Victor Ngo works long hours and spends more than half of the year on the road. Yet competitive pressures and ever-expanding job responsibilities mean the Singapore-based audit manager for U.S. bank Citigroup must constantly upgrade his business acumen. Even a grueling international travel schedule fails to provide a safe haven from further study. So last year, realizing he could no longer delay the inevitable, Ngo enrolled in an MBA program.

But not for Ngo a weekly round of lectures and lessons, crammed into the end of a tiring workday.

Instead, the banker chose distance learning, through Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, as his mode of study. "With my work schedule, I couldn't have done it any other way," he says. An on-campus degree would require his attendance at class two or three times a week, a time commitment he simply could not afford. Doing so once every few weeks, as his work schedule permits, is a lot more manageable. Self-paced study allows Ngo to focus on his work when he needs to, and to study when he is free to concentrate.

Not surprisingly, he is sold on the concept. "A traditional on-campus program just doesn't offer the kind of convenience and flexibility that distance learning does," he says.

A growing band of Ngo's time-constrained, knowledge-hungry peers agree. Heavy-duty work commitments are forcing executives — especially those in professions such as finance, law, management and IT, where self-improvement is almost mandatory these days — to study at their own pace, in their own place and on their own time.

Once considered the backwater of academic endeavor, distance learning is booming. Universities and education centers in the region report a 20 to 30 percent annual increase in their post-graduate distance learning enrolment in the last two years. One of them, The Open University of Hong Kong, the first school in the SAR to offer distance learning, saw its enrollment grow more than six times to 26,000 in the last decade.

Global Learning
Ten years ago, only a handful of universities in Asia — mainly those serving students spread across the vast distances of Australia — offered distance learning. Most institutions in Asia were easily accessible to the public, so there was little need for people to learn from afar.

The rise of a global education network has changed all that. Eyeing an entrepreneurial opportunity, in the 1990s many Western universities set up distance programs to address overseas demand for course places that could not be met at home. To do this, they often forged alliances with schools from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to New Delhi, all designed to offer their prestigious programs — culturally adjusted to suit the regional business environment — both online and in classrooms. Before long, distance learning became not just mainstream, but downright desirable.

Increasingly, these partnerships are multilateral. In March last year, Philippines-based System Technology Institute (STI) started an online education unit, partnering with 11 universities in the U.K., U.S., Canada and Australia, to cater to busy working executives. This network means a student sitting in the Philippines can undertake an MBA degree from the University of Surrey in the U.K., complete with tutorial support and student interaction from STI. The Informatics Group's Center for Opening Learning in Singapore and the NIIT Online Learning Center in India offer similar setups.

Some schools go a step further. In June, Deakin University, The Open University of Hong Kong, The Open University of the UK and Canada's Athabasca University formed an alliance that allows students to participate in virtual study groups and take courses offered at each other's colleges — and receive full credit for them.

"The initiatives will give distance education students wider study options, and access to courses and resources that are not available in their own schools," says Lindsay MacKay, a professor at Deakin University. "They will give students the opportunity to interact and network with their peers from overseas, a feature that is highly prized among our post-graduate students, many of whom are executives of multinational companies," he says. What's more, the alliance members are working to develop international MBA programs to meet the needs of global managers, MacKay adds.

New Groove
Such initiatives have revolutionized distance learning. In the past, the typical distance learner lived in a remote location, received his course materials by post and mailed his assignments to the school. He was pretty much on his own. Today, a distance learner more likely lives in the city and downloads her course materials from the Internet. She enjoys a world of options. At the click of a mouse, she can interact with professors and classmates via emails, messaging, chat-rooms, threaded discussions, bulletin boards, file sharing and videoconferencing — and gain access to E-libraries and E-databases.

If she feels lonely and wants companionship, she can attend lectures at a local education center and afterward meet up with classmates to discuss assignments and group projects. "It's a blended, mixed delivery," says Terry Hilsberg, CEO of Hong Kong-based NextEd, a supplier of computer systems for E-learning. "In today's breed of distance education, you get the technology to study by yourself if you wish, or you get the face-to-face element if you want human interaction. Distance learning is multifaceted and offers people choices," he says.

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