Editing Distance education (section)

=== University correspondence courses ===
====United Kingdom====
[[File:SomersetHousebyAnonpublAckermann&Co1836.jpg |thumb|[[Somerset House]], home of the University of London from 1837 to 1870]]
The [[University of London]] was the first university to offer degrees to anyone who could pass their examinations, establishing its External Programme in 1858. It had been established in 1836 as an examining and degree-awarding body for affiliated colleges, originally [[University College London]] and [[King's College London]] but with many others added over the next two decades. The affiliated colleges provided certificates that the student had attended a course. A new charter in 1858 removed this requirement, allowing men (and women from 1878) taking instruction at any institution or pursuing a course of self-directed study to sit the examinations and receive degrees. The External Programme was referred to as the "People's University" by [[Charles Dickens]] as it provided access to [[higher education]] to students from less affluent backgrounds.<ref name="External Programme History">{{cite web |url=http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/about_us/history.shtml |title="History", University of London External Programme Website |publisher=Londonexternal.ac.uk |date=15 July 2009 |access-date=27 April 2010}}</ref><ref name="Key Facts">{{cite web |url=http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/about_us/facts.shtml |title="Key Facts", University of London External Programme Website |publisher=Londonexternal.ac.uk |date=15 July 2009 |access-date=27 April 2010}}</ref> Enrollment increased steadily during the late 19th century, and its example was widely copied elsewhere.<ref name="Guardian Article">{{cite web|url=http://www.guardianabroad.co.uk/education/article/283 |author=Tatum Anderson |title=History lessons at the people's university |date=16 May 2007 |publisher=Guardianabroad.co.uk |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070524102204/http://www.guardianabroad.co.uk/education/article/283 |archive-date=24 May 2007 |access-date=20 September 2016 |url-status=dead}}</ref> However, the university only provided examinations, not instructional material, leading academics to state that "the original degree by external study of the UOL was not a form of distance education".<ref>{{cite thesis|url=https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/9023
|first= Vigneswari |last=Thanapal|title=The social mediation of multinational legal education: A case study of the University of London's undergraduate laws programme for external/international students|publisher=[[Queen Mary, University of London]]|date=January 2015|type=PhD|page=16}}</ref>

The External Programme is now known as the [[University of London Worldwide]], and includes postgraduate and undergraduate degrees created by member institutions of the University of London.<ref name="Key Facts" />

====Australia and South Africa====
The vast distances made Australia especially active; the [[University of Queensland]] established its Department of Correspondence Studies in 1911.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1080/0158791820030207 |title=Distance education in Australian higher education – a history |journal=Distance Education |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=255–78 |year=2009 |last1=White |first1=Michael }}</ref>

[[File:Portrait of William Rainey Harper.jpg|thumb|[[William Rainey Harper]] encouraged the development of external university courses at the new University of Chicago in the 1890s.]]

====United States====
[[William Rainey Harper]], founder and first president of the [[University of Chicago]], celebrated the concept of extended education, where a research university had satellite colleges elsewhere in the region.<ref>{{Cite web |title=William Rainey Harper |url=https://president.uchicago.edu/ |access-date=2023-02-17 |website=president.uchicago.edu |language=en}}</ref>

In 1892, Harper encouraged correspondence courses to further promote education, an idea that was put into practice by the University of Chicago, U. Wisconsin, Columbia U., and several dozen other universities by the 1920s.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Levinson |first1=David L |title=Community colleges: a reference handbook |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xrnPJcb7c54C |year= 2005 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn= 1-57607-766-7 |page=69 |access-date=2011-01-23}}</ref><ref>Von V. Pittman, ''Correspondence Study in the American University: A Second Historiographical Perspective,'' in Michael Grahame Moore, William G. Anderson, eds. ''Handbook of Distance Education'' pp 21-36</ref> Enrollment in the largest private for-profit school based in [[Scranton, Pennsylvania]], the [[International Correspondence Schools]] grew explosively in the 1890s. Founded in 1888 to provide training for immigrant coal miners aiming to become state mine inspectors or foremen, it enrolled 2500 new students in 1894 and matriculated 72,000 new students in 1895. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The growth was due to sending out complete textbooks instead of single lessons, and the use of 1200 aggressive in-person salesmen.<ref>Joseph F. Kett, ''Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America'' (1996) pp 236-8</ref><ref>J.J. Clark, "The Correspondence School—Its Relation to Technical Education and Some of Its Results", ''Science'' (1906) 24#611 pp 327-8, 332, 333. Clark was manager of the school's text-book department.</ref> There was a stark contrast in pedagogy:

{{blockquote|The regular technical school or college aims to educate a man broadly; our aim, on the contrary, is to educate him only along some particular line. The college demands that a student shall have certain educational qualifications to enter it and that all students study for approximately the same length of time; when they have finished their courses they are supposed to be qualified to enter any one of a number of branches in some particular profession. We, on the contrary, are aiming to make our courses fit the particular needs of the student who takes them.<ref>Clark, "The Correspondence School" (1906) p 329</ref>}}

Education was a high priority in the [[Progressive Era]], as American high schools and colleges expanded greatly. For men who were older or were too busy with family responsibilities, night schools were opened, such as the [[YMCA]] school in Boston that became [[Northeastern University]]. Private correspondence schools outside of the major cities provided a flexible, focused solution.<ref>Kett, ''Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties,'' p 240</ref> Large corporations systematized their training programs for new employees. The National Association of Corporation Schools grew from 37 in 1913 to 146 in 1920. Private schools that provided specialized technical training to everyone who enrolled, not just employees of one company, began to open across the nation in the 1880s. Starting in Milwaukee in 1907, public schools began opening free vocational program.<ref>{{cite book|author=William Millikan|title=A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903–1947|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GseChEHIysAC&pg=PA60|year=2003|publisher=Minnesota Historical Society Press|pages=60–61|isbn=978-0-87351-499-6}}</ref>

====International Conference====
The International Conference for Correspondence Education held its first meeting in 1938.<ref>{{cite book|author=Francis Lee|title=Letters and bytes: Sociotechnical studies of distance education|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6_V7z998PlgC&pg=PA48|year=2009|publisher=Francis Lee|page=48|isbn=9789173935180}}</ref> The goal was to provide individualized education for students, at low cost, by using a pedagogy of testing, recording, classification, and differentiation.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1080/07341510801900318 |title=Technopedagogies of mass-individualization: Correspondence education in the mid twentieth century |journal=History and Technology |volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=239–53 |year=2008 |last1=Lee |first1=Francis |s2cid=144728618 }}</ref><ref>Ellen L. Bunker, "The History of Distance Education through the Eyes of the International Council for Distance Education", in Michael Grahame Moore, William G. Anderson, eds. ''Handbook of Distance Education'' pp 49-66</ref> Since then, the group has changed its name to the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), with its main office in Oslo, Norway.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.icde.org/who-we-are|title=Who we are|website=International Council For Open And Distance Education |date=August 17, 2018 |access-date=2019-03-25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325213612/https://www.icde.org/who-we-are|archive-date=25 March 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref>