Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 80

Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
The Institutional Economical Context
The present context of transforming educational systems in Europe gives a heightened
relevance to interuniversity consortiums and partnerships that embrace and support
advancements in scientific, technological aspects, and the expansion of educational
programs. The present legal structure in Europe has been inspired by both governmental and
organizational efforts and practices in the United States and various European countries.
Cooperation in education matters has been assuming a great relevance with the
homogenizations of the national universitary educational systems across Europe.
Although originally well-intentioned to extend education to all, the financial structure
supporting the national universitary educational system was deficient, hence leaving an
aftermath of overreliance of student quantity over quality. This lack of quality, in turn, has
left a gap in the assurance of obtaining employment upon graduation. In many countries, no
special attention was paid to the specificity and potential of online/distance learning
universities. Some universities have been paying attention to the specificities of online
learning, but such an attention is not common. The laws in the EU countries typically
promote the building of inter-universitary consortiums and of partnerships between
universities and several types of institutions. In some countries, there are universities that are
fully dedicated to online learning, for example, in Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
While in other countries, such as The Netherlands and Germany, many university professors
simultaneously teach at their respective face-to-face university and do the online teaching
through their face-to-face university and/or through their national online university.
There is a strong movement in Portugal for face-to-face universities, which are
geographically close, to become integrated in larger super-universities—the advantage being
the reduction of costs, the budgetary increase which allows for higher-scale projects, and an
improved position in the world university rankings. A recent example is the effort to join the
University of Lisbon with the Technical University of Lisbon. But online universities have
the clear advantage of not needing geographical proximity to be merged with another
university. Portugal’s fully-dedicated public university, the Aberta University, has been
making an effort to increase the degree of collaboration with several fully-dedicated online
universities, such as UK’s Open University and the Universitat Oberta of Catalonia, but also
with traditional face-to-face universities.
Not all online universities have similar number of students; examples of large online
universities are the British Open University or the Spanish Universidad Nacional de
Educación a Distancia with many tens of thousands of students, while examples of mediumsize
universities are the Aberta University and the Universitat Oberta of Catalonia with a
few tens of thousands of students. And even if online universities have similar numbers of
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