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what the experts say
"There are two fundamental equalizers in life - the Internet
and education."
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems
"If you are not being educated in your job today, you may
be out of a job tomorrow... Employee education is not growing 100
percent faster than academia, but 100 times - or 10,000 percent
- faster... Over the next few decades the private sector will eclipse
the public sector and become the major institution responsible for
learning."
Jim Botkin and Stan Davis, The Monster Under the Bed
"E-learning is becoming a commodity. Companies are looking
at E-learning programs like a stapler or reams of paper-- it's just
one item in their inventory."
Clark Aldrich, Gartner Group
"It's not e-learning or c-learning; it's learning"
Chuck Ferguson, Sun Microsystems
"Triggered by the Internet, continuing adult education may
well become our greatest growth industry."
Peter Drucker, Fortune magazine (see article, below)
"Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You
do not...""
Lou Gersten, CEO, IBM Singapore
"The next big killer application on the Internet is going
to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big
it is going to make email usage look like a rounding error.""
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems (Singapore)
"Motorola no longer wants to hire engineers with a four year
degree. Instead, we want our employees to have a 40 year degree."
Christopher Galvin, President and CEO, Motorola
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Extracted from: Triggered by the Internet,
continuing adult education may well become our greatest growth industry.
BY PETER DRUCKER (Fortune magazine)
The market for continuing education is already much bigger than
most people realize. A good guess is that it already accounts for
6% of GNP in the U.S. and is rapidly getting there in other developed
countries. It is going to get a lot higher.
Why this explosion of demand? We live in an economy where knowledge,
not buildings and machinery, is the chief resource and where knowledge-workers
make up the biggest part of the work force.
...A great thing about knowledge is that it is mobile and transferable.
It belongs to you, not to your employer or the state. And it is
highly marketable today.
With a potential market for continuing adult education thus embracing
at least 40% of the typical developed-country's work force, conventional
institutions no longer suffice. They are too expensive and insufficiently
accessible in a physical sense.
...Already colleges and universities are putting some of their
best teachers and their best sources on the Internet.
...Students can access this sort of material from their homes at
their own convenience. Or the learning can be digitized and sent
to satellite learning centers, where small groups of students can
meet after working hours.
Imagine the potential in online learning for the world's poor countries
to leapfrog their way up the development ladder. Assuming that their
politicians do not try to control the Internet's content and delivery
systems, people in the developing countries will be able to use
the Internet to access the developed-world's best brains and valuable
data, without the expense of building and staffing great universities.
Bright and ambitious young men and women of the emerging-market
countries will get first-class educations without leaving home-thereby
addressing the brain-drain problem that has helped to widen the
gap between rich and poor nations.
Online teaching, however, is more than just time-efficient and
cost-efficient. It is more flexible than the classroom in that the
student not getting the point right away can replay the material.
The interactivity of online education, its facility for blending
graphics and pictures with the spoken word, give it an advantage
over the typical classroom. With the interactivity of the Internet,
we get the equivalent of a one-to-one teacher-student ratio.
...In short, the means are finally at hand to improve productivity
in education.
Online continuing education is creating a new and distinct educational
realm, and it is the future of education. There is a global market
here that is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
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