Funding for New Technologies
While basic funding has been reduced in continuing education, adult education and training, there has been increasing support for the use of new learning technologies. This is sometimes done without determining the advantages of using technology or without any provision for comparison between programs using new learning technologies and those that do not.

Funding for new learning technologies tends to be targeted, meaning that it is a priority for educational providers to use a specific technology. What programs are offered and to whom are less important factors than the technology itself.

There are a number of levels of costs for education and training, and new technologies require additional expenditures. Traditional costs for education and training include:

• macro level costs of building and maintaining an educational system;
  
  
• intermediate level costs of operating an educational institution, and of supporting community learning centers and local programs;
  
  
• the costs to a particular provider of offering specific programs or courses to specific populations;
  
  
• costs to the learner for fees, materials, travel to an educational institution, and reduced income if paid employment is curtailed for study time.

The costs of adding new technologies include:

• the cost of national and local infrastructures to support the use of educational technologies (electronic communications and transmission systems);
  
  
• costs to the institution to use these technologies (equipment acquisition, system development, training of staff and faculty);
  
  
• costs to the institution of developing specific programs and courses using learning technology;
  
  
• costs to the learner of obtaining access to these technologies (cost of computers, software, line charges, etc. and/or cost of travel to sites where technologies are available).

Some Examples of Infrastructure Costs
It is difficult to estimate the total cost of establishing the infrastructure that supports new technologies or to determine what proportion of it can be attributed to using new technologies for learning. For example, the Information Highway is used for a wide range of purposes and its development is funded by a broad range of public and private sector investments.

SchoolNet, the computer based communication systems that is expected to be connected to all schools in Canada by 1998, represents an investment by the federal government of $52 million over four years. In addition, there are provincial government investments to provide computers and other technological support systems in schools. In British Columbia, the provincial government is investing $100 million over five years and in New Brunswick, $10.5 million will be invested over five years in TéléEducation New Brunswick, of which $6.1 million is to establish and maintain the technological and organizational infrastructure, and $4.4 million is to support up to 50% of the costs of developing courses for distance education.⁵

The initiative by Stentor, called the Beacon Initiative, to upgrade 80-90% of local telephone networks to broadband lines by 2005 will cost $8-$10 billion.⁶ However, investment in enhanced systems will be based on potential rate of return in accordance with new CRTC policy stipulating that rates for specific services to specific regions be set at cost recovery levels. Unless interventions by government or other agencies subsidize the cost of serving smaller and/or more remote communities, populations that can cover the cost of enhanced service will receive it first, while other communities may not receive it at all or will face considerably higher costs.

The Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education (CANARIE), a federal/industry coalition to explore applications of the new communications and information technologies, projects an investment of about $900 million in public and private sector funds in network upgrading, product development, establishment of a test network, and its own administration.⁷