Influence of public funding in Higher Education in the E-learning sector in Europe

The 'Higher Education in Ireland' is facing a rising in student numbers and dwindling resources since the crash in 2008. As the below table shows, it seems that the Higher Education in Ireland is suffering more than Higher Education in other European countries affected by the economic crash.



I am wondering about the impact of the above situation in the e-learning sector in Higher Education in Ireland and the EU. I think that all the Institutes of Technology and Universities in Europe have a LMS (Learning Management System) to support their face to face classes or even to deliver full masters and degrees online, but i doubt that all of them have a professional that can properly administrate that system.

From my point of view, this situation will have two main consequences in the e-learning sector:

1. A fostering in the use of online resources by lecturers in Higher Education, as they face classes with a lot of more students. Some of the lecturers that have never use a LMS in their classes before are pushed to do it to save time and effort and manage to overcome their busy schedules.

2. At the same time, the lack of funding might influence the implementation of LMSs and the recruitment of qualified e-learning professionals that could manage the new tendency.

The challenge for the European Higher Education sectors in countries like Ireland, Spain, Portugal... will be to provide enough professionals that could properly show the right path to all lecturers that struggle with new educational technologies in their classes.

The Higher Education system will need to plan the provision of more degrees and masters in e-learning in all that countries in order to counteract this situation.

Please write your comments and ideas below.