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How a for-profit company is delivering courses from world-renowned universities to desktops in Latin America

By Paul Constance

John Buerkle heads the international operations of UNext, a private company based in Deerfield, Illinois, which owns Cardean University, an online university for business education. Cardean offers courses developed in collaboration with Columbia Business School, Stanford University, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Last year UNext opened a wholly owned subsidiary in São Paulo, Brazil, that currently serves seven Brazilian and multinational businesses.

IDBAmérica: Why do you think Latin America is a good market for UNext?

We’ve always considered international students to be the largest part of our business opportunity. Latin America is completely consistent with our basic premise of offering world-class education to people who otherwise would not have access to it. There are many quality options in Latin America, but overall there are still more people seeking educational solutions than institutions ready to meet their needs. The quality of our partner institutions resonates in Latin America, so we see it as a natural opportunity.

IDBAmérica: What is the profile of the kind of student you hope to attract? Will you be offering individual courses or full degrees?

Our prime prospects are people in their late 20s or early 30s in management-level positions with major companies. We’re focusing on companies that want to help accelerate their employees’ career development through advanced business education. Although we are accredited to grant MBA degrees, we expect near-term demand from corporate customers to be greater for short, specialized courses.

IDBAmérica: What about the language barrier? Will you offer courses in English only?

Initially we will be offering only English-language courses. We will begin to supplement these with native-language tutors and collaborative materials, and, later will offer translated on-screen content in Portuguese and Spanish.

IDBAmérica: Are your courses offered exclusively on the Internet, or do you use local classroom sessions as well?

We have a portfolio of options that we adjust to particular market conditions. In the United States and Europe we are using an almost exclusively online approach. In the rest of the world we’ve found that some on-site component is usually desirable, because the educational paradigm is somewhat more traditional and people place a greater value on face-to-face contact with tutors and fellow students. We’re still working on what the right mix is in Latin America, but in many cases it may include some kind of on-site instruction.

IDBAmérica: What are some of the difficulties you have found in entering markets outside the United States?

The language barrier is a big issue. Then there is the pedagogy. We specialize in problem-centered, active learning, which all of the work of cognitive science in recent decades has demonstrated is clearly the best way of learning. But this approach is based on an implicit assumption of the active student, not just a passive receptor, and students in some countries are not as ready to learn that way.

We’ve also found that we have to correct the misperception that all distance education is the same. Distance education has been around a long time, and people have assumptions about how it works. But we think there are fundamental differences in the quality of what we offer, and our challenge is, how do you get potential customers to appreciate that?

IDBAmérica: Do the relative limits on Internet access and bandwidth in Latin America constrain your ability to function?

Not for now, because most of our customers will access courses by using company-provided Internet access instead of personal home-based connections. And as for bandwidth, we design all our materials, including multimedia, to be deliverable over a standard 28.8 Internet connection, which is the minimum most companies have.

IDBAmérica: Are your products affordable to people in Latin America?

Surprisingly, this has generally not been an obstacle. We’ve found that our pricing represents an excellent value relative to similar quality alternatives–and certainly relative to sending someone to an off-site program, either domestically or abroad. List price for what we call a "mastery course" that requires about 25 to 30 hours of student time is around $500. Volume discounts for companies can bring that down to $325.

Also, companies all over the world recognize the importance of human capital development, so the focus tends to be more on value received than on price.

Date posted: June 2001