Address by Sir John Daniel, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO

Summit Meeting of Mega-universities: some personal reflections

John Daniel
Assistant Director-General for Education
UNESCO

In 1972, when I was a young assistant professor of metallurgical engineering in Canada, I spent the summer as an intern at the new UK Open University (UKOU). The experience changed my life.

The UKOU was a revelation of a revolution in higher education. The scale of its operations, the idealism of the staff, the determination of the students, the professionalism of the teaching, and the brilliant use of learning media all impressed me greatly. Here, I thought, was the university of the future.

Others thought so too and in the following years many open universities were created. All had to fight for recognition and overcome the scepticism of both academe and public. They succeeded. Today open and distance learning is fashionable nearly everywhere.

My internship at the UKOU was linked to my studies in a part-time master’s programme in educational technology. It launched me into an exciting new career that kept me too busy to complete the thesis requirement of the master’s programme. Not until 1994 did I finally embark on the thesis, taking as my topic the impact of the online technology on the large distance-teaching universities. I coined the term mega-universities for these institutions and borrowed the expression knowledge media for the new technologies. In 1996 the thesis became a book, Mega-universities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education and, to my surprise, the term mega-university has now passed into the general vocabulary.

I focused on the larger distance-teaching universities partly to limit the number of institutions in my study. In 1995 there were eleven open universities with over 100,000 enrolled students – the arbitrary threshold that I set for mega-universities. But a more important reason for the choice was my belief that the key aim of using new technologies should be to widen access to quality education by teaching at scale. The challenge of operating at scale is also an important test of the robustness of the technology itself.

That is why I am delighted that the Shanghai TVU has organised this summit of mega-universities. We should meet neither in a spirit of exclusivity nor in the belief that we represent the totality of distance education – a field that is now vast, diverse and complex. Our discussions should focus on the issues that are most salient for mega-universities. Five topics are of particular interest to me.

First, there is the basic challenge of operating effectively on a large scale over a wide geographical area. Second is the imperative to offer an education of quality. Some mega-universities have now established an excellent reputation for quality while others still struggle. We can learn from each other. Third, because of their size, mega-universities have a close relationship to their governments, not only in the formulation of policy for higher education, but increasingly for technology and communications policy. Fourth, we shall want to discuss the special challenges of introducing new teaching and learning technologies into large operational teaching systems. Fifth, and finally, it might be interesting to explore the possibilities of virtual student exchanges, so that those studying with one mega-university can experience the academic culture of another.

Open and distance learning was the major educational innovation of the 20th century. The task for the 21st century is fully to harness the potential of open and distance learning so that humankind can finally achieve its long-declared goal of quality education for all. The mega-universities must be leaders in that noble mission and UNESCO pledges its full support to them.

John Daniel
Assistant Director-General for Education
UNESCO