Review by: Zellweger, Franziska (2004-08-09)

The collected edition “Digital Academe” in which Baer’s article is published offers a variety of perspectives on developments and options in distance education and distributed learning.

Starting with a description of the post-secondary education market Baer points out the blurring of traditional classifications in the field. For-profit organizations no longer focus exclusively on the training market but also enter the post-secondary education market which has been dominated by traditional non-profit academic institutions for a long time. But also the distinction between full or part-time students, degree vs. non-degree, on campus vs. distance learning students looses its value.

Consequently, Baer studied the emerging organizational forms of distance learning providers enabled through the groundbreaking developments in ICT. Derived from market observations he offers a systematic framework for variations in approaches, based predominant on the balance between outsourced activities and those remaining the primary responsibility of colleges and universities. Depending on which party fulfills the basic functions of the academic value chain (technology, administrative services, promotion and marketing, content development, instruction, awarding credits, overall quality control) other models of collaboration result.

Baer distinguishes four main models and illustrates them with numerous cases: 1) The firm as a traditional vendor takes primarily responsibility for the technological infrastructure and the related delivery processes. 2) The second model extends the for-profit firm’s role beyond supplying technology to providing some administrative services and sometimes marketing of online courses. 3) In the third model the academic partner gives up the sole responsibility for content development and a shared model is institutionalized. 4) On the far other end the firm provides all components of the value chain with some academic contributions in the area of content development and instruction.

Baer concludes the article with some observations on the market development. He states that the coaction of academic and for-profit partners should accelerate the growth of online distance education and create new markets and denies the perception of a ruinous competition for the same students. Furthermore he observes the increasing separation of content development and content delivery heavily practiced by for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix as a scalable and therefore cost-efficient model.

The proposed framework is valuable to understand the many options on how academic and for-profit partners can collaborate and what the consequences of the handing over of responsibilities to for-profits might have. However, Baer doesn’t rate the existing models he mentions and he doesn’t specify under what conditions which model is more appropriate. He passes on without drawing any conclusions or recommendations.