“You would be very hard-pressed nowadays to find a subject association that is not re-assessing itself.”New developments are taking place all the time. Greenwich – together with the University of East London – is putting in a bid for one of the new two-year foundation degrees and has chosen, appropriately enough, to offer it in the creative industries. Multimedia technology will be combined with landscape design and entrepreneurship, and possibly e-business, to entice local people into higher education.Another university, Southampton, is launching programmes at its New College for lifelong learning which will offer degrees in sports management and leadership, and political communication and media management. It is an attempt by an old university to cash in on the new interest in vocational subjects, but in a way that maintains Southampton’s excellence in research.And it should probably be seen as an example of enlightened self-interest. “The University of Southampton is the first élite university in the country to develop this kind of initiative,” says Sir Howard Newby, its Vice-chancellor.

“Following the implications of the Laura Spence affair, I’m sure we will be followed by many others.”It is the kind of development that may have the chemistry and physics professors crying into their tea as they watch the core subjects contract and physics departments close The contraction looks inevitable. The question is whether anything can be done to halt it – and whether it really does matter.l.hodges independent.co.uk. “One student said that he had more contact on our distance-learning course than he had ever had when he did his first degree at university.”

“One student said that he had more contact on our distance-learning course than he had ever had when he did his first degree at university.”
An over-enthusiastic claim from the founder of the world’s first internet law course, Mike Semple Piggot? Possibly. But the growing impact of electronic communication on distance learning means that, for increasing numbers of students, it does contain more than a kernel of truth.Since the first correspondence courses were set up more than a hundred years ago, distance learning has offered huge benefits to people who can’t afford the time or money to study full time. But until recently there has been one major drawback: isolation, both from tutors and other students. Now e-mail is bringing increasing numbers of students out of that vacuum.Professor Jim Wilson of Northern College, the biggest distance provider of teacher education in Scotland, says: “With e-mail, you get a virtual classroom – people can ask and answer questions, so you begin to create the interactions you get in a classroom.” At the same time, internet access to libraries has revolutionised research.But if you prefer to study from good old-fashioned textbooks, take heart.

While at one end of the spectrum, the world’s first internet law school, Semple Piggot Rochez, has just produced its first graduates, at the other there are perfectly respectable courses which remain overwhelmingly – if not totally – paper-based. Most courses continue to offer a reassuring mix of print and electronic material.David Morley, head of the Open and Distance Learning Quality Council (ODL), says: “The predictions that new technology was going to change the nature of learning haven’t yet been fulfilled. There has been a relative lack of major impact so far – here, as well as in the US – although it’s true that e-mail support has grown. The average student who wants to do an A-level by distance will do it by correspondence now, just as they did 20 years ago.”There is good reason for this continued reliance on print: the whole point of distance learning is that it is accessible to a far wider range of students than campus-based courses. Clearly, the need to own a computer limits this accessibility. As a result, many providers, like Peter Morgan, the programme manager for the distance learning programme at Durham University’s Business School, are keen to maintain a solid foundation of print-based materials for the new Masters in management.