Abstract

In the second decade of the new century, digital education has been spreading fast worldwide through the Mooc revolution: massive, open, online access to top quality academic courses. With the sudden lockdown of over 1.4 billion students, e-learning has become the new normal. This article provides an overview of major drivers of changes in public versus private institutions, in Ict giants versus a myriad of ed-tech startups, in traditional Western universities as well as in Asian hybrid new entries. A late comer in the process of digitalization, e-learning is catching up with major industrial sectors such as e-commerce, e-health, fin-tech, fueled by the same factors of success: globalization, scalability, flexibility. In this new environment the future of education will depend on how fast national governments and international authorities will become aware of the new trends and live up to their disruptive innovations