Distance Education as Strategy: How Can Your School Compete?

Student learning outcomes and attitudes dominate the distance-education debate. Competitive aspects such as price, product, institutional reputation, and market size may be equally important to the effective implementation of distance strategies. This article explores the strategic implications of distance education by examining it as a killer application and describing a typology of universities based on organizational and competitive characteristics. Porter's generic strategies are used to derive propositions detailing the most appropriate strategies for various university types. We conclude with a discussion of the negative effects of poorly conceived or implemented strategies.