2000 Chronicle Article on South African Distance Education

This was a rather interesting article on boom of DL within in South Africa and it's impact on UNISA as traditional universities begin providing DL education. It is rather dated (June 2000) but still interesting.
http://chronicle.merit.edu/free/v46/i42/42a04501.htm

North

 

Hey, thanks for sharing this article with us. I had come across it recently while conducting an internet search. Strangely enough, just this morning I had been thinking that I should have provided a link to this article for the members of this forum. Good work!

 

It wasn't clear to me whether the moratorium on expansion of DL applied to new DL programs at residential-only universities or faculties (most likely) or to new students. If it's the later, the moratorium must be over or else the order is being ignored.

 

Without looking again at the article, I think the moratorium was ending as the article was written back in 2000 (or I saw that on one of the other links). I am sure this was a reaction by the traditional university (UNISA) to a direct hit in the pocket book. No one wants to hemorrage students. Like many things I guess the addition of competition, especially by other universities known for their quality should improve the overall quality of DL in general. Hopefully having schools like Duke, Harvard and parts of the UT system becoming involved in DL here will have a similar effect.

North

 

Since the posted article was written, the Minister of Education has proposed a merger between Unisa, Technikon SA, and VUDEC (with the other 7 Vista campuses merged into other institutions). He called for a moratorium on new DL programs and on hiring senior executives into DL-related positions until the merger is consummated. But the moratorium is being ignored, and there is a heated battle going on between the Minister and the Unisa Council. The Mail and Guardian recently (2 Nov 2001) published an article about some of this entitled Unisa's future still in the balance.

 

Thanks. I do know that there has been a serious financial crisis for some time for many RSA institutions and there has been a lot of reorganization and down-sizing. Unizul has been suggesting on their faculites page that there will be fewer faculties from 2001.

 

Bill,

Don't forget to use the politically correct
South African term, "right sizing".

Language is an amazing thing. We have had "redundant" in Britian, "downsizing" here, "right sizing" in South Africa. What happened to good old "canned".

North