Apple is looking to infiltrate the education institutions in the United States by slowly increasing its offerings and its availability in the form of the iTunes University which is a collection of lectures from colleges and receives not only America but around the world.
There’s more than 600 schools that post information to iTunes University and Apple now says it has over 250,000 classes that are available to students and, this is bringing up a debate about what exactly is being taught to students through iTunes University because it is not just an American institution anymore. Case in point would be open University which is a distance learning school based in Britain announced recently that it had seen more than 10 million downloads from iTunes to students of its lectures.
Will we see such debatable topics as history being questioned and other sciences because not every country shares the same view as the United States?
Apple’s iTunes is in direct competition with YouTube.edu and looks to take control of the online learning phenomenon. This is also caused heartburn for companies such as Phoenix online and others who had been monopolizing the need for nontraditional students to attend classes online and pursue online degrees.
But, Apple is not doing this just to increase knowledge around the world without making a hefty profit and without strings. By putting itself in such a position it is integrating itself with people who will go on to earn degrees and are becoming familiar with their software in the process.
This scenario has worked for Apple in the past because it is the same concept that used in the early days to have a trade school systems and become an important part of learning experience. This tactic is no different than Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
With control over such a vast library of educational knowledge and alliances with major universities around the world, Apple can position itself into a very powerful political entity as well. It is common knowledge that educational institutions and politics are entwined because the future leaders are usually the ones that are there in the institutions.
This war in the educational system and online distance learning is just another area of a broader war that is going on between Microsoft and Apple and also includes other players such as Google and Yahoo. Each company is positioning itself to take full management of the Internet as we know it.
