by John Kersey, Ph.D., Marquess Educational Consultants, Ltd. (UK)

You might be forgiven for thinking that distance learning is a new phenomenon. Far from it – it is actually well over one hundred years old and draws on the extension models of the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Since that time, institutions have been giving men and women all over the world the opportunity to earn a college degree without setting foot on campus. Your college may be separated from you by a town, a country or even a continent; nevertheless your degree is awarded in recognition of the meeting of equivalent standards to those who pay their dues on campus.

Anna Ticknor is one of the pioneers of distance education in the U.S.A. In 1873, she created a society to encourage studies for women at home so as to increase educational opportunities for them. In its twenty-four year history, Ticknor’s Boston-based organisation served over 10,000 students, and set the pace for other home-based correspondence study courses. One of the early institutions that allowed an university degree in bachelor, master or doctoral level to be earned entirely through correspondence was Indiana’s Central University, founded in 1896 and still in existence in much the same form today.

It was not long before mainstream universities realized the value in distance learning programs. Chautauqua College of Liberal Arts, N.Y., offered degree programs through summer courses and correspondence between 1883 and 1891. Herbert Baxter Adams of John Hopkins University was a driving force behind the university extension principle. In 1915, the National University Extension Association (NUEA) was formed.

A 1933 faculty survey of the University of Chicago faculty, suggested that the justification of correspondence study should be rooted in its experimental nature, and that it should generate innovations and research data that would lead to improvements in teaching methodologies. Henry Ford wrote to the President advocating the formation of a University Without Walls.

The inter-war years were to see the development of education by radio, with many universities and colleges granted licenses. Although educational radio was seen as popular, in fact the only college credit course offered by radio by 1940 failed to attract any enrolments. Educational television, however, was to prove more effective. Chicago’s ‘Sunrise Semester’ was on the air from 1959, offering filmed classes, and by the 1970’s Coastline Community College and Dallas Community College were making serious use of television. Coastline was one of the very first “virtual colleges”, serving 18,500 students in California by 1976. Dallas took the important step of putting their courses on video tape so that they could be sent to other colleges.

The 1960’s had seen some important and highly radical changes and experiments in college provision. Into the 1970’s, pioneering efforts such as the University Without Walls project at Sierra University promoted methodologies of student-centered learning and the use of community resources as the student’s ‘campus’. In Britain the Open University offered courses by correspondence, television and radio that made degree study a reality for working adults. Programs such as those at Columbia Pacific University attained worldwide popularity and acclaim, with leading universities such as Harvard and Yale stating that they would be happy to consider graduates of such programs for admission to further degrees.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) had previously produced such educational delights as the children’s program “Sesame Street”. In the 1980’s they started to produce full telecourses, but faced with falling revenues came to franchise out their courses to local PBS stations.

Many universities and colleges now offer college credit through telecourses. The growth of distance learning has increased exponentially with the advent of the Internet. Online courses are offered in many disciplines and it is now even possible to complete the initial stages of medical training through distance learning. Providers such as University of Phoenix Online have brought a stripped-down, highly business-focussed approach to the field, aimed squarely at the busy professional. Specialist business institutes are also proving popular with the international market. Accelerated distance programs offer the opportunity to earn an associates or bachelors degree in a fraction of the time usually taken by campus-based students when prior learning is taken into account.

The last barrier to be overcome in distance learning is the online doctorate. Although some providers, such as The Union Institute and University, offer doctoral studies with short residency, the truly non-residential doctorate, as seen for example at the University of South Africa, has yet to take off at mainstream schools in the USA.

Notwithstanding this, the opportunities now offered by distance learning are tremendous and still expanding. The prospects for student choice are particularly exciting, as that choice is now increasingly not limited by geographical boundaries and national barriers.

John Kersey is the president of Marquess Educational Consultants, Ltd., a British educational consultancy firm with particular interests in international credential evaluation and equivalency. Kersey can be reached at president@marquess-education.com