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of education. This article starts an initial discussion of the theme that might be further explored in
future work.
The research base consists of research papers and conferences on distance education in the Arctic;
government documents and legislation; website information of international and Russian
universities; statistical sources; and mass media including online sources.
To analyze the base of research, the following research methods were used: a comparative analysis
of Arctic and Russian distance education; distance education reports and material contextual
analysis; the legalistic method of analysis; and a comparative quantitative analysis of social and
educational indicators.
Background
Education in the Arctic
The North is a vast area characterized by its remoteness. For a definition based on human
geography, the Arctic would better be termed the remote region occupying the northernmost
expanses of Asia, Europe, and North America (Berman 2013). Huskey and Morehouse (1992)
described a remote region as an area with a unique combination of features. Remote regions are
remote geographically, economically, and politically. They are distant from large, urban industrial
and political centers, and they are sparsely settled. Most of them contain Native or indigenous
populations as well as non-Native immigrants, and they have a mix of traditional and Western
institutions. Typically, they have limited market economies, and they are dependent on natural
resource exports, government transfers, and subsistence activities. The costs of doing public and
private business are high. Important decisions affecting these areas are made in distant metropolitan
centers. These remote regions lack both political autonomy and economic self-sufficiency.
A significant implication of these characteristics is that most of the researchers view remote regions
as problem areas suffering from a complex set of physical, economic, and political limits on their
security, welfare, and autonomy.
Development, in this view, is a process of overcoming obstacles to desired