ABSTRACT
Ideological arguments are made for open learning, economic ones for distance education. If it can produce similar results to those of conventional education at a lower cost, then distance education has a powerful appeal. There are grounds for thinking that distance education may have economic advantages. There are two cornerstones to the argument. The educational cornerstone is the theory of media equivalence: that there are no significant differences in the effectiveness of different educational media. A long line of experiment and research has demonstrated this. It began with comparisons between radio and classroom learning in the 1930s, continued through studies of television as it was being introduced into education, and continues today.24 The consequence is that, if you can learn from print, or from a broadcast or cassette or computer, as well as you can from a teacher, there should be no educational objection to substituting another medium for the teacher. (There may be social objections to this easy substitution.) If there is no teacher you do not need a school, college, or hall of residence in order to study: educational theory can help us reduce capital investment. The economic cornerstone was laid by Adam Smith and tapped into place by Henry Ford. Distance education allows a new division of labour, in which a group of teachers and producers manufactures teaching material, an organisational machine distributes it, and another group provides a minimum of individualised tutorial support to the students. Economies of scale become possible, provided there are enough students to justify the manufacturing cost of the first group and student contact is kept down in order to contain the costs of the second.
