Editing Distance education (section)

====United States====
[[William Rainey Harper]], founder and first president of the [[University of Chicago]], celebrated the concept of extended education, where a research university had satellite colleges elsewhere in the region.<ref>{{Cite web |title=William Rainey Harper |url=https://president.uchicago.edu/ |access-date=2023-02-17 |website=president.uchicago.edu |language=en}}</ref>

In 1892, Harper encouraged correspondence courses to further promote education, an idea that was put into practice by the University of Chicago, U. Wisconsin, Columbia U., and several dozen other universities by the 1920s.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Levinson |first1=David L |title=Community colleges: a reference handbook |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xrnPJcb7c54C |year= 2005 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn= 1-57607-766-7 |page=69 |access-date=2011-01-23}}</ref><ref>Von V. Pittman, ''Correspondence Study in the American University: A Second Historiographical Perspective,'' in Michael Grahame Moore, William G. Anderson, eds. ''Handbook of Distance Education'' pp 21-36</ref> Enrollment in the largest private for-profit school based in [[Scranton, Pennsylvania]], the [[International Correspondence Schools]] grew explosively in the 1890s. Founded in 1888 to provide training for immigrant coal miners aiming to become state mine inspectors or foremen, it enrolled 2500 new students in 1894 and matriculated 72,000 new students in 1895. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The growth was due to sending out complete textbooks instead of single lessons, and the use of 1200 aggressive in-person salesmen.<ref>Joseph F. Kett, ''Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America'' (1996) pp 236-8</ref><ref>J.J. Clark, "The Correspondence School—Its Relation to Technical Education and Some of Its Results", ''Science'' (1906) 24#611 pp 327-8, 332, 333. Clark was manager of the school's text-book department.</ref> There was a stark contrast in pedagogy:

{{blockquote|The regular technical school or college aims to educate a man broadly; our aim, on the contrary, is to educate him only along some particular line. The college demands that a student shall have certain educational qualifications to enter it and that all students study for approximately the same length of time; when they have finished their courses they are supposed to be qualified to enter any one of a number of branches in some particular profession. We, on the contrary, are aiming to make our courses fit the particular needs of the student who takes them.<ref>Clark, "The Correspondence School" (1906) p 329</ref>}}

Education was a high priority in the [[Progressive Era]], as American high schools and colleges expanded greatly. For men who were older or were too busy with family responsibilities, night schools were opened, such as the [[YMCA]] school in Boston that became [[Northeastern University]]. Private correspondence schools outside of the major cities provided a flexible, focused solution.<ref>Kett, ''Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties,'' p 240</ref> Large corporations systematized their training programs for new employees. The National Association of Corporation Schools grew from 37 in 1913 to 146 in 1920. Private schools that provided specialized technical training to everyone who enrolled, not just employees of one company, began to open across the nation in the 1880s. Starting in Milwaukee in 1907, public schools began opening free vocational program.<ref>{{cite book|author=William Millikan|title=A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903–1947|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GseChEHIysAC&pg=PA60|year=2003|publisher=Minnesota Historical Society Press|pages=60–61|isbn=978-0-87351-499-6}}</ref>