ABSTRACT
In Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and India, the private Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector is expanding rapidly. This chapter outlines the extent to which distance education, defined as predominantly off-campus study, has permeated the provision of VET among for-profit providers, corporate universities, certification providers, and the commercial arms of public providers. Many of the for-profits are both VET and degree-level institutions and it is difficult to extricate reliable certificate/diploma/associate degree enrolments from degree enrolments by delivery mode, because so many on-campus students also enrol in a distance subject. In the United States (US), VET-level for-profit provision is dominated by national, and generally publicly listed firms, the biggest being DeVry, Corinthian Colleges, Strayer, and ITT Educational Services. The district-based model of community colleges in the US would appear to favour a trend to distance education, at least in terms of the synergies and cost efficiencies that could be gained by a common learning platform and centralised curricula.
