Why Distance Learning is the Future of Education

Darpan Keswani
3 min readJun 10, 2017

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Online Degrees were once looked upon as nothing but a scam, a stigma on your educational qualifications, however, with the rise of MOOC’s and prestigious schools like Warwick Business School and Massive Open Online Course platforms such as Coursera, Udemy and even Harvard- employers are now happily accepting candidates with a wide variety and quantities of online courses.

So how does the future of Distance Learning look like? Will the archaic system of universities be uprooted in the future? Will multi-millionaires have their epiphanies at the comfort of their own home instead of libraries in traditional brick and mortar locations?

Too many Fish in the Sea

As the world continues its slow progress towards development the number of people seeking education increases exponentially every year. The problem lies in the fact that there are not enough colleges to enroll everybody! Distance learning solves that problem quite comprehensively, you can have an unlimited amount of students doing the same course all across the world.

“In five years’ time 90 percent of academic leaders believe the majority of college students will be taking at least one online course.”

The Digital Revolution

The move into the digital age is happening more rapidly than ever and we’re seeing services previously offered in person being automated or delivered online.

With these advancements in technology means that learners nowadays are a pickier bunch and are of course used to having information at their fingertips. Tablets, Mobile Phones, Laptops, Computers, these are all used interchangeably by most people in their everyday lives. Their needs and wants as learners are the same too.

According to the latest ‘Online Report Card’ survey by Pearson — the world’s leading learning company — “In five years’ time 90 percent of academic leaders believe the majority of college students will be taking at least one online course.” And with technology transforming so many aspects of our life already, education is sure to follow.

Employer Demands

With increased competition in the market and the downturn of the world economy as a whole, getting a job is tougher than ever. Employers not only look at the basic knowledge and skill of an applicant but also any extra qualifications the employee has that could help improve business processes. The value of distance education and online degrees cannot be understated. In a study conducted by Coursera on people who have taken their courses, 72% reported career benefits, 43% reported improved candidacy and 26% actually got a job using these courses.

Flexibility and Savings

I wanted to leave the most obvious points for the ending of the article, the best part of doing a distance learning course is the fact that you can study at any time of the day and information is always available to you no matter where you go. And secondly, it saves a whole bunch of money. With the average top MBA course in the world priced at a wallet exploding $100,000 — $200, 000 it is clear to see why new students are ditching the traditional university experience and going for online courses or institutions which offer distance learning. As for Thailand, to learn more about a certified institute which offers a distance learning MBA program from IPE School of Management, Paris and distance learning for Undergraduate Programme from Northumbria University, UK click here

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