Tiffin, J. (1994). In search of the virtual class: Education in an
informal society. London: Routledge.
The future, says Tiffin, will be very different for the education
providers. We are near the beginning of the internationalization and
large-scale commercialization of education. There will be trade wars
among education providers, driving down prices and heightening
competition. Distance education will become the norm, the least
expensive way to deliver the education product, while face-to-face
teaching will be so expensive that it will become something only for
the well-to-do. Only schools like my friend's prep school of the
super-rich will provide full service face-to-face education. Tiffin
compares this, again, to the transition from horse to automobile. When
that transition was under way, horses were far less expensive to buy
and maintain than were autos. Eventually, the automobile became
affordable on a large scale and horses became more expensive to own
and maintain. Now, in fact, we associate horses with money: "the
horsey set."
During questions after his talk, Tiffin made a point of noting that
there is very little evidence that shows such a transition will
enhance the education process. Its effects are, as of yet, unknown.
You can find the entire piece at
http://www.rpi.edu/~decemj/cmc/mag/1994/dec/last.html