The impact of electronic commerce on study programmes. The modernization of higher education, innovations and social dimension

Abstract

In a social and economic environment, knowledge and skills acquired by highereducation have become increasingly important (European Commission 2010). Expandingthe higher education opportunities in a major part of the society has so far become a socialnecessity. Lately, the concept of e-commerce in the curricula, and the social dimension(social inclusiveness) are the centre of important policies on the national and internationallevel. It has been affirmed that the social dimension of higher education primarily consistsof offering the members of a society the opportunity to participate in higher education.Universities play a key role in the future of Europe and in the orientation of theeconomy and society towards knowledge. Particularly, higher education institutions need toopen flexible programmes, and find more ways to increase the number of the students inneed thereby raising their total number of the students. The flexibility of higher educationis also extended by the development of new technologies such as e-learning. Computernetworks and digital technology are widely used in e-commerce. The combination ofhuman intelligence and the high speed of computers has enabled the effectiveness ofcommercial activities. All the processes of negotiation, signing of contracts, ordering andaccepting products are done by computers which are connected to the network. This hasthus created new problems of consumer protection and intellectual property issues.In order to protect the copyrights and in order to stimulate the development ofe-commerce, we should include in the curricula of higher education studies the principlesfor the protection of intellectual property and key points of the copyright law inaccordance with the network computer technological developments and their applications.Many countries offer two study cycles as a sensible contribution for the flexibility ofstudies. This offering provides the opportunity to take a bachelor diploma and then enterinto the work market, or to further their education with a master's programme. Half ofthe countries do not show any relationship between the employer and higher educationalinstitutions, thus encouraging the flexibility of study.