Abstract:

Online education has a tremendous impact on the education system as a whole. By changing the way students and instructors interact, online education is challenging universities to adapt in order to meet the requirements of present day students. Research into online education efficiency and effectiveness tends to consider there is a clear distinction between online education and traditional education. We believe that this is no longer the case. Variables considered when assessing online education are different from those used in assessing traditional education. This model of assessment is no longer suitable to the realities of the educational process as we can no longer find a clear separation between the online and that which remains offline. The distinction between jobs and education is also becoming less clear, lines are blurring and the two formerly distinct worlds of the labour market and the university campus keep finding new points of intersection and interaction. Tools traditionally considered to be the exclusive domain of online education have become mainstream and are now used for what we should simply call “education”. Taking into account all of the above, we propose a model that supports economic efficiency and effectiveness in education. The model aims to provide alternatives designed to make us better adapted to face the challenges put forth by our modern world. We largely focus on providing more opportunities within the entire educational system based on a vision of lifelong learning.
Throughout the development of the model we relied on the standard tools associated to economic efficiency in order to determine which components should be part of the model and also in testing the model’s functionality. This paper focuses mainly on the cost-benefit analysis that we conducted on US and EU markets although other tools have been tested and used in earlier stages of our research. The data that we used integrated information, from US and EU markets, about both private and state investment of time and money in education with information about labour productivity and economic value added in those same markets. Our results have shown that only through an integrated approach, one that looks at both online and offline education, one that looks at education throughout the productive lifetime of the individual, can we correctly assess educational impact and design better, value creating, educational processes and systems.

Keywords:

Education, online education, blended learning, economic efficiency, economic effectiveness, teaching, lifelong learning.