Most countries cannot afford to expand traditional education provision, especially in places with a young and growing population, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. So, classrooms become overcrowded or inaccessible and this results in many school-age youths staying out of school. ODFL provides a model that allows education to be readily scalable (wide access), academically credible (high quality) and affordable (low cost).
Examine figure 3.3a and Figure 3.3b and read the text next to each figure.
Figure 3.3a: Access, Cost, Quality in education provision
This image by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
Ministers of education seek to provide wide access to good quality post-secondary education at low cost (Daniel et al., 2009). Making a triangle with these three vectors of access, quality and cost is a simple way of representing different models of post-secondary education graphically and illustrates the ministers' dilemma (Daniel, 2010, p. 51). It shows that although classroom teaching may be flexible, it does not allow us to extend any one of these three vectors in the desired direction without compromising the other two.
Figure 3.3b: The dilemma of balancing the Act
This activity should take you about one hour to complete.
To understand how the three metrics of access, low cost and high quality play themselves out in ODFL, you need to read the resource by Daniel, et al. (2000)25 : Breaking Higher Education's Iron Triangle: Access, Cost, and Quality
After reading the resource by Daniel, et al., consider a scenario where a government decides to embrace ODL and suddenly the Minister of Education sends out a circular ordering institutions to introduce distance education offerings from the next semester starting in two months' time. Advertisements are sent out immediately for interested people to apply and the response at all institutions is overwhelming. The Minister is happy to report back to cabinet a two-fold increase in enrolments in the education system. However, the budget for the Ministry and for individual institutions is not increased. Fees for distance education students are also capped at very low levels by the government. Whilst enrolments have increased substantially due to the introduction of Open and Distance Learning and the cost has been significantly cut, a year later there is public outcry about this development.
Explain in a few lines what problems could have arisen which the public raises.
Feedback and comment on Activity 5
It is clear from the scenario described that government increased access by reducing the cost of education, which is a huge benefit associated with ODFL. However, the quality of education was poor since low cost meant few resources were deployed to ODFL, including human resources. The introduction of ODFL was rushed, without any planning being done. All this compromised the quality of ODFL and resulted in negative perceptions of ODFL by the public.
