VIRTUAL REALITY: DISTANT LEARNING IN INFORMATION SOCIETY

Abstract

Due to current socio-cultural transformations, the system of national higher education has significantly reduced its effectiveness, which is indirectly prooved by numerous international ratings, where Russian universities keep far leading positions. Many attempts of the authorities to strengthen the financing of concrete Russian universities in the beginning of the XXI century were not successful and merely pushed aside the moment when it became obvious that the approaches used were not efficient to ensure the competitiveness of national education in the context of increasing globalization. In higher education system, the gap between the high-speed flow of information in online-education sector (distance education) and the slow passage of time in the traditional educational process is rapidly increasing. Currently, one of the possible alternatives for the development of education is lifelong learning, which is based on the development of distance (virtual) technologies. The paper discusses the ontological features of distance education, highlighted its positive and negative characteristics. The author highlights that modern education is a process and the result of mastering the knowledge and skills acquired in the context of the achievements of modern science and practical activity of people. It is revealed that in modern conditions, as a result of the lack of synchrony and balance between the virtual and real sectors of higher education, there can be a de-synchronization of the ontology of education. The paper explains that a complete transfer of education to the virtual area will lead not only to a serious deterioration in quality, but also to destructive changes in education as an institution aimed at the reproduction of society. The author makes conclusion that, in accordance with the trends of the world economy, national higher education will experience a shift in favor of a product with «growing surplus value», which will lead to the inevitability of high-tech, high-value, competitive higher education and low-cost depreciate «higher education», aimed at supporting the production of cheap uncompetitive labor, which is unclaimed outside the domestic market.