ODDE and Debts

Abstract

AbstractRecent monetary policies of quantitative easing have produced a cognitive dissonance with the previous “there is no money” mantra and invite us to revisit our understanding of the costs and economics of distance education (DE). It turns out that study of the costs of DE was narrowly rooted in neoclassical microeconomics. Consequently, DE has focused on driving down costs and devolving costs to the students, thereby contributing to increasing student debt. The chapter summarizes the efficiency gains of traditional DE and their changes due to the emerging affordances of information and communication technologies (ICT). The chapter also notes changes in the “macroeconomic weather conditions,” which have led to regarding education less as means to raise productivity than as a center for profit itself. As a consequence, cost efficiency gains have often not been handed to the learner, leading to rises in tuition fees and, consequently, student debt.The second half of the chapter introduces modern money theory (MMT), a different economic paradigm, which suggests that monetary sovereign countries have enough policy space not to focus narrowly on driving down costs. It notably suggests that devolving costs to students turns out, from the MMT perspective, to be misguided. It identifies a policy space which can be used to build in additional resilience, especially required in times of crises.