The New Education Industry

By David J. Ward

"Sparking the development of a higher education export industry is the fast-growing market for distributed learning."
- Detroit Free Press, December 1999

"The associate's degree is America's greatest higher education export."
- University Business Daily, May 2000

Unfortunately, the above headlines--regarding Michigan Virtual University and the American Association of Community Colleges --do NOT have a Wisconsin focus. In fact, we've yet to see these kinds of headlines about higher education in Wisconsin, and I think we should. And soon.

That's because those of us in the UW System are, in effect, producing one of the world's most valued and critical resources-knowledge. As noted management scholar Peter Drucker has observed, "Knowledge is now the central capital, the cost center, and the crucial resource of our economy."

Knowledge, indeed, the export of knowledge/education, should be one of the cornerstones of the new Wisconsin economy. Wisconsin has a long and proud tradition of investing in education and has a quality K-12, UW and technical college system to show for it. People as far away as Dubai and as near as Dubuque want, and need, quality education. So, why don't we create an education industry and export it?

In effect, we are creating this educational export, at each of our UW and technical college campuses, every day. But, in order to make this type of education accessible and attractive to a global audience, we need to provide it in a timely, seamless and scaleable way. That's why online learning has become so prevalent, and that's why the Regents created UW Learning Innovations in 1997.

UWLI provides instructional design and development, faculty training and learner services expertise to the 15 UW institutions in support of their online degree and certificate programs. Today, UWLI manages over 100 online and 300 print-based credit and noncredit courses, and serves approximately 8,000 student enrollments. A growing number of those students live outside the state of Wisconsin. In return for exporting our educational product to them, these students pay tuition and fees that provide higher paying jobs in Wisconsin.

We are building the infrastructure necessary to export Wisconsin online education worldwide. But, perhaps more importantly, UWLI is drawing upon the UW's 109-year history of supporting learners at a distance by providing a full range of learner services, including advising, technical help desk support, comprehensive online registration, e-commerce, virtual bookstore services, and course and learner tracking to monitor a student's progress through course completion.

In other words, we're keeping our fingers on the pulse of each and every learner. That's how we can successfully build a new education industry in our state. That, and the political will to invest in, and support, this new Wisconsin "export," could be part of a prosperous Wisconsin economy.