'McEducation' an inevitable outcome of air travel, Internet

"McEducation" sounds like something you would get at a fast food outlet.

It is in fact the watchword created to describe a new wave in international education, and a future powered by the Internet and ever-increasing air travel.

Alison Hollier, regional manager of Far East Consultants, with offices at Dubai's Knowledge Village, said that learning-on-demand will inevitably reach more students in the farthest corners of the world at the speed of digital lines.

"Distance education makes it more affordable to spread world-class training by bringing down the cost," she said. "One unbeatable advantage is that students don't have to quit from work or leave the familiarity of home to pursue higher learning. It is also a good solution in cultures where inter-mingling between opposite sexes is not encouraged."

Hollier represents in the Middle East region three Swiss hotel management schools.

"The trend towards McEducation, through franchising or establishment of off-campus sites, is a natural outcome of the use of English as the medium of instruction. Every computer in the world runs on codes written in English, even if the user interface is in another script or language," she added.

According to her, most of the managers in five-star hotels around the world used to be Swiss, French or German-speaking people, trained in Switzerland's top private hotel management schools.

"When the training schools shifted to English as the medium of instruction, it allowed other nationals the opportunity to have a crack at senior management positions in these international hotels too. Now, if you walk into any Swiss hospitality school, you would see something like a UN assembly."

But the association of education with burgers is only true where standards are concerned, she explained.

Hollier said they are currently looking for a solid partner in the UAE and other Gulf countries to conduct basic academic training to aspiring hoteliers here using their standardised syllabus.

After the first two years of academic instruction, the final year will still have to be spent in one of the schools in Montreux, Switzerland, for operational experience.

"We see a great potential for growth in hospitality education in the Middle East, because the industry itself is in a flux. There are around 270 hotels here already and over a hundred more are being built in the next three to five years. That's unheard of in other places."

She also noted an increasing popularity of hotel management courses among the young people of the Middle East.

"Young Europeans are no longer going into this field in big numbers, because the industry offers far lesser job positions today in that region than in the past. In the Middle East, the hospitality sector is one of the sunrise industries. This is especially so in the GCC, where governments are vigorously promoting tourism," Allison added.

Under the franchise offer, which is similar to the one they have in Bulgaria, lesson plans, textbooks, tests and course content will come from the parent school while the franchisees will hire their own teachers.

Purdue University, one of the top U.S. schools, is also offering distance learning by giving the same course work to students sitting at the Knowledge Village as their classroom-bound counterparts in the U.S., but at less than 50 per cent of the cost.

Combining distance learning and face-to-face instruction, Purdue is also helping re-equip teachers in Afghanistan with the latest teaching methods and standards as part of the post-Taleban rebuilding efforts.

Many sociologists from the West have dismissed McEducation – the use of standardised textbooks and measurable tests – as an indirect form of colonisation.

Hollier said, however, that she does not believe that adopting a Western education system in the Middle East will lay a thin socio-cultural membrane that will cover local cultural norms.

The use of strict education measures, Hollier explained, cannot really replace traditional mores or thinking acquired since childhood.

Rather, education should be viewed as a form of addition or enrichment process, not a superficial layering of one culture on top of another.

Since Switzerland is known for its hospitality management schools which go back over a hundred years, it's natural that students from other countries seek Swiss education in this field.

"Education is not really a commodity, but a relationship," said Hollier. "What is important is to provide a quality-oriented learning as education involves a long-term commitment to a specific subject."

Affordable education at your doorstep
- Distance education makes it more affordable to spread world-class training by bringing down the cost.

- One unbeatable advantage is that students don't have to quit from work or leave the familiarity of home to pursue higher learning.

- It is also a good solution in cultures where inter-mingling between opposite sexes is not encouraged.

- In the Middle East, the hospitality sector is one of the sunrise industries. This is especially so in the GCC, where governments are vigorously promoting tourism.