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Over the past two decades the field of distance education has been virtually redefined by the growth of large, single mode, distance education institutions. Nowhere is this trend seen more powerfully than in the Asian region with the development of large national distance education institutions in such countries as India, Pakistan, Thailand, Hong Kong and Indonesia. These institutions no doubt differ from one another in many important ways, but in their essential structural features they are very similar.
They have accepted the challenge of applying industrial principles to education, and developed institutional structures and processes that reflect these principles. For instance, most single mode institutions have a more streamlined corporate structure and style of management and decision making than most conventional tertiary education institutions.
They have deliberately separated the course preparation and production phases from the course delivery and support phases, and in the process achieved a high level of control over their costs. The identification and control of costs has been a consistently strong feature of the recent generation of large distance education institutions.
They have striven for economies of scale and sought to expand their enrolments to take full advantage of these economies. The separation of the course preparation phase from the course delivery phase has made it possible to expand student enrolment as far and as fast as the market will allow. What other enterprise has gown with such consistent speed as distance education?
They have planned their course offerings and their academic profile with one eye on the market, but the other very firmly on the balance sheet. Most of these institutions require all of their course offerings to meet a rigorous test of economic viability and are reluctant to allow very much cross-subsidisation within, let alone between, programmes.
This paper will not attempt to analyze this model of resource management or institutional leadership any further. It is a model which is demonstrably powerful, successful and appropriate to the task. Instead I want to describe a very different model of resource management, one which comes out of a very different tradition and structure of distance education delivery. My purpose in sharing this experience with you is to encourage you to reflect on the powerful impact of organisational culture and tradition on institutional policy and practice.
Four years ago I made a brief presentation on a similar theme to the ICDE Forum in Caracas. If there are any members of that audience here today, and you have any recollection of what I was talking about on that occasion, I trust you will forgive me if I have not managed to advance the general principles very much since then. I hope, though, that we have been able to advance from a theoretical analysis to a confirmed institutional position.
I come from Massey University, New Zealand's second largest university. Massey is a bimodal institution offering a large distance education programme to some 18,000 students throughout New Zealand, as well as a conventional campus-based programme serving the central North Island region. Massey University began its extramural (our term for distance education) in 1960. From the inception of the extramural programme there was a commitment to develop and maintain the strongest possible links between the conventional teaching mode and the distance mode. This commitment has found expression in a number of ways. All the courses taught in the extramural mode are also taught in the conventional mode. They are taught to the same curricula, assessed by the same examinations and contribute to the same degrees and diplomas. The students' academic transcripts do not record the mode in which a course has been studied, and indeed many students switch between modes in mid course when their life circumstances make th
is appropriate.
Distance education in this sort of environment is not seen as a separate and specialist operation requiring its own management and resource structures. The model is best understood at the level of the individual course and teacher. Some sixty teaching departments, from a total of around seventy-five, are engaged in the University's distance education programme. Most teaching staff will teach the same course in both the conventional mode to a class on campus, and in the distance mode to a class dispersed around New Zealand. The individual academic in charge of any particular course takes on a major and continuing responsibility for the course. These teachers, or "course controllers" as we call them, are responsible for planning the course prescriptions; for preparing the full sets of teaching materials up to the draft stage; for setting and marking all student assignments and any final examinations; for conducting any residential course components that may be required; and for maintaining personal cont
act with their students. They receive advice and assistance from in preparing and producing their course material and in discharging some of the organisational tasks associated with distance education. But, in contrast to the situation in most single mode institutions, members of the academic staff retain a very high degree of control over every aspect of the planning, preparation, delivery and evaluation of their distance education courses. Staff view their distance education teaching with the same level of personal commitment and ownership as their conventional teaching. Herein lie both the weakness and the great strength of this model of distance education.
Many of the challenges of managing a bi-modal distance educational institution arise from the tension between the imperatives of an academic institutional culture and those of an industrial or bureaucratic one. The former is the preferred and dominant organisational culture of the conventional organisation. This culture is characterised by devolved decision making on programme and resource issues, loose coupling of organisational processes, a high value placed on academic autonomy, research and scholarship, and a consensual approach to institutional planning. An industrial or bureaucratic culture, on the other hand, is the one that tends to be favoured by central administrators with responsibility for such processes as enrolment, examinations, materials preparation, production and dispatch, student assignments and examinations. This cultural tension is experienced most acutely by administrators like myself with a foot in both camps who must attempt to reconcile the varied expectations of dozens or even
hundreds of academics with the uncompromising demands of budgets and of production schedules.
The management of resources poses an especially acute dilemma for such dual mode institutions. In its purest form this dilemma is seen as the co-existence of two forms of resource allocation and management in the same institution. Teaching departments continue to be funded on a formula based on student enrolments, while the central units providing administrative and professional assistance to the distance education programme are funded on some altogether different basis. The problem of course is that decisions taken by one group are likely to have major implications for the other. Unless processes are devised to ensure mutual accountability between the two groups, the management of resources will be a haphazard process at best.
Two years ago the management and resourcing of the distance education programme underwent a review. The review was precipitated in part by a dramatic change in the environment in which all New Zealand educational institutions must operate. The New Zealand Government has moved from being the provider of most public education to becoming the funder and purchaser of educational provision. This move has forced institutions into competition for increasingly limited government funding. It has also forced institutions to examine the quality and the efficiency of their processes both educational and administrative.
This review focused on a number of features of our particular model of distance education and the way we manage and resource it.
Planning and Priorities
The review found that existing arrangements for planning the extramural programme provided for devolved planning where there should be a measure of central control and coordination, and for separate planning where there should be more integrated planning. The planning of the extramural programme was largely the work of individual teaching departments with little opportunity for any corporate shaping or rationalising of the university's overall distance education offerings. On the other hand, at the most senior level of planning within the university there was a tendency to consider issues relating to the planning of the distance education programme as somewhat separate from general university planning.
The Locus of Control
The key decisions affecting extramural teaching are made by the four hundred or so academics involved in the programme. These concern what will be taught, when and by whom it will be taught, how it will be taught and serviced, and how it will be assessed.
This kind of bottom-up decision making, when allied to an open-ended EFTS-based funding formula can lead to a measure of market responsiveness, and has certainly contributed to a steady expansion of course offerings by the university, and a very high level of commitment by teaching staff to their extramural teaching. But it also makes it very difficult to take a coordinated, university-wide approach to any extramural challenge. There are likely to be four hundred strongly held opinions on an subject of real interest or importance.
This situation of devolved control over the teaching programme is common to conventional universities and has many strengths. Distance education, on the other hand, has been described as an industrial process requiring the careful integration and sequencing of a number of complex administrative as well as educational processes. A devolved locus of control makes it extremely difficult to optimise the potential of this mode.
Resource Management
The allocation and management of resources follows a system similar to most conventional universities. Teaching departments are allocated resources on the basis of student numbers, or Equivalent Full Time Students (EFTS), and are expected to resource their teaching from that income. They then draw on the services of various registry and allied units, sometimes on a cost recovery, but more commonly without having to meet any direct charge. This model applies equally to the distance education and the conventional programme.
The review found that this model allowed teaching departments to plan and develop their distance teaching programmes without due consideration to all the resourcing requirements of those programmes. These central units, on the other hand, were unable to exercise full control over their resources as they were obliged to provide a base level of service to each and every distance education course which teaching departments wished to offer.
The review group identified other important features of the university's management and planning systems for the distance education programme, but these three focus on the important issues with respect to resource management. The key problem, according to the review group, was the misalignment of the loci of decision making and the loci of accountability. That is, the people who were making the important decisions which would commit the university to expending scarce resources were not being held responsible for the management and stewardship of those resources. And conversely, the people who were responsible for managing the university's resources were not able to influence the important programme decisions which committed the university's resources.
There were only two broad solutions possible, suggested the review group. Either the managers responsible for the university's central resources should be given a far greater control over programming decisions, or else the people making the decisions about programming should become responsible for the full range of funding implications of those decisions. These alternatives were sketched out in more detail.
Scenario 1: Separate Funding and Control
The first scenario, and the most radical of all, was for a separation of the managing and resourcing of the distance education programme from the internal teaching programme. The major elements of this scenario were:
The extramural programme would be funded separately from the internal with all EFTS-generated income and fees being channelled to an extramural studies unit;
This central extramural studies unit would commission teaching departments to prepare and teach a range of extramural papers, and pay them for those services according to an agreed formula;
While the extramural teaching programme would continue to offer the university's normal academic programmes, it would be a management decision as to which courses would be offered and how many at any one time; the extramural studies unit would negotiate a series of servicing contracts with the various administrative and servicing arms of the university.
Under this scenario, the locus of programme decision making would change. Decision making on critical programming issues would be centralised, and the university would regain management control of this important area of its activities.
Scenario 2: Devolved Funding and Control
The second scenario was the mirror opposite of the first. Under this scenario teaching departments would operate as full cost centres for every aspect of extramural teaching and servicing. They would receive an annual allocation as in the past based on their total funded student enrolments; but in the future they would be required to purchase all administrative and support services associated with their distance teaching as well. This would mean that a teaching department would need to budget for its consumption of instructional design and materials preparation services, for the printing and production of all study materials, for the dispatch of all materials to students, and for all communications to and from students.
Each scenario had its strengths and weaknesses. The Separate Funding and Control scenario held a powerful appeal for central administrators who were keen to follow a more coordinated, corporate approach to the management and direction of the distance education programme. It would facilitate university-wide initiative such as the introduction of new teaching media and the international marketing of the programme. It would also enhance quality management within the distance education programme. But it was seen very negatively by most of the university's academic community. This scenario was seen as a serious threat to departmental and academic control of extramural teaching, and a development which could reduce the existing level of commitment from teaching staff to the distance education programme.
The Devolved Funding and Control scenario appealed only to the market purists in our midst. While this model would force economic accountability from both teaching departments and service providers it was seen as a high risk strategy. Most teaching departments did not welcome the additional burden of resource management and accountability. And it was not easy to see how the university could continue to exercise any meaningful control over the direction or quality of the distance educating programme if departments were free to spend their resources as they wished.
The university finally made a commitment to a third scenario:
Programme Planning and Budgeting
Under this scenario departments will be required to plan their extramural offerings within programme budgets. Such a system would require the following elements:
The Extramural Centre will receive a one line allocation for all extramural services and support beyond departmental staffing;
Each department will be awarded an entitlement to central resources based on its number of funded student places;
Heads of Department will be required to negotiate servicing budgets for their distance education programme with the Director of Extramural Studies and then to purchase units of service in accordance with those budgets;
These budgets will need to meet basic quality guidelines;
A critical difference between this and the former model is that teaching departments will be awarded credits rather than dollars. This means that departments will be able to select from a range of central university services such as desk top publishing, printing, teleconferencing, regional travel, postage or phone. They will not be able to use these credits for purposes outside the extramural teaching programme, and they are not likely to be allowed to set up their own distance education servicing units.
This option has been given added impetus by the steady tightening of funding to which all New Zealand tertiary institutions are being subjected to. The Government is unable to maintain its former level of per capita funding for student places. As with governments the world over it is shifting a greater share of the cost of tertiary education on to students, and it is insisting on greater productivity and efficiency from the institutions themselves. Most institutions are being forced to move away from open-ended funding formulas towards more targeted funding and contained growth. This development is encouraging a shift from the old patterns of organic growth driven from the grass-roots to new patterns of funded places and programme rationalisation.
It is more than a year since the report was released, and we are still some way from fully implementing its recommendations. The first step was to gather information on the present costs of the central serviced provided to teaching departments, and then to identify each of these costs on a job-by-job and course-by-course basis. Under existing arrangements this was never necessary in the past. It is requiring a full yearly cycle to gather a baseline of costing data. We are likely to spend at least a further year operating with trial allocations and trial budgets before embarking on the real thing. At present central office staff are looking at each function and service in turn, and inviting departments to consider their consumption of each of these services. The next step should be to arrive at an appropriate formula for determining departmental funding entitlement, and then set up mechanisms to manage the purchase and recording of these transactions. Only then will we be in a position to operate the
full Programme Planing and Budgeting system.
In all our discussions and planning, we have been guided and at times constrained by the tradition and culture of the institution. Certain options had strong appeal from a purely rational perspective. The Separate Funding and Control scenario might have allowed the University to take better advantage of economies of scale, and allowed a more concerted institutional position on such developments as off-shore marketing, programme rationalisation and quality management. But this option would have cut right across some of the most deeply held values of our institution, and threatened some of the most positive and distinctive features of our distance education programme. The strongest of these is the commitment and talent of the four hundred or so academics who contribute to the extramural programme. Unlike the situation in many dual mode institutions, these academics do not need to be cajoled or coerced into teaching by distance. They see it as a valuable and rewarding aspect of their academic life. The
y view its positively because they enjoy so much autonomy in the way the plan, produce and deliver their extramural teaching. In considering more rational and more efficient approaches to organising the distance teaching of the university we have been forced to take stock of what we might lose in the process. Before we change the bath water we need to make sure that none of the family is still in the bath. In our case there are four hundred of them still paddling around happily, and they have indicated that they are not ready to get out just yet.
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