I' ve been thinking more and more lately about the unprecedented possibilities students around the world may have soon with new advances in e-learing and global university education. Right now there are around half-a-million foreign university students studying in the United States. But imagine the millions out there who would like to study in the U.S. but do not have the financial or educational means to do so, especially in places like China and India.

However, there are also questions that must be raised before a global university education system would go into effect. Are these people only to be trained in technical areas, or degrees that are functional purely for employment means. What about the benefits of a classic liberal education, as well as the social and interpersonal skills that go along with traditional education at a real university? Is the future of online education mainly to produce students who can put something together, design products, etc.? Isn't this just a hig-tech vocational school? Today I heard a talk by the CEO of Pella Corporation, the window maker, and he mentioned that around 75% of people fail in their related fields because of lack of interpersonal and social skills. This isn't anything that can be taught normally, but just by interacting on a personal level at a traditional university some of these skills do rub off. I often wonder about this in relation to online university education.

Secondly, if one were to educate students in India and China or elsewhere through online liberal education, the propagation of the use of English would surely continue. There are likely to be cultural gaps between what modes of governance are to be taught, the relation to the individual in society, as well as foundations of history. India and China both have thousands of years of history and culture behind them, history and culture they are proud of. China, for one, also has a form of governance which is almost directly opposed to the U.S. model, and moves into free-market orientation only mask that below the surface is a crumbling communist system on its way toward looking more like the Russian system of Anarcho-Capitalism. This is a thin verneer of democracy shrouded in a system of corrupt political, military and business interests. Not that the U.S. picture is so rosy as to point it out as the shining city on the hill, mainly because there is a vast political apathy in this country. When only fifty percent of the people vote, they do get what they deserve.

But all this points to a need for more classic liberal education, not only around the world, but in the U.S. as well. A basis of course work that teaches the rights of citizens, their responsibilities, as well as their place in society and the need for an informed electorate. The preponderance of specialized education in the last twenty-years only seems to move people in the opposite direction ... away from participatory democracy and into an apathetic state of childlike existence.

Well, I've begun to ramble. What I'd meant to write on was globalization and online education, so here is an interesting piece from the New Haven Register. In it, the president of the University of New Haven Lawrence J. DeNardis talks about the changes globalization has brought to the higher education industry, mainly in the U.S.

Here are a couple excerpts....

Moving people is the first layer of the internationalization of higher education. The next is the movement of institutions. Rapid growth of higher education export is well under way - an unstoppable phenomenon with the establishment of branch campuses, satellite programs, franchising and other arrangements of "transnational" higher education.In 2000, U.S. education and training services totaled more than $14 billion and ranked among the country's top five service exports, placing the United States among the top three higher education exporters worldwide. International students and their dependents contributed nearly $12 billion to the United States as an importer during the 2001-02 academic year.

It is conservatively estimated that there will be 160 million higher education learners in the world in the next several years. By comparison, there are 14 million students currently enrolled in 3,600 colleges and universities in the United States.

As transnational higher education increases in scope and reach, especially with the expansion of Internet services, educators and national policy-makers will face new problems. For example, while most countries have established their own quality Assurance systems, there is no international consensus on accreditation or any other quality assurance method.