With the explosion of the internet back
in the mid 1990’s it was just a matter of time before the
education industry caught up and starting taking advantage
of all the internet has to offer. If you look back at
history you can see why I believe this is just the beginning
of distance education and I see more and more positive
growth for the industry over the next 10 years.
How did your parents get their degree?
More than likely they attending a state ran university and
spent 4 years obtaining their degree. Most were young when
they attending and most were male. Spring ahead to the
1990’s and what has happened. First the internet allowed
people to enroll and take courses in areas of the country
that perhaps didn’t have a school. All of a sudden you could
live in a small town and get your degree without moving to
the bigger town and paying high rent.
The second thing that happened was the
economy changed. No longer did the wives stay at home with
the kids while the husband worked 40 hours per week. Now
every member of the family works in order to make it and
that required many to go back to school. It was very
difficult for many to attend a live school after either
never attending or not being in school for 20 years. The
internet allowed them to study and earn their degree online
without ever needing to step foot outside their home.
Most major 4 years universities and
colleges didn’t jump aboard with online education when it
was first introduced and my personal opinion was that they
really didn’t see it as a threat. I would guess the
conversions were focused around the media wasn’t available
to have live discussions, chat wasn’t around, video and
audio were poor, etc. This as all of you know has
dramatically changed even over the last 2-3 years and video
and audio are very common and used daily by almost every
company in the world.
I believe that most live schools
actually missed the boat with online learning and are
suffering today because of it. They held on as long as they
could so they could charge big money for their course and as
enrollments started to slip then are now running big
campaigns to capture the distance education market. They
have a big advantage over the online schools because they
can capture both traditional and online students and even
allow them to do both.
So simply put distance education is
here to stay and I believe will slowly take over how
everyone goes to school one day. I know my kids will take
advantage of distance education and I’m sure their kids
won’t even think twice. Perhaps we will all look back one
day and wonder why anyone attended a live school.
