Felicity Coughlan
The recently released White Paper for post-school education and training focuses on the need to build an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system.
To do this, higher education enrolments in South Africa need to increase to 1.5 million within the next 16 years – a number that the current infrastructure cannot accommodate even with the new institutions being built.
Although it is questionable whether this enrolment target is realistic*, it is clear that demand for tertiary education will continue to increase as the country develops. Part of this expansion can and will be catered for by the private higher education sector, which is gaining a reputation for offering meaningful alternatives for students at all levels.
Most of the growth though, it is argued in the White Paper, needs to be absorbed through increased provision of distance learning programmes to be offered not only by dedicated distance education institutions but also by existing contact institutions.
While the White Paper does signal that high quality distance education is not an easy thing to achieve, it does not necessarily give a great deal of attention to the student-centred questions of students’ expectations of the learning experience and whether or not the average South African student is “distance ready”.
It is common cause that high dropout and failure rates are endemic in distance education programmes. And while the response of creating more tuition and student support centres to mitigate this is a positive one, it does draw into focus the potential disjuncture between the promise of what distance education can do and the reality of what is available.
Increasing distance education provision is necessary and in line with trends in the rest of the world, but we need to be sure we do not trivialise either the process or the lack of distance-ready skills our students bring.
Some of this growth will come from working people who have decided to earn a higher education qualification now that they can afford one, who need it for career growth, or those who already have a qualification but wish to advance their educational standing. It is safe to assume, however, that the majority of students who intend to enrol in new distance offerings would be school leavers or other youth who are not in education or employment.
What we know about these learners makes their potential success in a distance environment very questionable. While most of our young people are technologically savvy, there is not yet ubiquitous access to affordable bandwidth, meaning that the highly interactive possibilities of online support are not equally available to all students. In fact, there have already been institutions that have had to slow down their online provision to accommodate this reality.
That means that most have to continue to offer most of their teaching through “pack and post” methodologies that have limited feedback and interaction options for students who need these, even if just to mediate the gap between school and higher education.
Successful study using distance methodology requires far higher levels of personal motivation and self-organisation skills.
As much of the learning is mediated through reading and self-study, higher verbal and other literacy skills are also non-negotiables. But viewed within the context of success rates in contact institutions, where much of this engagement with learning material is mediated on a face to face basis, a low level of readiness in our young people to mediate the engagement on their own, at least initially, is clear.
Less than ideal written communication skills and weak time management experience add to the challenges that distance students fresh out of school are not equipped to tackle alone. The White Paper recognises this, but does not begin to suggest how to achieve equity in the quality of education and services for on- and off-campus students.
Further complicating this issue is the phenomenon of students enrolling for distance tuition because it is cheaper and because they are not able to gain access to contact institutions because of previous academic performance.
These students are increasingly studying full time and even living in residences away from home to replicate the “real” student experience. These students have also sought increased contact services from large distance providers, with high expectations of a significant portion of mediated contact learning and teaching.
In other words, to be blunt, there is an increasing demand for a “contact like” educational experience from distance providers who are not necessarily well equipped to provide this.
Some students are able to access tuition support at these centres or through private providers that support the programmes of specific institutions, but the reality is that already distance students are needing more contact in order to succeed and this is difficult and expensive to provide.
Unless we are able to attend to the expectations that distance students have when planning to grow this offering and enrolment, we are at serious risk of rolling out what is indeed a necessary and soundly argued additional provision mode that triggers discontent rather than solving access (and success) problems.
If students do not want, accept and handle the real differences that distance education offers – and there is emerging evidence that what they want is increased contact – we are setting ourselves up for failure. And that is long before we even start to focus on whether individual institutions, who are specialists in the contact mode, can and will make an effective transition in their own delivery without compromising other areas of their work.
If distance enrolment is only envisaged for older students who have acquired the skills needed, then distance education is not going to address the target and demand for increased access.
In conclusion: Given the constraints related to building contact institution capacity rapidly enough, and the challenges associated with providing high quality distance education, the appropriate strategy may be more hybrid. It would need creative attention to how to leverage the best of distance education potential to address the need for increased volume in partnership with contact institutions (rather than as parallel offerings by contact and distance institutions).
To do this, the whole sector, including private providers, must be taken into consideration. No matter what approach is taken, success is dependent on the rapid and urgent provision of the necessary physical enablers – particularly of affordable bandwidth and the associated infrastructure and hardware for those who currently do not have access.
And one way to accomplish this with relative ease within the context of the current environment, is through all important partnerships and the ongoing development of existing infrastructure on contact education premises for distance education students.
* The enrolment target represents a 25 percent participation rate in higher education by 2030, yet our current growth does not necessarily make this number achievable without special interventions, as even the 15 percent participation rate cited in the National Development Plan will not be achieved by 2015.
l Dr Coughlan is director of the Independent Institute of Education (IIE), the largest and most accredited registered private education institute in South Africa. It has a history in education and training since 1909, and its brands, such as College Campus, Rosebank College, VarsityCollege, and Vega, offer a wide range of qualifications, from post-graduate degrees to short courses, on 21 registered higher education campuses across South Africa.