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Michael P. Lambert: Executive Director of the Distance Education and Training Council, Washington, DC, USA
With the advent of the Internet and the launching of the World Wide Web, its commercial outlet, it has become increasingly apparent that the so-called global village is fast becoming a reality. No longer can educational institutions take provincial, xenophobic approaches to enrolling students if they intend to be around in the next century. The world has become our campus. Political boundaries have no meaning in this context. There is a whole new, interconnected world out there, and the educational institutions which will survive will be those making intelligent decisions today about how best to capitalize on the distance education method that has taken the academic world by storm.
For example, in a recent survey called Campus Trends 1995, published by the American Council on Education, Washington, DC, most of the universities responding indicated that they will be making more use of distance learning in the next five years. From our experience in working with several dozen institutions in the USA in recent months, this survey finding understates the real situation: distance learning is phenomenally popular. It is the key to institutional survival.
All this is by way of introducing one of the groups that helped to pioneer distance learning, a group of US institutions that is little known outside of the USA: the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). For over 104 years, member institutions of the Distance Education and Training Council (formerly the National Home Study Council) have been enrolling millions of adult learners in home study or correspondence study programmes.
An estimated 95 million Americans have enrolled in correspondence courses in such subjects as accounting, electronics technology, computer programming, management, art, writing, academic degree studies, hospitality training, gemology, health care topics and hundreds of other certificate, degree and professional-level courses of study.
Historically, the National Home Study Council, which was founded in 1926, has worked steadily for the past seven decades to upgrade correspondence study and promote sound practice in the USA. Its nationally recognized voluntary accreditation programme has been a singularly successful force for ensuring high ethical standards, and the overall level of "customer satisfaction" among the millions of consumers of home study programmes has...