Dual-mode universities operating in a tough economic environment need to be able to answer a range of questions concerning their use of different teaching modes accurately and with confidence. Only an activity-based costing approach will provide them with this tool. Cost studies of other distance learning projects may provide benchmarks against…

In the 1960s and 1970s distance education was seen as a way of increasing access to education, and hence as something the state should fund. Libertarian thinking has weakened support for the nation-state as a provider of social welfare. This article argues that libertarian policies are "vicious" in their effects. By subscribing to such ideas we…

Responds to comments on a previous series of three articles on labor market theories and distance education. Highlights include conceptual frameworks of Fordism, neo-Fordism, and post-Fordism; industrialization and its impact on education; work and academic work; mass production; and specialist markets and small-scale distance education systems.…

Examines the vulnerability of distance teaching universities (DTUs) around the world to competition both from campus-based universities that are initiating distance teaching and from dual mode universities that have traditionally offered a range of teaching methods. Costs are considered, and the future feasibility of single mode universities is…

Addresses industrialization and distance education and how they relate to the modernist and postmodernist models of work, Fordism, neo-Fordism and post-Fordism. Concludes that not all distance education is industrialized; traditional education is not always a craft; and Fordism does not adequately explain the development of distance education.…