What does the future hold for distance learning? Professor Glenn Shive, Fulbright scholar from the Governor's State University in Chicago told of his US experiences at a CRIDAL seminar in August, which might shed some light on Hong Kong's way ahead.

Distance education is being embraced fervently by Americans for its time convenience, equitable access, value to mobility, technology solutions and individual-oriented choices. Enrolment in distance learning courses, up from 710,000 in 1998, is likely to reach 2.23 million or 15 per cent of all higher education students by 2002. The new demand for learning and re-training from the workforce is so enormous -- estimated to be the equivalent of 20 million full-time students -- that a new university would have to be opened every eight days if it were not accommodated by distance learning.

The rise of digital media is rapidly transforming higher education: teachers become coaches and facilitators, learners are self-driven and learning is based on interactivity through a global, omnibus multimedia communications network. As entrepreneurial businesses realize the high profitability of distance learning courses, private capital is pouring into technology-based distributed learning systems. A new industry of 'Third party' commercial facilitators is joining forces with academic institutions to offer degree programmes on the Net. Possibilities on the agenda are the unbundling and outsourcing of the education process -- support services by specialized companies and Web-based applications, courseware by curriculum designers and technicians, and assessment by computer-based evaluation and self-assessment tools. Soon universities may be left with only two preserves -- the knowledge in their faculties and the authority to award qualifications.