ABSTRACT
The transformation of the education sector is analysed within the context of the evolving global economy, the development of new communication services and the growth of knowledge businesses. The emergence of a new turbulent phase in the global economy is seen as likely to trigger the absorption of much of the education sector into a new industry, the Experience Industry. This new Industry, encompassing other virtualising sectors, such as entertainment and tourism, and relying extensively on tele-service manufacturing, will form the basis of new international markets. The opportunities that could be created by a UK Experience Industry are immense with wide-ranging prospects for co-operative forms of global wealth creation.

Introduction
We are living through a technological and social revolution driven by increasing communications, IT and new interdependencies in global competition. No economy, organisation or individual can side-step the resulting forces for change now sweeping back and forth across the world; they have been created by everyone; they are being fed by everyone; they are affecting everyone. They will take out the old and let in the new.

The education sector is one that has remained relatively stable for many decades. It is now about to face the full brunt of a global maelstrom driven by IT. This is because the education sector, in most advanced economies, has held a near-monopoly on that important middle ground which separates work and play, a ground which will quake as new communications and IT markets erupt.

As this revolution gathers pace, the distinction between work and play will largely disappear. Teleworking and Inter networking already give clear indications of the way communications can change old ways and modes. The very concept of a distinct and separate education sector will correspondingly become tenuous as community and customer requirements begin to undermine current frameworks and institutions, which are fast becoming unworkable. Organisations designed to cope with stable environments and limited flows of information are finding it increasingly difficult to cope. The assumptions on which such organisations are based no longer 'fit reality' [Drucker 1994].

The emergence of a new turbulent phase in the global economy is likely to trigger absorption of much of the education sector into a new industry, the Experience Industry. This will encompass other virtualising sectors, such as entertainment and tourism, and rely extensively on tele-service manufacturing, to form the basis of new international markets. The opportunities that could be created by the birth of the Experience Industry are immense with wide-ranging prospects for co-operative forms of global wealth creation.

Meltdown: Beginnings of a New Phase
Institutions are having to become increasingly fluid, disorganised, agile, and obsessively customer-facing in order to maintain direction and survive the buffeting of the 'nanosecond nineties'. The growing uncertainties and shortening time scales in the global economy are defeating centralised organisations and structures in all their varied forms - economic, organisational, social, managerial or technological [Handy 1990, Drucker 1993]. Centralised control and management can no longer handle the vast, and increasingly, rapid information flows whilst also realising the required reflexive local decision-making processes which are fundamentally necessary [Morton 1991]. Emerging organisational forms, akin to ameobic flexi-structures, by their very nature, are more resilient able to continually adjust to the new economy. The first few decades of the next century will be ones in which the entire global system will make an almost complete transition into incessant turbulence. It is during this period when the transition from the Information Society to the Experience Society will occur and new industries will be born.

In this transitional phase, unstable organisations will melt down and the raw material (people, money and resources) will metamorphose to many smaller organisations - many of which will be virtual. The telecommunications industry is typical of those industries that are already caught up in the initial wave of global meltdown. Public telephone utilities, with an established national monopoly, are being transformed into large numbers of small, but highly competitive, customer-oriented units. Technologies are converging and competitors are rushing into new markets at breakneck speed. Further waves of meltdown are beginning to engage as different sectors sense imminent collisions. The engagement cannot be avoided as it is no longer possible to operate in isolation; everything is beginning to communicate.

Hybridisation of the Education Sector
The education sector will be typical of organisations caught in the second wave of meltdowns. Just as optical fibre, radio, satellite, and digital technologies stimulated the fragmentation of the IT market, the education sector meltdown is being prompted by the availability of communication and information. The education sector will no longer be constrained by distance, time, and country, and will evolve to become a truly international activity. As a result it will lose its monopolies and will therefore have to restructure and reinvent itself as a new, training, learning and creativity sector emerges. This new sector, like all others emerging during the global transition [Turner and Hodges 1992] will be a hybrid, intimately mixed, intertwined and interconnected with many others.

The onset of a micro-hybridisation in education can also be seen with the proliferation of courses, through modularisation, which allows the synthesis of previously separate subjects to meet specific industry, business and lifestyle needs. Over the past few years we have witnessed the emergence of a range of hybrid subjects such as biochemistry, geophysics, ecopolitics, mechatronics and sociolinguistics, to name but a few.

In many technology areas the half life of much of the material in university degrees is already less than three years. Gone are the days of going to school and then university, finding a job - educated for life. Life-long learning has now become a necessity [eg Spoonley 1994]. The meltdown of the education sector has started at the higher and further education level and can be expected to propagate down the age scale. Computer and communication power in the home is already introducing a significant divide - the lesson, museum, library on a CD at affordable prices are with us already. These developments have pushed the education sector to the verge of an extensive macro hybridisation process. For example, previously distinct sectors, such as education and entertainment, have spawned the new 'edutainment` sector, fed by waves of new consumer electronic product and software package offerings. Even traditionally stable topic domains such as mathematics and the classics will see radical change through increasingly capable visualisation, modelling and animation techniques created to excite the individual learner.

Economic and Social Imperative
The developed economies have reached a point where many basic industries are being disrupted by global competition. Numerous 'tiger` economies in the developing world are sustaining growth rates which the advanced economies have rarely achieved. By the end of the decade, the GDP per capita of the more advanced of these 'tigers' will be comparable with those of the US and UK. Once this happens we shall see an escalation in the mobility of economic activity across international borders. Prospects for traditional industries and the old ways of doing in advanced economies are bleak. New forms of industry need to be created and seeded quickly to form the basis of super-advanced economies, operating at much higher speed. It is our contention that the basis of the super-advanced economy will rely initially on a synthesis of manufacturing and servicing to create a tele-service-manufacturing sector, capable of tele-exporting within global tele-markets.

For the industrialised nations of the West to remain prosperous radically new flexi-forms of economic activity are required. These will have to supplant the current activities being copied and adopted by the newly industrialising countries. Such countries, intent on achieving top economic performance are installing new infrastructures. They have recognised that a key facility to realise their future is the advanced communication network designed to leapfrog many of the stages which have taken the Western economies about 200 years to develop. In effect the stage is being set for a global maelstrom in which rapid intensification of competition will be the day-by-day norm and processes of wealth redistribution will be fast. This will be facilitated by advanced and extensive communications infrastructure. In short - the future is about access to information: any time, anywhere, up to date, relevant, in any form, presented in the right format and at the right price.

Integrating the Learning Structure
New forms of economic activity must offer a competitive advantage over those already present in the global market. If they do not, the highly connected global market will react within days, hours, minutes, or seconds, and by-pass them. The requirement for new forms of activity indicate that advanced economies must invest new learning skills in their peoples. A super-advanced economy will only work if it is super-creative and able to market and sell its creations rapidly. Economic activity relying on the deployment of unskilled labour is extremely unlikely to form the basis of healthy and sustainable social structures capable of withstanding the incessant pounding of future global market forces. Unskilled, low cost, low value-add labour markets will be decimated and may lead to the formation of economic and knowledge ghettos, locked out from global participation and society. The prospect for the formation of a permanent underclass is real.

The requirement is for new forms of rapid and high density learning, education and training in support of the new rapid creativity industries, many of which may be in the home [Gray et al 1993]. It therefore follows that the education and training sectors need to be transformed into all-pervasive boundary-crossing learning and creativity vortices. Such vortices, and their associated perpetual dynamism are needed to support and fuel creativity in the new, and very volatile business communities. For such a system to work there will have to be far greater integration with, and support from, the disorganising business community of a super-advanced economy.

Future economies cannot afford for the learning and creativity sector to be ring-fenced and separate from the rest of society in the way it is today. The learning and creativity structure of super-advanced economies will need to permeate and be every aspect of the entire society and attempt to embrace all of the people (young, ageing and aged) all of the time. Since many of the newly emerging competing economies are geared up with exceptionally young and massive populations, it will become essential for super-advanced economies to develop and tap into the skills of every citizen. Super-advanced economies cannot afford to sideline their citizens on the basis of age or apparent ability; everyone must be enabled and given the opportunity to contribute.

Telecommunications & Competition
The future of the global economy depends fundamentally on the ability to transfer and process vast amounts of information across geographical borders, markets and organisations [Reich 1991]. The capability to do this has grown with developing information, communication and teleportation technologies. Teleportation (telepresence) enables creativity and choice to multiply without bound and will underpin the advanced co-operative forms of global wealth creation as they evolve.

The ability to communicate across the planet in an instant has enabled people and organisations to co-ordinate faster and increasingly complex activities in diverse markets and locations. The increased competition and co-operation engendered by the need for the internationalisation of business has stimulated extensive restructuring. Telecommunications has already become the primary enabler and conduit for the propagation and stimulation of co-operation and competition. It's inherent ability to act as this conduit will increase as the ability to combine different forms of media increases.

Monopolies in Education
The education sector has evolved to encompass a range of monopolies and relatively slow processes. Apart from what is now stirring in the global economy, challenges to such monopolies have been largely unheeded. The UK education sector is likely to experience significant transformation, particularly in view of the high levels of knowledge and innovation that now reside outside education in the so-called knowledge businesses [Hague 1991]. The education sector is losing, or may have already lost, its monopoly on knowledge. In the UK for example all the university research programmes are totally overshadowed and largely outclassed by the industrial sector. Some individual companies already invest more in R&D than the UK's EPSRC for example. In Japan, the USA and some European countries the ratio of industrial to university expenditure and achievement is even greater. This trend is compounded by the rising levels of investment necessary in the more sophisticated technology areas. The education sector can no longer afford to enter, keep up and meaningfully contribute.

The knowledge businesses, with their lifelong learners, have an important advantage over traditional educational institutions because the environment in which such businesses operate has compelled them to develop capabilities of looking forwards and doing. Knowledge businesses are coming to see themselves and their customers in partnerships in which both partners play the roles of educators and learners; this is a reality which is presently alien to the education sector. However, it is a sustainable model for the future. The integration of education, training, knowledge and business sectors is essential for their mutual survival and prosperity. It is likely to be a case of "One for and all for one - or die".

The impending transformation of education and training will bring numerous opportunities, both to those active in building the new learning and creativity flexi-structures and to the millions of customers worldwide waiting to be offered new tele-learning experiences in and from the UK.

Virtualising Education
Developments in IT, such as multi-media, and increasing levels of communication will enable the Information Society. In the so-called information age, 'managers must prepare to abandon everything they know' [Drucker 1992]; the same may hold for teachers, educationalists, researchers, students and policy-makers. Maintaining the status-quo is not an option.

Numerous corporations and businesses have already become defunct or moribund through their adherence to the markets and practices that made them wealthy in the past. In contrast, others are rapidly changing in structure and function as extended enterprises and virtual organisations emerge [Lyons and Gell 1994]. These virtual organisations are not defined by physical space, buildings and offices, but consist of collaborative international networks linking people through integrated computer and communications technologies, such as the Integrated Digital Services Network (ISDN). The ISDN [eg Heldman 1988] is now ubiquitous in the UK and available on demand throughout an increasing number of countries worldwide. It makes new modes of learning, working and operation possible across a broad range of organisations and activities. Significant uptake of ISDN services is evident as tariffs tumble with bandwidth and distance disconnecting from the communications cost equation. Virtual organisations, which are fast replacing traditional organisations, may become dominant. Such forms may be enthusiastically accepted by tomorrow's customers and used and developed in exciting ways which none of us today can imagine or predict. Virtual organisations are more about self-organisation and emergent behaviour than planning and prediction.

Partnerships Galore!
A feature of telecommunications markets that is often overlooked is that there is no new money available. Society at large will only invest in information technology (IT) and telecommunications by diverting funds from existing activities. Beyond industry and commerce, the primary moneys that can be tapped by communications service providers, hundreds of which have now entered the UK market, include expenditure on physical travel, entertainment, education and health care. In each of these sectors the current expenditure is vast. For example, the total for general education and company training in the UK are #163#27Bn and #163#35Bn respectively; traffic jams account for some #163#15Bn and computer games another #163#2Bn (and growing). Diverting a modest percentage of this expenditure into telecommunications-based activities would enable considerable national waste to be avoided in terms of time, energy and raw materials. Given the imperative for economic transformation, the case for implementing teleworking, tele-teaching and other such activities are reasonably clear cut. It is the prospects for education and training at a distance, supported by numerous partnerships, which provide a tangible starting point for transforming the education sector.

Engineering Education
To appreciate the challenges and opportunities facing the education sector, it is instructive to examine the case of engineering education. This sector is one of the fastest moving and is in the vanguard of those promoting technological, managerial and operational change and is thus near ideal in serving to illustrate some general principles.

As a result of accelerating technological change, engineering education is coming under increasing pressure to be more responsive to the needs of industry and society, while at the same time becoming more cost effective. In the UK this is posing significant difficulties because there are no universities with sufficient financial and people resources to offer leading-edge engineering education across all fronts. It is not unusual, for example, to find departments consisting of only 20 - 50 staff trying to teach across a rapidly expanding range of topics at levels ranging from first degree through to postgraduate research.

The pressures are now approaching or have exceeded a level that challenges the very existence of these small departments. The key problem is the lack of critical mass that would allow staff to specialise and treat topics in sufficient depth, while at the same time keeping up to date, supervising research students and developing new courses and teaching material. Given the earlier discussion, it is clear that the pressures will not recede and it is therefore inevitable and essential that a more productive form of resource utilisation is realised.

Due to various factors, it is unlikely that critical mass departments will be realised through the collocation or coalescing of existing units across the UK. The danger is that the global economy is fast unleashing forces which will destroy departments, colleges and universities in their present form. With staff numbers and funding paired to the bone, there is no visible slack and the education system is becoming increasingly vulnerable. There is, however, an alternative approach to achieving order-of-magnitude jumps in the efficiency of educational resource utilisation and the stimulation of new creativities. IT can bring students and teachers together for lectures, tutorials and one-to-one interactions. It is also possible to conduct many experiments on the screen, whilst visualisation techniques can greatly aid the understanding of mathematics and physical processes through simulation and modelling. Such an approach could revolutionise teaching, training, learning and research.

The Library - Museum - Gallery
There are now over 2000 libraries and information sources accessible on line via Internet. More than 22,000 CD titles are available giving access to all the classics (2000 on one CD - the complete works of William Shakespeare for 2.5p), Sandiego Zoo, The Natural History Museum, National Gallery, Encyclopaedias and much more. Every day more material becomes available: the data and information base is growing.

In the USA the Library of Congress has some 22 - 24 M books (estimated from the km of book shelving - no one knows the real number!) Each year it has to accommodate a further 3.5 km of new volumes. As the sum total of human information is now estimated to be doubling every 3.5 years, it is clear that this trajectory, this paper based technology, is intractable. Dickensian libraries just cannot be sustained - they are approaching the end of their real usefulness. Much of the time the information is out of date, outmoded, disorganised and irretrievable. Costs of physical search, even if the existence of required books and documents can be extablished, are becoming too expensive. But the new electronic libraries can do all this in seconds and at low cost.

The only useful feature of a paper based library, museum or gallery is serendipity. The chance happening upon something you were not looking for, that cross correlation of thoughts and ideas, the anticipatory, the reflective. Electronic libraries have some way to go to realise such a facility, but electronic agent technology is getting there. It is only a question of time before we see our own intelligence augmented by software agents that are anticipatory and pro-active on our behalf. Even the limited window, the (CRT) screen inherited from Radar and TV technology, could see an expansion to a useful size so that multiple documents and pages can be viewed simultaneously. Then the libraries of old will have been eclipsed.

There is still more to come. Our current paradigm of the printed page is a fundamentally limiting technology. Electronic documents can be built in hyper space with layer upon layer of detail, cross linking and adaptability.

Perhaps most of all the ability to include video, sound, animation, modelling and interactivity will realise the most important leap forward. Beyond this, the technologies of telepresence and VR will add the next layer of benefit as we move from the information to the experience world.

Remembering the old Chinese proverb:
I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand

Perhaps we can now contemplate the full significance of the changes ahead. Interestingly, in the stages of the current phase of education since the industrial revolution, we have moved through all three lines of this proverb. We started with words, then included pictures, and finally experimentation. After all many of our traditional schools and universities have a demonstrator bench located right up front. Fifty years ago lectures and classes were commonly supported by physical demonstration and 'hands on' sessions. Sadly this is rarely the case today - and we understand less as a result. The reasons for this backward step can be found in the exponential growing curriculum, the tightening economy, the fixed education time frame, and static mind sets. The salvation lies with the technology itself - IT will allow experiments on the screen on a grand scale.

In the USA and Europe there are degree courses based on the personal computer (PC) as the primary tool. To attend without access to a PC would be the equivalent of not having a pen or paper on a conventional course. We may expect a move to a must-have-PC-to-do-degree and must-have-PC-skills-to-do-job environment.

Some Questions
• If the concept of using telecommunication services to assist in the training of people is accepted, a range of basic issues can be explored. For example:
• Why do we have dozens of lecturers in numerous colleges and universities delivering substantially the same material? If only students and staff could be teleported to common work spaces for interaction, valuable time could be released for other activities, such as research and consultancy, which can generate new knowledge, understanding and revenues.
• Why should a student attend just one university? Why not access hundreds of different specialists, units and centres? Why not gain from the best of the best across the globe? Why not choose the inspirational or sympathetic or understanding teachers in all topics?
• Why does lecturing have to be carried out in real-time? Why not access interactive multimedia databases around the world and tap into the best lectures at any time of day or night?
• Why should UK students be constrained to attend UK schools, colleges and universities?
• What will happen to national curricula when customers choose to build individualised courses engineered to suit their individual lives, companies and developments?
• Why should educational establishments invest in new buildings if their customer bases are extending globally and can be accessed through the telecommunication system? Does a college or university need a Hall of Residence if its customers never physically come into the country?
• Why are educational establishments building new laboratories when state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment could be programmed, accessed and shared as virtual resources?
• Why are educational establishments building new libraries when state-of-the-art libraries are now electronic and on line?
• When will we see the 24-hour open-every-day virtual school or training enterprise offering simulation technologies as teaching aids and computer-based self-assessment facilities?
• How can traditional and virtual approaches complement each other so that people, groups and communities can benefit?
• When will enterprises begin tele-exporting educational and cultural experiences to our global partners?
• When will the unhelpful distinctions between arts and sciences be abandoned? Is there not scope for teaching and research, for example, in choreography, acoustics and dynamics in the design VR offices, laboratories and theatres?
• Can students, working as company associates, contribute to the design and construction of real systems, such as VR products in virtual universities, as part of a synthesised process of teaching, training, learning and experience acquisition?

From the point of view of the national economy, the above transitions represent a significantly improved utilisation of national resources and directly assist in developing competitiveness.

Virtual University: For Real
Experimental systems in the US and UK have demonstrated that it is possible to teach and interact with students at a distance using telecommunications and IT. In Scotland, night school classes have been conducted over the telephone by broadcasting to over 250 students from one institution. The Open University in the UK has been an unparalleled success with mature students attending courses by way of television for over 20 years.

The distributed university using electronics to teleport students, teachers and experience explorers to the virtual lecture theatre may increase overall efficiency. The notion that 1000 students need to be co-ordinated to meet at the same physical place at the same time to watch one overloaded person copy material from a book onto a blackboard and allow it to be recopied (with all the mistakes) into 1000 separate notebooks is not cost effective. However, this is a fact of life for most students. Far better that students are treated to individual expert lectures, by specialists and inspirationalists in each topic, that are later backed up by local or remote tutors, mentors, counsellors and guides.

Coming together electronically is not only possible for staff and student, but also for people working in industry. In industry there is an increasing demand for first and higher degrees and a need for refresher courses and higher levels of technological understanding. As businesses speed up and living and working become more hectic and complex, perpetual learning will become the norm. However, company staff are often too busy to spare time to travel to a college or university. If they could attend at a distance and mix and match lectures and tutorials to create a learning portfolio of their choice, then everyone would benefit. BT is pioneering this concept for its people by running Masters Degree courses, with interactive lectures, across continents using ISDN services. To date these have seen groups of students gathered together physically in common locations to access each class.

The above represents a distributed, rather than virtual university. However, in 1994/5 BT opens the first Virtual University. Classes start with students distributed across the planet in 6 different countries and in over 50 different locations. None of the students will be co-located in the same physical space - only in information and experience space. Lectures, tutorials and experiments are being presented and prepared by a raft of university and industrial organisations world wide. As far as is humanly possible these students will get and have access to the best of the best.

Virtual University: Future Developments
Numerous simulation and demonstration packages that allow students to enter the world of animation are being developed. Some multimedia products, such as interactive theatre, are already on the market. Electronic libraries and databases are available over Internet. Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are now available for applications ranging from finance through to drug administration and decision support for military and commerce. In medicine, AI systems will seek out and gather the latest information, correlate symptoms, causes, diagnostic accuracy and treatment and thereby provide a new tool not only for the rapid identification and treatment of problems but also for learning. AI systems can realise software agents that roam databases and libraries at request, assembling and formatting information for us so that we can devote a higher proportion of our time to the productive process of solving problems and making decisions. Technologies are available for electronic publication and dissemination of literature, videos, ideas, research results and 'on screen` experiments. Experimentation and interaction with simulations on the screen are widening the scope for rapid assimilation and analysis of complex problems, leaving expensive physical laboratories and swathes of national curricula to become part of history. Computer-based products are available which allow children to visit virtual museums and landscapes and make individual video-diaries of their visit. Products are available which are exciting and which allow and encourage students of all ages to enjoy learning.

In short, all of the base technologies for virtualising education are available. What is required is the resource, the willingness and the drive to implement and commence trials. What is required is an ethos of "Do and Discover". If the education sector, perhaps in partnership with companies, does not rise to the challenge and initiate solutions to its systemic crisis, the whole sector may atrophy. Numerous businesses worldwide are intent on grabbing the significant market opportunities which are materialising; the customers will be easily tempted. The UK and US markets are already being populated with a diversity of new teaching and training units; some companies have even set up their own universities. Universities and companies are coming into the UK through the communication system direct to the customers.

All citizens need to find ways of learning, creating and selling new skills and abilities which will help them in this brave new world [Marshall and Tucker 1992]. It is unlikely that an economy will be effective unless it rises to the challenge of creating and harnessing a distributed learning and creativity infrastructure using the technology and know-how that is already available. This challenge must be met if an economy is to tap successfully into the energies and enthusiasm of its people.

Teleportation: The Key to the Experience Industryb
As we move into the 21st century we can look forward to a world where the global sharing of information and ability will become the norm through telecommunications linking centres of need and expertise. Teleportation of sight, sound and touch will bring about a dramatic reduction in the time to disseminate information and experience, which in turn will impact significantly on established means of production. Although we can also expect new social forces which may be difficult to direct [Ravitch 1993], they are likely to be relatively benign compared with economic seizures which may arise as a result of failure to participate in global markets. Until more extensive forms of co-operation develop in the integrating global economy, the implications of not sustaining a high level of national creativity and competitiveness are chilling.

A clear challenge for traditional universities is that of revenue generation. Although their Business and Management Schools, amongst others, have accumulated much expertise in this area, there is now the challenge of attracting new customers whilst also creating new resources, skills and experience. The shortage of workstations, personal computers and terminals in education establishments is clearly a problem. For example, in the UK in 1994 the average number of students per workstation in educational establishments is: universities 20, new universities 11 and colleges 15. Even the top average score of 11 students competing for each workstation means that on average each student has at most about 1 hour of access per day. The average ratings do, however, hide the fact that colleges of further education are virtualising very fast and, unlike any university, there already there are establishments with significant student populations with student:workstation ratios of almost

1:1
Despite these uneasy figures, the overall challenges are actually eased by the globalisation process which initiated the challenges in the first place. The emergence of the global learning enterprise extends the potential customer base of a learning structure from perhaps a few million in the local or national market to many billions in the global market. Global partnerships can be formed to share resources, skills and experience and extend the reach into new cultures and markets.

The creativity enterprise, encompassing a range of virtual sub-enterprises (companies, schools, colleges, universities, workshops, laboratories, theatres, sport arenas, etc) will integrate with numerous organisations and communities. The creativity enterprise can in no sense be a stand-alone organisation trapped in a stand-alone sector.

As the customer base of a creativity enterprise increases, the time scale for which a typical customer may be engaged may shorten. The concept of a school or university having a monopoly over a customer for a period of, say, three or four years will come to be viewed as absurd. Busy people may use the services of a learning company for perhaps one or two hours and then move on to another for further sessions at times convenient to them. Thus, over a lifetime a customer may accumulate thousands of different learning sessions from thousands of different people and organisations. Under such dynamic conditions the basic concepts of 'term-time` and a standardised `qualification', such as a degree, may break down. Standardised qualifications and standardised curricula will have little or no meaning within the 24-hour 365-day Experience Industry, where differentiation will be the norm.

These developments, compounded by those in other sectors, such as tourism and entertainment, constitute the emergence of a widespread phenomenon within the global economy: the drive to acquire experience. The experience may be work- or play-related and will be delivered by a new industry, the Experience Industry. The Experience Industry, implicitly dependent on communications and information technology, will stimulate the formation of new international markets and open wide-ranging possibilities for co-operative wealth creation. These new markets are now waiting to be created.

It is because the education sector straddles that traditional middle ground between work and play, and because virtualisation increasingly mixes sectors, that education is likely to serve as the focal point for a new wave of economic transformations.

Summary
The transformation of the education sector has been analysed within the context of the evolving global economy, the development of new communication services and the growth of knowledge businesses. A new turbulent phase in the global economy has been cited as the likely trigger for much of the education sector to be absorbed into a new industry, the Experience Industry. The predicted simultaneous absorption of other virtualising sectors, such as entertainment and tourism, will rely extensively on tele-service manufacturing and will satisfy global market needs for experience. This will lead to the creation of new international markets, serving both to reinforce and increase the level of systemic integration in the global economy. There will be new opportunities which could be created by a UK Experience Industry that are potentially immense with wide-ranging prospects for co-operative forms of global wealth creation.

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