Outsourcing Distance Education Classes

We discussed this topic in one of my masters classes. If companies are outsourcing their IT to places like India do you think it would be feasible to one day take an on-line course/degree from outside the US and be accepted by the US. Remember it wasn't that long ago, when distant education was not considered valid among the degreed.

 

I would say that not only is it possible, it is likely.

 

It is possible...some of the British Universities have done that (University of Liverpool, University of Wales, and etc.). In fact, New York Institute of Technology outsourced their degrees to Ellis College (Cardeen Educational Company). Also some Universities have done with Alliance University as well. Now, if you're referring to Offsourcing (to another country)...possible, but all about the credential. But before doing that, I think the customer services (Academic advising, Technical Support, and Marketing) are the first one to be offsourcing.

 

I agree that it is likely with some schools. However, I can also foresee a possible problem with the image of a school that farms its classes out to the cheapest bidder. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think a number of students would possibly avoid a school where their professors are in India, or wherever, being paid peanuts. It cheapens the education. Think of the many tech support departments that are farmed out to India and now customers are expressing their frustration with this practice. I called one tech support line and the first thing I heard was the person identifying that they were in the US. I think some schools will outsource professors, I'm not sure that it will become commonplace.

 

Old news! It is already happening. I just got an email from University of California at Irvine looking for people to teach their MBA overseas with online support. The instructors can be from anywhere in the planet as long as they have a AACSB accredited PhD.

As AACSB accreditation spreads more, you will have more people from other countries teaching classes in the US.

It doesn't help that people in the US are commanding 200K to teach accounting. The CPA and CMA certifications can be completed anywhere in the world so this opens the door to outsource more education.

I don't understand the panic about this, if you look around, most of the business professors in the USA in Finance, Operations and IT are from India. They do it in the US or from home, we are still talking about the same people.

 

Let me add to this mix a couple of things. Why don't we just got the middleman out, as degree seekers just apply directly to the foreign Universities? Where we will be paying $6 a credit hour as opposed to $100 a credit hour.

Also, I can see a possibility of dual enrollment and certificate of equivalency being used to save money.

Say a student gets an accounting degree from a recognized program in the US, so he can sit for the CPA license. He also enrolls in a Mexican correspondence school for finance(all courses are taught in Spanish.), so he can acquire the language.

 

There's nothing stopping you. Go ahead and do it.

 

Somehow I don't see this being a big factor because of the expense of getting an AACSB doctorate. How much would that cost? Don't know, but it's hard to imagine someone coming up with a huge sum of money for a doctorate, returning to India, or wherever, and then working for peanuts. Are there cheap AACSB doctorates available off-shore? Don't know. If there are not, it is likely that these off-shore individuals would demand to be well-paid. If they are well-paid, they would not be nearly as much of a threat to the job market. Am I missing something?

 

Time, plus can't find a Mexican or Spanish on-line college.

 

0.01 seconds on google

UNED, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

 

You're off there...first of all.. College is nothing just like something proving you have something. You can pick a book and learn more than taking a class at University of Phoenix, but if you learn something from the book. You have no proof that you have that knowledge. Why do people have to pay $3500.00 class at Columbia University instead local school for less than $500.00?

 

Actually, you can do this now with Excelsior. You can get an accredited degree from a place where education is really cheap (e.g. India) and then transfer all your credits to Excelsior. You might need to do few extra classes to finish your degree but you will be cutting a lot on the cost of the final degree.

 

it costs a lot to get an AACSB accredited doctorate but salaries are a lot lower in other places of the world even for AACSB accredited degree holders.
I can give you an example, ITESM in Mexico is AACSB accredited and offers AACSB accredited doctorates. A friend of mine interviewed with them before coming to Canada and was offered 30K a year to teach at their campus in Mexico city.
30K might be good for Mexican standards but way low for Canadian or American Standards. A Mexican PhD from ITESM will be willing to take lower salaries than an American PhD from AACSB accredited school given the options available at the local market.
I know that there are not many AACSB accredited schools in India, Mexico, China or other cheaper places but might be enough to attract some greedy American schools willing to save some bucks.

 

It costs a lot to get an AACSB accredited doctorate

True under certain circumstances. It's also possible to do things the traditional way and pay nothing for the degree itself. Of course if you look at it from a macro level you'd not be working that 100k plus job in IT while doing the doctorate so it's all relative. Still, I'd argue most that are getting those 200k finance and accounting jobs are doing it the free way.

 

Like ITJD said, most B&M AACSB doctorate programs award assitantships to their doctoral students, so their only cost is opportunity cost. Some foreign students in my department told me they made more money as a grad student than they did working full time in their own country. This is probably one of the reasons you see so many more foreign students than domestic ones in graduate schools.