远程教育经济学概述及其国外主要研究成果——远程教育经济学研究的研究(一)

Outline of Distance Education Economy and Main Foreign Research Results

在我国组织实施跨世纪现代远程教育工程时,对远程教育经济学研究的兴趣与日俱增。实践表明,以计算机网络和双向视频会议等电子信息通信技术为基础的第三代远程教育的经济学特征与以印刷教材加函授和广播电视录音录像等大众媒体为技术基础的前两代远程教育不同。教育经济学在远程教育诸分支学科中是研究得比较充分的,并且已经产生了大量研究成果。研究成果表明,制约远程教育生存和发展的是“规模-质量-效益”之间的基本三角关系。远程教育经济学主要探讨的就是如何解决好远程教育的质量、规模和效益(效率)的关系问题。即,必须在保证教育质量的前提下研究规模和效益(效率):规模主要指远程教育系统的投入(投资)和产出(合格毕业生)的总量和水平;而效益(效率)主要指从投入到产出的转化率(成本效率),及其对国家和地区的社会经济发展、对远程教育系统(院校)和对远程学习者个人的经济收益的关系(成本效益)。远程教育经济学的研究成果表明,远程教育可以在保证质量的同时实现规模经济,达到较高的成本效率和成本效益。本系列论文将论述远程教育经济学的基本概念、基础理论和国内外远程教育经济学研究的主要成果。

Along with the development of modern distance education engineering in China, the interest towards research of distance education economics has been increasing steadily. The practice has shown that the third generation of distance education based on electronic information and telecommunications technologies such as computer networking and two-way video-conferencing has a very different features from those of the first and second generations of distance education based on correspondence printed materials and audio-visual mass media respectively. Distance education economics is a relatively well -studied branch of distance education and has produced a number of results. The study has shown what drives the development of distance education is the fundamental triangle relationship between 'scale, quality and effectiveness'. The study of distance education economics is aimed to explore this triangle relationship. In other words, it studies how to expand the scale of and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of distance education while the quality quarantined. Hereby, the scale is refereed to the total amount or level of input (investment) and output (qualified graduates) of a distance education institution, the effectiveness is refereed to the ratio of transforming the input into output (cost -efficiency), and the economic benefits for national and local development of social economy, for distance education institution and for learners individuals (cost -effectiveness). The study of distance education economics has shown that a well designed and operated distance education system could reach the scale economy and realize the high cost -efficiency and cost -effectiveness. This series of papers will examines the basic concepts, the elementary theories and the major outcomes of research in the field of distance education economics.