United States

Higher Education

It is not knowable how many universities there are in the US. So much depends on what one means by a university - this is especially so in the devolved and regionalised system of accreditation used in the US for universities. In any case, there seems little value in knowing the answer. Those who wish to try to find out could try looking at the alphabetical list of universities maintained at the University of Texas at Austin.

Exemplars in e-learning

There are two main categories: private for-profit and the rest (public or private non-profit).

At this stage of evolution in the UK there is little perceived relevance of the private for-profit institutions oriented to e-learning, such as the University of Phoenix - noting that some others, but not Phoenix have declined in recent years. The list of online courses at Phoenix is impressive. There is a useful wikipedia entry on Phoenix.

There are also many high-profile large universities (especially state-wide systems) which would be difficult for UK institutions to emulate, given their scale, endowment, etc. So it is likely that the main relevance to the UK - different, but not totally, from "threat to the UK" - will come from mid-range providers. Since there are several active HE networks - such as WUN - which cross the Atlantic, it is worthwhile for UK HEIs to look first at any US partners in that category.

Institutions which come to mind include:

1. MIT, of course
2. Carnegie Mellon, with a long tradition of insightful e-learning development
3. Penn State, active for years in distance learning and e-learning, and a WUNmember
4. Michigan State, with the MSU Global entrepreneurial arm - who as just one university without any US government involvement co-hosted a major conference in China on quality assurance in online learning.

There are many many more.

Benchmarking e-learning

Within the sphere of influence of methodologies supported by the Higher Education Academy, there has been some interest in benchmarking in the US from several universities including in particular Penn State, a member of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) to which several UK universities active in eMM are affiliated.

The UK members of WUN are:

1. University of Bristol (ELTI - Pilot)
2. University of Leeds (eMM - Phase 2)
3. University of Sheffield (eMM - Phase 2)
4. University of Southampton (eMM - Phase 2)
5. University of York (not active in benchmarking e-learning)

The University of Manchester is no longer a member of WUN.

Outside the methodologies being supported by the Higher Education Academy, there is much activity in the US including from IQAT, increasing substantially in 2008.

Partners situated in Country

None.

Country in a nutshell

The population of the USA is around 301 million, as estimated in the CIA Factbook. This seems enormously large compared with the UK or England, let alone the other home nations. However, the federal structure of the US and the deregulated nature of higher education means that it is reasonable to look also at the states level. In fact, even the largest state, California, has only 36 million people, and the next, Texas, just 23 million. Some 33 states have populations less than 6 million, bringing them into the zone of relevance to Scotland, Ireland, etc - and 13 states have populations in the range 1.0 to 3.0 million.

The EU should in theory feel comfortable in that the population of the EU is now estimated as 497 million, about 1.5 times that of the US. But where the analogy breaks down with the EU is that the common language and culture of the US means a velocity of propagation of ideas which cannot be replicated across the EU.

A note on relevance of the US

It has been a mystery to many analysts why the success of e-learning in universities in the USA does not transfer more readily to Europe. Is it the economy, the demographics, the population density? Or as some suspect, is the key the nature of the funding of universities?

Because of the mysteries, there is little point in bombarding readers with information on the excellence and sophistication of e-learning in US HE, even in quite small institutions. In any case, it is not feasible within the limited effort we have.

So instead we shall concentrate on a few aspects of most relevance.

Higher education

Universities in Country

The USA has a complex structure of HE e-learning providers including organisations offering both face-to-face and e-learning (usually blended) provision via different subsidiaries. In terms of blended/e-learning provision, the two leading players in the USA are often agreed to be:

• The University of Maryland University College (UMUC), with over 110,000 online enrolments spread over 540 distinct courses online (chapter 12).
• University of Phoenix (UOP), with over 109,000 attending via the Internet through the University’s Online Campus (out of over 213,000 students as of May 2004)

For comparison, note that the UK Open University is reported as having 60,000 online students.

There is a major applications service provider, eCollege, whose entry into the UK and other non-US markets is not unlikely in the next 12 months.

Yet the major feature of the USA is now the breadth of deployment of distance e-learning services in HE, including the beginnings of activity overseas, from literally hundreds of universities and colleges. Many leading public universities, including the US partners in the WUN consortium, such as Penn State, are increasingly active. Several of these are featured in the Gazetteer.

References

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