Challenges for virtual universities

Traditional universities can be categorised into residential and distance universities. There has, over the past few years, been a trend towards geographically dispersed organisations, away from hierarchical environments. In addition, economic demands require higher levels of education for meaningful employment. Thus, the customer demand for distance learning is growing. The availability of progressive technologies has given rise to new opportunities for distance learning. The result of this technological development is that traditional obstacles, such as adequate printing and despatch departments, are dwindling, and distance learning is becoming a competitive business. There is an urgency for many universities to incorporate virtual curricula into their formal programmes. This paper highlights some of the challenges that universities face when becoming virtual. In the pure sense, “virtual” implies the exclusion of all paper dealings