Editorial

Globalization and Commercialization
Like other aspects of globalization, changes in the role of education in society are driven by forces that appear beyond the control or even influence of educators. A significant example of this is the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The GATS framework promotes a free-market orientation to the supply and trade in services. Education is considered such a service. Thus, GATS promotes the transition of education from being a publicly owned enterprise dedicated to the social and cultural goals of each nation to being a private good to be bought and sold by suppliers and consumers on an increasingly global scale (Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs [Australia] 2000)

There are two ways of looking at this. As the growth in telecommunications and private entrepreneurial activity globalizes the delivery of distance education, many believe it will have the positive effect of enabling consumers of education to choose more widely. From this perspective "in the realm of distance education, modularisation and the plethora of innovations to increase 'openness' can be constructed as developments to satisfy the demands of consumers for educational products"(Edwards 1994, 9). It is the power of consumer choice arising from new technology that will have a liberating effect, forcing educators to make greater concessions to student needs and to loosen a range of academic constraints, including featherbed staffing arrangements, stifling semester time frames, controls on credit accumulation and transfer, and rigidly structured curricula. In this view, students can only benefit enormously from the emergence of a commercial global marketplace where they can shop for courses and where "the expertise of the few can be made available to the many, such that those in remote areas can have the same access to educational resources, specialist courses and renowned experts as those located in large cities and developed parts of the world"(Mason 1998, 5)

There is an alternative perspective, however: When "the needs of the economy have precedence, market solutions are the rule and educational consumerism flourishes"(Usher, Bryant, and Johnston 1997, 38). This educational consumerism reduces teaching to a process of training workers for specialized productive functions in industry and commerce while giving very high priority to training them for their roles as consumers of mass-produced goods and services--especially services. The core aim of education in this culture is supporting continuous production and producing continuously unsatisfied and uncritical consumers. Consumerist values already dictate a growing part of the curriculum, instruction, and educational policy in many countries and may be exported abroad through their distance education programs. This export is accomplished not simply through the sales of particular products, or even by promoting the ideal of productivity and consumption as ultimate and overriding social values, but more subtly by promoting consumerist attitudes toward nation; race; gender; family; and use of national and personal resources, including time. In education it promotes learning as an acquisitive process (i.e., collecting credits and covering "required reading"), teaching as labor-for-hire rather than a vocation or profession. It sets up professional managers in control of academics at universities and evaluates educational programs by the income generated and by customer satisfaction. Many institutions of higher education now regard themselves as competitors trying to attract business, rather like competing movie theaters. It may be true that higher education as a consumer-oriented service may be more open, that is, available to almost anyone--but only for those able and willing to pay a price. Legislators, having themselves graduated through such educational programs, are increasingly reluctant to provide public funds for noncommercial programs and reinforce the dogma that education is a personal investment, intended for individual self-advancement. Educational services are offered in a mass market, with a concomitant effect on the quality of what is provided since the primary aim is to maximize "throughput"and volume. In the consumer society, even ideas are regarded as objects to be marketed, to be sold. Ideas are less for the purpose of debate, examination, analysis, and perhaps compromise than for packaging and selling in a pervasive marketing culture of spin and hyperbole. The consumerist view of distance education leads to individual educational programs being treated as cost centers that have to become profitable at relatively low levels in the delivery organization (i.e., if a course cannot pay for itself in student tuition fees, it is canceled) and to focus on producing a financial profit, usually in the short term. One effect of this on the curriculum has been for institutions to drop nonvocational programs and to provide only programs for which workers or their employers are willing to pay. More serious perhaps is the effect on instruction. Just as the American radio station maximizes profits by spending as little as possible on creative programming while selling as much advertising as possible, so the distance education institution may in the future have a profit-driven interest in spending as little as possible on program design as well as hiring the cheapest instructors

Neither side of this debate has all the merits of the arguments. The marketing perspective, however, seems to have the monopoly of control of the organs for making their case. The voices of those who object to the commercialization within nations, as well as the voices of those with alternative educational values, have to be heard as well. The new network systems of distance education will certainly have to support expanding knowledge for economic development in those countries where there is still insufficient food, insufficient shelter, and insufficient medical care. On the other hand, these same networks must also help educators working in cultures that hold values other than mere consumerism to bring their different forms of knowledge to the global meeting. More conscious efforts will have to be made to identify what can be learned from those cultures. Students in the advanced economies have to learn to question the assumptions continuously promoted by domestic marketing media that tell them the good society is found only in their country and their culture. This is not to say they are asked to denigrate or reject their culture; on the contrary, by coming to a much better understanding of other cultures and other societies, they may come to a better understanding and appreciation of their own. Distance education is equipped to facilitate this exchange of knowledge on a scale that no previous forms of education could equal

Michael Grahame Moore
Editor

References
Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs. 2000. The business of borderless education. Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Australia). Available online at http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/eip00_3/bbe.pdf

Edwards, R. 1994. From a distance? Globalisation, space–time compression and distance education. Open Learning 9 (3): 9-17.

Mason, R. 1998. Globalising education: Trends and applications. London: Routledge.

Usher, R., I. Bryant, and R. Johnston. 1997. Adult education and the postmodern challenge: Learning beyond the limits. London: Routledge.


	Editorial Globalization and Commercialization Like other aspects of globalization, changes in the role of education in society are driven by forces that appear beyond the control or even influence of educators. A significant example of this is the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The GATS framework promotes a free-market orientation to the supply and trade in services. Education is considered such a service. Thus, GATS promotes the transition of education from being a publicly owned enterprise dedicated to the social and cultural goals of each nation to being a private good to be bought and sold by suppliers and consumers on an increasingly global scale (Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs [Australia] 2000) There are two ways of looking at this. As the growth in telecommunications and private entrepreneurial activity globalizes the delivery of distance education, many believe it will have the positive effect of enabling consumers of education to choose more widely. From this perspective "in the realm of distance education, modularisation and the plethora of innovations to increase 'openness' can be constructed as developments to satisfy the demands of consumers for educational products"(Edwards 1994, 9). It is the power of consumer choice arising from new technology that will have a liberating effect, forcing educators to make greater concessions to student needs and to loosen a range of academic constraints, including featherbed staffing arrangements, stifling semester time frames, controls on credit accumulation and transfer, and rigidly structured curricula. In this view, students can only benefit enormously from the emergence of a commercial global marketplace where they can shop for courses and where "the expertise of the few can be made available to the many, such that those in remote areas can have the same access to educational resources, specialist courses and renowned experts as those located in large cities and developed parts of the world"(Mason 1998, 5) There is an alternative perspective, however: When "the needs of the economy have precedence, market solutions are the rule and educational consumerism flourishes"(Usher, Bryant, and Johnston 1997, 38). This educational consumerism reduces teaching to a process of training workers for specialized productive functions in industry and commerce while giving very high priority to training them for their roles as consumers of mass-produced goods and services--especially services. The core aim of education in this culture is supporting continuous production and producing continuously unsatisfied and uncritical consumers. Consumerist values already dictate a growing part of the curriculum, instruction, and educational policy in many countries and may be exported abroad through their distance education programs. This export is accomplished not simply through the sales of particular products, or even by promoting the ideal of productivity and consumption as ultimate and overriding social values, but more subtly by promoting consumerist attitudes toward nation; race; gender; family; and use of national and personal resources, including time. In education it promotes learning as an acquisitive process (i.e., collecting credits and covering "required reading"), teaching as labor-for-hire rather than a vocation or profession. It sets up professional managers in control of academics at universities and evaluates educational programs by the income generated and by customer satisfaction. Many institutions of higher education now regard themselves as competitors trying to attract business, rather like competing movie theaters. It may be true that higher education as a consumer-oriented service may be more open, that is, available to almost anyone--but only for those able and willing to pay a price. Legislators, having themselves graduated through such educational programs, are increasingly reluctant to provide public funds for noncommercial programs and reinforce the dogma that education is a personal investment, intended for individual self-advancement. Educational services are offered in a mass market, with a concomitant effect on the quality of what is provided since the primary aim is to maximize "throughput"and volume. In the consumer society, even ideas are regarded as objects to be marketed, to be sold. Ideas are less for the purpose of debate, examination, analysis, and perhaps compromise than for packaging and selling in a pervasive marketing culture of spin and hyperbole. The consumerist view of distance education leads to individual educational programs being treated as cost centers that have to become profitable at relatively low levels in the delivery organization (i.e., if a course cannot pay for itself in student tuition fees, it is canceled) and to focus on producing a financial profit, usually in the short term. One effect of this on the curriculum has been for institutions to drop nonvocational programs and to provide only programs for which workers or their employers are willing to pay. More serious perhaps is the effect on instruction. Just as the American radio station maximizes profits by spending as little as possible on creative programming while selling as much advertising as possible, so the distance education institution may in the future have a profit-driven interest in spending as little as possible on program design as well as hiring the cheapest instructors Neither side of this debate has all the merits of the arguments. The marketing perspective, however, seems to have the monopoly of control of the organs for making their case. The voices of those who object to the commercialization within nations, as well as the voices of those with alternative educational values, have to be heard as well. The new network systems of distance education will certainly have to support expanding knowledge for economic development in those countries where there is still insufficient food, insufficient shelter, and insufficient medical care. On the other hand, these same networks must also help educators working in cultures that hold values other than mere consumerism to bring their different forms of knowledge to the global meeting. More conscious efforts will have to be made to identify what can be learned from those cultures. Students in the advanced economies have to learn to question the assumptions continuously promoted by domestic marketing media that tell them the good society is found only in their country and their culture. This is not to say they are asked to denigrate or reject their culture; on the contrary, by coming to a much better understanding of other cultures and other societies, they may come to a better understanding and appreciation of their own. Distance education is equipped to facilitate this exchange of knowledge on a scale that no previous forms of education could equal Michael Grahame Moore Editor References Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs. 2000. The business of borderless education. Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Australia). Available online at http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/eip00_3/bbe.pdf Edwards, R. 1994. From a distance? Globalisation, space–time compression and distance education. Open Learning 9 (3): 9-17. Mason, R. 1998. Globalising education: Trends and applications. London: Routledge. Usher, R., I. Bryant, and R. Johnston. 1997. Adult education and the postmodern challenge: Learning beyond the limits. London: Routledge.