Universities face virtual competitors
Murdoch’s new senior lecturer in Journalism, Suellen Tapsall, is a key player in Australia’s contribution to the $100,000+ comprehensive study, funded by the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Partner organisations include the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee and its British counterpart the CVCP.
Entitled The Business of Borderless Education: The Impact of Corporate and Virtual Providers on Higher Education Provision, the study has been commissioned by the Federal Government, through DETYA.
Ms Tapsall has already undertaken research into the boom in virtual education delivery with a team of colleagues at QUT. That resulted in a well-received international report - New Media and Borderless Education - which assessed the level of interest being shown by global media and communications corporations in the higher education market.
She followed that investigation with the Australian report for a world-wide Commonwealth of Learning study - Virtual Institutions Study. That study is being published.
Though Ms Tapsall recently shifted to Murdoch, she will continue her collaboration with the QUT team to gather information on some of the world’s leading providers of corporate and on-line education as part of the Business of Borderless Education project.
That information, gathered largely by visiting the centres in the US, will then be assessed by teams in Australia and the UK to devise policy responses.
Ms Tapsall said there was concern among traditional education providers that, in an age in which universities were becoming more reliant on their commercial activities, the new corporate and virtual institutions could “cherry-pick the most profitable areas and niche markets, leaving the rest to the existing universities”.
“We also know that there is huge growth in the post-secondary education market, and corporate providers are doing big business in this area,” she said.
Initial findings of the BBE study will be workshopped with an invitation-only group of industry, government, vocational and higher education representatives in July.
| Further information | |
| http://www.qut.edu.au/bbe/ |