose to live in them. Their nature might change, but cities have a social inertia, which is its own justification. The same can be said of the campus university. There is, after all, more to a university education than just the degree.

A university education is a social experience, often a pivotal one for students. As the former Open University Vice-Chancellor, Sir John Daniel (2000), commented,‘I often argue that university campuses will always be in demand because they create a protected environment where young people can come to terms with life, love, liquor and learning—while sparing the rest of the community the sight of these often unsightly processes’.

There is a lot of truth in this: most students will name the social aspect of university life as one of the most significant elements of their overall experience. However, if this is the only advantage large campus universities offer, then it might not be sufficient for the additional costs they entail. There are other ways of having a good time, after all: for instance, a year travelling the world might fulfil a similar function.
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The Internet will mean the globalization of education

The Net can be a place of paradox. Within it, seemingly contrary trends can be realized simultaneously, and it can be viewed as the means of achieving diametrically opposing views. This seems particularly pertinent with the arguments about the globalization of education. At one conference I attended, a speaker warned of the threat of a global super-university, while at another conference in South America, someone spoke passionately about the possibility of the Net as a means of educating the populace, so that they might compete with ‘the colossus of the north’. So for some, the global aspect of the Net will mean that there will be a few dominant organizations that deliver online education, while for others, the Net is a means to offer good-quality education to a large populace, and begin to compete more effectively in the global economy. There is an element of truth in both of these views.

One of the problems people have on the Net is with finding a reliable provider of any commodity they are seeking. They are either overwhelmed by irrelevant search results, or they find providers they have never heard of and are unsure they can trust. In such an environment a familiar brand name becomes invaluable. On the Net, the brand becomes as important as the location for traditional businesses.

This could have implications for education. If someone is searching for a course, say an online MBA, then rather than filter through lots of results and try to assess the quality of the offerings, there is a temptation to go straight to a known and trusted provider, let us say Harvard. Not only can you guess the appropriate URL (www.harvard.edu), but also you can be assured that the MBA will meet certain standards. In such a scenario the big-name educational establishments (Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, MIT, etc) become online brand names, to the detriment of many smaller, more local providers. This is the anticompetition scenario where there are ultimately a few, or even only one, online providers, a sort of Microsoft of education.


The alternative view is that in fact students want a course or qualification that is accredited, and thus recognized, in their own country. There are also strong cultural differences between nations that make few subjects generalizable to the extent that they could be studied in any country equally effectively. By utilizing
their familiarity with the local culture, the needs, interests and concerns of the environment in which they operate, local universities and colleges can provide a much better online course than a global provider. They might also take advantage of their geographical location, for instance by supporting online courses with face to face activities such as residential schools or day sessions. By operating this way, the local universities can increase the proportion of the population they can educate effectively.

It is likely that neither extreme view will materialize: this is usually the way with new technologies. They encourage visions of technological utopia or dystopia, which often seem to have a determinist underpinning: that is, the technology will force the change, for better or worse, regardless of people. It is the opposite effect—the manner in which technology itself is adapted through use by people—that results in these predictions largely being unfulfilled. When the personal computer first began to achieve a mass audience, the utopians
similarly predicted that it would be a democratizing force, which would free the artistic creativity of individuals and give them powerful information tools. The dystopians predicted that it would increase the power of governments and corporations and that people would stop communicating and become slaves to their computers. Of course, neither vision quite came true, and although huge changes occurred in work practices, education and society, it is also true that a great deal stayed the same; we merely found different ways of doing it. From the explosion in computer gaming to the people who transformed their Apple Macintoshes into fish tanks, the technology was used in unexpected and unpredictable ways.

Courses being offered to a global audience raise several issues. The first, and most obvious, is applicability of content. However sensitive to different cultures we might be, we are all influenced by our own environment. It is often difficult to appreciate how relevant the examples you have selected might be in another culture, or whether your use of language contains subtle cultural references that might have different meanings elsewhere. To make the course feel relevant to students you might need to provide local examples or case studies. However, such issues can be addressed, for example by collaboration with a local education establishment, or by careful use of language and a resource bank of different examples.

A more difficult problem to overcome for global courses is the difference in cultural values embodied in the pedagogy. These often go deep to the heart of the social values of a particular culture. For instance, intensive online collaboration is more difficult in a society which tends to promote politeness and reservation. Similarly, strongly familial societies often place a great emphasis on respect, which is also exhibited to teachers. A course pedagogy that expects critical questioning and dialogue with the educator might thus not translate well into such an environment, where such behaviour is usually frowned upon. These factors, combined with language, local recognition and subsidies, suggest that the globalization of education is an issue that will occur only in specific sectors, and usually through collaboration between international partners.
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The Internet will mean the commercialization of education

December 2000: an agreement between India and China is announced to oppose the commercialization of education at all fora, stating that education should not be controlled by market forces and that the goal of education should be to create a non-violent and non-exploitative knowledge society. What this news indicated was that the commercialization of education is now a serious, global concern and that it calls into question the very purpose of education in society. So is the commercialization of education inevitable? Is it necessarily a detrimental force? And, what has the Internet to do with it?

The commercialization of education seems to be an attack on the last bastion of the public sector. For many, the role of private companies in health care was, and still is, unacceptable. Yet there is no doubt it has happened, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on where you live. So, it would be naïve perhaps to think that education is in a more privileged position and the same could not happen in that domain. Indeed, venture capitalists now eye the education sector covetously and see it as the next big target. In the year 2000 some $2.9 billion of venture capital was invested in education and training start-up companies (Eduventures.com,
2001). True, the e-commerce bust has seen this investment slow somewhat and some of the shine has come off the optimism, but the sector is still attracting a good deal of finance and attention. There is certainly more drive and, significantly, more money behind the move to involve commercial organizations in education than there ever has been before. And large sums of money tend to have a way of fashioning the output those behind the money desire.

There are a number of reasons that education and commercialization make for an uneasy marriage. Many of the models and practices applicable in business do not transfer easily to education. For instance, the notion of students as customers is fraught with uneasy implications in education. In a commercial relationship customers are not assessed as they are in education, they cannot fail as they do in education. The idea that ‘the customer is always right’ would make marking any form of assessment very difficult. The notion of academic freedom is similarly difficult to marry with a commercial approach. Commercial pressures and constraints could seriously threaten this liberty. These are wider issues, however, and beyond the scope of this book. I want to focus here on the role the Internet plays in this debate.

Let us be clear before we apportion blame to the Net: it did not start this process. Global cultural changes have meant educational establishments have generally become more accountable and more businesslike in the way they operate. Despite the reservations mentioned above, the ‘customer centred’ approach has been adopted by many universities in response to a broader customer culture. Many vice-chancellors would argue that they have to operate as a business now, but do so in an unusual market which is much at the whim of

governments and politicians. One could view many of the established educational practices as evolving not from pedagogical or student support considerations, but rather as sound economical models. Ellington, Percival and Race (1993:64) for example say of the traditional lecture, ‘one of the reasons why the lecture has retained its dominant place in the educational and training scene is that the method appears to be highly cost-effective, since it enables high student/staff ratios to be achieved’. Online education, because it requires changes to established models of teaching, support, assessment and use of technology, naturally forces universities to examine the financial viability of such a model.

This does not mean that it is any more (or less) concerned with profit than traditional forms of education, but rather that we have become so accustomed to these assumptions in the established processes that often we do not notice them. Gaining access to the education market was always difficult for commercial organizations. The process of becoming an accredited university that can award degrees varies between countries, but is nearly always difficult and protracted.

This gives private universities a problem: they need a successfully working educational establishment in order to gain accreditation powers, and yet few students will want to study at a place that is not accredited. The private university needs to employ academic staff and have a campus in operation all the time that it is going through this process. Unlike for other businesses there seems to be little chance of starting small and building up gradually, using the previous year’s profits to sustain growth. With a private university the organization has to go directly to the fully established model. This requires some brave and considerable financial backing. Hence the number of private universities has remained relatively small.

The Net changes some of these dynamics. First, because the students and the academics are not located physically on campus, an online university does not need to invest vast sums of money in building a campus with specialized rooms for lecturing, laboratory space, social areas, and so on. It will need a headquarters, but any standard office space will suffice for this. Second, again as a corollary of the academics being located anywhere, there is no need to employ them full-time. A wide range of courses can be offered by employing academics on a part-time basis to deliver the courses online.

This is precisely what the University of Phoenix has done in the United States (with greater or lesser success, depending on your point of view). Last, because the costs are lowered by these factors, the online university can appeal to students as an economical means of study, particularly if they wish to study part-time while working and cannot attend a campus based university. So the online university can appeal to a different group of students on different grounds, whereas the private campus-based university was competing directly with the traditional universities. The online university still has to negotiate successfully the rigorous accreditation process, and it will have to invest a lot of money in its technical infrastructure and in marketing, but it begins to appear as a more attractive and viable business model for investors. The Net therefore can lower the cost of entry to the market, although in the next chapter we will see that this is not always borne out—but for now let us assume it does.

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