This course is no longer offered

12020 Distance Teaching Universities: The Democratization of Higher Education

Credits: 4 graduate credits in Democracy Studies

Prerequisites: Democracy: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Israeli Democracy: Selected Issues Contemporary Democratic Theories, and Education Policy: Education for Democracy in Democratic Societies

The course is based on Distance and Campus Universities: Tensions and Interactions – A Comparative Study of Five Countries (Pergamon Press, 1999), by S. Guri-Rosenblit, and on a reader edited by Sarah Guri-Rosenblit.

Objectives: To analyze the academic and political ramifications of democratization in access to higher education, beginning in the second half of the 20th century; Compare alternative solutions to expanding access to higher education; Present a historical and comparative overview of the phenomenon of distance learning from early times to the present day, focusing on its influence in promoting goals of “democratic” education; Examine the complex mutual relationship between open universities and mass-oriented universities and the “elitist” university sector in higher education systems throughout the world over the past three decades; Analyze the “innovative profile” that underlies several open university models in the context of the academic culture within which they function; Examine the ramifications of the growth of open universities on the demographic fabric of student populations and on the changing role of the faculty; Clarify the democratic principles embodied in the modular system of academic courses and in the various principles of accreditation in different education systems throughout the world; Analyze the impact of new technologies on access to information and on the creation of new models of academic environments aimed at opening the gates of academia to all; Discuss issues relating to costs of learning in open universities and the expenditures on the organizational infrastructure, and the ramifications of these on expanding the groups of learners in higher education systems; Examine the impact of the globalization of higher education on the future of open universities and other models of higher education.