E-LEARNING, VIRTUAL LEARNING AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

E-learning opens new possibilities that may enhance the efficiency with which conventional education reaches its objectives. This is reflected in the fact that, in general, the returns to investment in human capital, both at the individual and the social level, are increased with the help of e-learning. Whereas the impact of e-learning on the acquisition of human capital seems, therefore, to be positive, the same cannot be said with the same level of confidence regarding the acquisition of social capital. As it is argued in this paper, the impact of e-learning on social capital at primary education, when developed as a substitute for the conventional school (distant e-learning) may well be negative. Taking into account the importance of some components of social capital with regard to the benefits of education, also from an economic point of view, the introduction of distant e-learning should not be done in an uncritical manner, but after a careful analysis of its impact on social capital. At graduate levels, however, e-learning provides an interesting kind of social capital worth analysing in some more detail.