Australian universities must take the on-line learning lead

Not only is e-learning scalable and able to reach distant people, it's the only way of updating learning in the shortest time possible. A two-year wait for a new course has become anathema in a society that needs to learn new knowledge weekly and to apply it daily.

For these reasons, e-learning is the third generation of education. The ability of our universities to reinvent themselves for this challenge deserves serious attention.

In the absence of global Australian education brand names, our universities - and our other non-traditional providers - have their work cut out. That's why they need to be innovative in securing market share. Corporate universities are one model but we also need others.

Take Labor's policy model of an Australian online university portal. This one-stop-shop for the online learning shopper may be useful. But it will hardly be efficient if it offers 20-plus versions of Marketing 101.

Using new technology to do the same old thing is neither innovative nor desirable. Instead, the real challenge is to decide what Australian education should be, and how many universities we should have to achieve it.

For example, are we to be the "no frills" provider of learning? Should an OzEd portal be the deliverer of a "fair deal"? Or of egalitarian/democratising products and services? There are even options such as "value for money", "greater employability potential" or "the very latest in skills upgrades".

In a knowledge society, it's new ideas such as these that are called for. With our future at stake, we can't afford not to think it up.