Why distance education can be cheaper than conventional education

In conventional universities geared to the lecture, seminar, and tutorial, there is a clear and almost linear relationship between staff and student numbers, and it is this relationship that is the primary determinant of cost. Media‐based distance education, however, changes the production function of higher education. This change occurs not where media is used to supplement the teachers’ role — this merely increases total costs, but where it is used as a substitute for teachers. In essence, capital replaces labour, offering to the educationalist what Leslie Wagner {1982: ix) has described as ‘a mass production alternative to the traditional craft approach’.