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State economic policies are geared to continued growth and economic power in national and international arenas within a framework of free enterprise. State social policies are concerned with the welfare of citizens. Both reflect conflicts over social, economic and political power. Distance educators link DE to both state economic and social policy, arguing DE is cost-effective, produces economies of scale, provides effective education and training of the workforce, can reach hitherto disadvantaged people and large numbers, and can do so without massive social, economic or geographic dislocation.
To understand the strong appeal which distance education systems have for capitalist democratic states, it is useful to consider functions of the latter and the kinds of conflict for which the state is the arena. I define the state as the collection of elected and appointed officials making up government and its bureaucracy (Panitch, 1980; Carnoy, 1984).
The capitalist state performs three broad functions (Panitch, 1980; Carnoy, 1984). One—coercion, or the formal authority to police and defend the state—need concern us little here. The second is assistance to capital in maintaining rates of profit, through provision of the social costs of production including the education and training of an adequate number of appropriately skilled and knowledgeable workers. Higher education is seen as an investment in human capital by the state, industry and the individual, and capitalist states have expanded their higher education systems to feed economic growth since 1950 (Pike, 1981; Carnoy & Levin, 1985). Distance education has been a beneficiary of that expansion.
Conversely, as rates of profit have fallen in more recent times, states have blamed higher education for its slow response to changing technologies and economic needs, and for its inability to provide the range, depth and volume of skills required by post-industrial society. States have contracted public expenditure, and demand that higher education concentrate on economically "relevant" programs, that it be more cost-effective, and that it serve a growing number of adults already in the workforce who need to acquire new or higher-level knowledge or skills. Distance education is both a beneficiary and a potential victim of contemporary economic rationalism.
The third state function is that of legitimization or reproduction of the social status quo. This requires a juggling of two inherently contradictory tasks. One is maintenance of the social and economic dominance of capitalist elites, including continuation of the unequal relations of production which assist capital to maintain its rates of profit. The other is ensuring social harmony through accession to demands of disadvantaged groups or classes for greater equity in social and economic life. One way the state achieves this balancing act is by maintaining the ideological hegemony of the dominant classes—i.e., projection of the latter's ideas and values in such a way that they are accepted as common sense and the natural order of things by those who are less privileged (Gramsci, 1971; Carnoy, 1984; Porter, 1986).
Higher education is a useful avenue to reproduction of these liberal democratic values and culture through the social construction of knowledge so as to maintain capitalist ideological hegemony (Berger &Luckman, 1966; Young, 1971; Bates, 1978). Yet access to knowledge and skills is also a route to personal and group empowerment. It is not surprising, then, that equality of educational opportunity is a value held in common by diverse groups (including distance educators), but for different and sometimes conflicting purposes (Silver, 1973; 1980; Tapper & Salter, 1978; Curtis et al, 1988).
Capitalist states have massively expanded higher education systems since 1950 to meet both functions of capital accumulation and legitimization. However, traditional forms of higher education are limited temporally and spatially, and in their capacity for cost-effectiveness of the kind demanded by states now feeling the pinch of the financial shoe. Moreover, traditional higher education institutions remain strongly elitist, committed in rhetoric to equality of opportunity but limited in practice to education of more privileged groups in society.
Till the late 1960s distance education was hardly an attractive alternative option for governments seeking to increase and diversify the skills base of the workforce. Drop out rates were very high (Perry, 1976), and although some (e.g., Sheath, 1969) could show that performance of correspondence students equalled that of on-campus students, conventional wisdom held otherwise. Learning materials were typically scrappy and poorly thought-out, and students were often left to get on with their studies as best they might.
The winds of change are evident in conference papers, books and articles of the late 1960s (e.g., Erdos, 1967; Childs, 1969; Mackenzie & Christensen, 1971; Sims, 1972). Nevertheless it took a coupling of remarkable imagination with political will and economic circumstances to create the first open universities—notably in Britain, Germany and Spain. The plethora of single- and dual-mode DE universities and colleges emerging in the 1970s owed much to the early successes of these institutions in showing that the modern form of DE could satisfactorily meet state economic and social policies.
In 1990, distance education has come of age. Whether you believe it to be a unique form of education or a collection of processes and techniques freeing learner and educator from temporal and spatial constraints, DE is now a national and international force with which to be reckoned, taken seriously by international bodies.
As distance educators bask in the glow of government favor, however, we risk becoming so tightly gripped by this state-led notion of education as an economic and social tool that we are unable to tend to cultural and other social advantages of an education that offers the freedom to study what, where and when the individual wishes. We also risk losing our capacity to cater for individual needs and to nurture mutually beneficial relationships between teacher and learner.
The tension between emphasis on the individual learner and on development of mass education systems has emerged as a major theme in the DE literature of the last 20 years. Moore's vision of DE as a matrix of dialogue and structure (1977; 1983), Holmberg's interest in guided didactic conversation (1978; 1982), and Sewart's concern for teaching and support services (1978; 1981) have sat uneasily with the industrial model of DE articulated by Peters (1969, 1971). Keegan's attempts (1980; 1986) to develop a taxonomy of DE have never satisfactorily resolved this tension. Rumble's most recent definition of DE (1989) may point a way through some of the theoretical dilemmas.
The industrial model is a dominant characteristic of modern DE systems. It is more or less sophisticated according to resources and to educators' approach to the DE process, but its common features follow Weberian principles of industrial bureaucracy—division of labour; objectivity of teaching behaviour; mechanization, automation and mass production; application of organizational principles and scientific control; and concentration and centralization. These characteristics enable DE to deal with large numbers of students and therefore claim economies of scale. It is these advantages we stress when seeking government funds, justifying not only institutional existence but expansion and further innovation. DE can go where traditional education cannot, do what it cannot, because DE has an efficient combination of skills, systems and command of technology which can be directed flexibly to state needs.
The danger is that the individual, the small enrolment course, the program with little relevance to state economic goals, will be swamped in today's era of rationalism. How do we ensure that women, ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups have access to educational programs which meet their needs when funds are available to develop and teach economically "relevant" courses such as business studies, computing, law, and other professional programs. Women and other disadvantaged people may wish to take such courses, but find them essentially geared for white middle-class males and the needs of industry, commerce and government bureaucracies (Prummer, 1985; Powles & Anwyl,1987; Faith, 1988).
In our daily work, in policy development, and in communication with external bodies, we need greater awareness of the social and political forces at work, and of the ways in which DE can be manipulated by the state through its financial power and support of the dominant ideology. We may accept that ideology. Even so, we need to be aware of its consequences for particular groups of students whose needs we know but whose political voice is small or not heard.
A key challenge for DE in the 1990s will be balancing growing pressure for economic and industrial "relevance" with continued concern for our social and cultural heritages. Universities traditionally have been sacred repositories of high social culture which has been available only to a small privileged group (Silver, 1980). One aspect of mass higher education and of commitment to equal opportunity is opening up that repository. DE has been a valuable democratizing agent of culture through its liberal arts and sciences programs. They are increasingly at risk as governments direct resources towards more technical, pragmatic and industrially relevant professional/vocational education.
A second challenge in the 1990s will be finding ways to meet distance educators' commitments to dialogue in the educational process and to learner autonomy, while fulfilling state demands for more mechanized, mass education programs. Moreover, we will be asked to do both with limited funds.
We are now in a better position than ever before to assert with confidence DE's ability to contribute to the liberal democratic ideology of equality of educational opportunity, and to national economic and social well being. But we need to rethink the language in which we couch our arguments, and the kinds of mission which are acceptable—in other words, our personal and institutional philosophies of the relationship between distance education and the state.
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