Online learning is fast gaining popularity and acceptance as a very effective and convenient means of receiving educational instructions and lectures towards acquisition of university or college degrees.
When we were growing up late 70s and 80s in Enugu, South East Nigeria, there were fewer opportunities for university education than there are today. To begin with, universities were not many relative to the number of candidates seeking admission. So, it was more of survival of the fittest. The type the economists would describe as “demand outstripping supply” or “much money chasing fewer goods.” Those who could afford to, sent their children to Europe and America to get university education.
Akin to this is the problem of families of low income status who scarcely were able to pay the school fees of their children and wards beyond primary or secondary schools. University education was then an elitist affair that even the very bright students found it difficult to pursue their higher education. Thus, a good number of brilliant students were compelled to cut short their higher educational ambitions to pick up employment as clerks in the public service, corporations, companies and banks.
Distance learning programs were few and unpopular then. Many, however, trojanned on, made some savings in their paid jobs, and with a little back-up from their parents and relations, left for the UK or the United States in pursuit of the golden flees. Others got admissions in local universities, resigned their appointments and proceeded for further studies. Some of those employed in the civil service took time off to study in universities under study leave without pay. Few lucky ones either got scholarships or study leave with pay, while a greater number settled for a long career in the civil service or the banks with their secondary school certificates because they were constrained, through no fault of theirs, to go to the university. There are now more universities in the country, but the problem appears even more acute as hundreds of thousands of high school or secondary school leavers who seek university admission every year, increasingly have their hopes shattered, all because there are still not sufficient institutions and facilities to absorb all that seek university education.
Now, with the advent of globalization, fostered by the internet, a student can indeed study for his/her bachelors, masters or even doctorate degrees online with the best universities in the world right from home. Never again would the ambition of any educationally conscious person be stalled on account of non-availability or inadequacy of educational institutions. Neither would distance or job be a barrier because online learning programs are designed to suit the student’s schedule so that whatever a person’s work or business schedule is, he/she can still have online education, reading at his/her own pace.
Next edition, I shall present the views of other publishers on this subject.
