The role of capitalism and monetary economies is seen as a dominant partner in the process of globalization. The influence of global markets is a powerful determinant of social and educational life. For years the USA has been dominant in this respect. The US economy is by far the single biggest economy in the world. So great is its dominance that one of its states, California, has the fifth biggest economy in the world (when compared with other nation states). American companies have developed what were seen as many of the first global products, for example Coca-Cola, McDonald's fast food, Ford cars, Microsoft software, Nike shoes and Disney media. The Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (2002), has argued that globalization is not a simple spreading of free market ideas and open trade, but rather a process by which the world's most powerful countries help promote unjust rules and regulations that lead to an unfairness and discontent about the process.

The global images of Microsoft in the computing world illustrate how much of the globalization of Internet communication is dominated by American business and culture. These have been closely followed by the taking up of Internet brand names into larger media brand names - for example, America On Line into Time Warner. Many of these companies each have greater wealth than the world's poorest countries.

Since the start of the new millenium some commentators have looked for the increasing importance of other continents to balance the business-driven Internet networks. China and the Far East have grown exponentially. In January 2004 a journalist, Jim Wagner, reported for clickz.com that China had 79.5 million web surfers, and that it had overtaken Japan in terms of its contribution to the total world population using the World Wide Web. But America remained in first position with 165.75 million surfers. Nua.com ran a credible web-based longitudinal market survey of the Internet and web-based products. They have noted that parts of Europe have strengthened their web based competitiveness against the USA. In April 2001 they reported that Sweden and Denmark were better positioned to use Internet-based business transactions and had overtaken the rankings of the USA and the UK. The European Commission is Brussels has been concerned in the past decade to make sure that the countries of the European Union increase their ability to use online resources to make a profitable industry from the new technologies available. The 2006 data from Miniwatts Marketing shows that Internet-user growth was higher in Europe from 2000 to 2005 than in North America, although the latter still had a higher total penetration into the population. The same survey shows very rapid growth in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, but from a much lower starting point than the more prosperous continents.

Higher education has not escaped the pressures of globalization. Although some aspects of education will always remain culturally specific, such as art and language, other disciplines will always remain culturally specific, such as art and language, other disciplines are by their nature international and global in their concerns. For this reason students will be attracted away from the host nation to build their network overseas, adding important educational experience, and for many there is the possibility of adding further language skills to their personal achievements. The English language has evolved as dominant in this respect because it is the primary educational and business language all across the world now.

Mahatma Gandhi University, Shillong, Meghalaya, is such a university which provides online education in this fast moving world where students can enrol online for various certificate, diploma, advanced diploma, graduate and post-graduate degrees. The best part of MGU is that you can take exam on on-demand basis.

Author bio:

Keerti Singh is an educator and teaches english and computer science to school students. She also helps students in taking up courses of their choice at various levels of their education. For more info logon to http://www.mgu.edu.in