Good Ole Virtual U
There are no football games or homecoming dances.
Cyberstudents don't have to leave home at all. And universities
across the country are competing to sign them up
by Burney Simpson
Forget smokestack chasing. That's so,
well, 20th century.
In the race for tomorrow's workforce,
states are turning increasingly to the
Internet. Call it cybercompetition.
Schools are going online. Businesses are
logging on to train workers. And
"distance learning" is a hot topic in
academic circles.
Already, the debate is moving beyond
theory to the bottom line. That's because
many states, in putting their colleges and
universities online, are blurring borders
and seeking out-of-state students. They're
offering an attractive option for the time constrained, so-called "nontraditional"
student, a growing constituency in the
higher education marketplace that
includes returning adults, the disabled,
international learners and those who
can't or don't want to travel to campus.
So the race is on at many learning
institutions, which, like some businesses
in the 1990s, are looking to the Internet to
reach consumers — and the revenue they
represent.
If Illinois colleges and universities don't
respond, some argue, this state's students
will go elsewhere. As one professor puts
it: "Say you're an engineer with John
Deere in Peoria, and you need to take
graduate courses for work. What are you
going to do, take an online course
through Stanford or drive two times a
week to the U of I?"
Indeed, this state has been quietly
putting more resources into the development of Internet-based learning throughout its university system. The plan isn't to
replace traditional classroom learning,
but to augment it. Even at that, Illinois
has moved slowly compared to
such aggressive states as California and
Michigan. Nevertheless, supporters say
Illinois is building a more populist foundation that will enable this state's schools
to provide a broad spectrum of classes for
students at all educational levels.
At its December budget meeting, the
state Board of Higher Education
approved more than a dozen projects,
worth $2.1 million, that are designed to
address the development and expansion
of Internet learning. Of course, the state's
new governor, George H. Ryan, will need
to review those projects in preparation for
his first budget message this month. But
the Republican campaigned in support of
the Illinois Century Network, the computer infrastructure or "backbone" of the
state's efforts to link schools, libraries and
businesses for continuing education. And
the higher ed board approved a plan to
spend $93 million over the next three
years to build that network and another
$32 million to $34 million to maintain the
system in the following year.
As its proponents see it, the network
will allow students from across the state
to take courses at home at any Illinois
school — public, private, undergraduate
and graduate. All they'll need is a computer and a modem. "Knowledge is
exploding so rapidly that people need to
keep training to keep their job or to get
their next job," says Burks Oakley II,
director of UI-Online and an associate
vice president for academic affairs at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We're trying to have the breadth
of the entire course list online, from
engineering to medicine to liberal arts to
health care. That's a very different
commitment. That sets us apart."
Competition for Internet class dollars
is getting fierce. Western Governors
University, a consortium of 18 western
states and Guam, opened last September
and officials estimate the system will have
nearly 100,000 students in a decade. It
currently offers online courses from 21
colleges and corporations. Instead of
joining WGU, California began planning
a for-profit virtual university in 1996 to
provide online courses for undergraduates and continuing education for adults.
The old-fashioned term for off-campus
classes, "distance learning," was coined to
describe correspondence courses, usually
vocational, which were offered as much
as a century ago. As technology evolved,
distance learning included courses taught
by audiotape, videotape, conference call
or satellite broadcast television.
But the growth of the Internet and its
commercial cousin, the World Wide Web,
has expanded the education universe.
The advantage of most distance learning
options is that students don't have to be in
the same place at the same time as the
teacher. The Internet takes the concept a
step further. Students are freed to move at
their own pace, as long as they finish a
course within the traditional semester.
More intriguing, the newest "distance
learning" capability enables students to
have greater access to teachers, albeit
through e-mail.
So how does it work? In the recent fall
semester, the three University of Illinois
campuses in Chicago, Urbana-Champaign and Springfield offered 123 online
courses. Classes ranged from nursing to
the Japanese tea ceremony Students
could receive degrees or certification in
eight programs.
The U of I's Oakley estimates that
about 1,300 students took courses online
at the three schools last semester and
22 February 1999 Illinois Issues
another 1,000 took such courses through
community colleges. His goal is 10,000
enrollments in 2001.
Students were able to get a syllabus and
course description and then enroll — all
online. To take a class, they signed on
with a password. For now, many virtual
classes are utilitarian, including a slide
format with bullet points and an accompanying audio track.
The disadvantage of Web learning,
naturally, is the loss of the classroom
experience, the give and take, the social
aspects of college learning. But, teachers
say, taking a course over the Internet
means quiet students can't sit in the back
of the class. Since class discussion and homework is done on
the computer, all students are
required to participate.
"I can get to know students
better online than when I have
three classes with 50 students
and we meet once a week," says
Ray Schroeder, a communications professor on the U of I's
Springfield campus. "The downside is the loss of the culture of
the campus," he says. "But this
is the information age, and
you need continuing education throughout a lifetime."
Even the most gung-ho
supporters of Internet
learning agree that the
virtual university is unlikely
to replace traditional bricks
and mortar. And Illinois
schools still require some personal
interaction between professor and
student in the Internet courses.
Other logistics are being worked
out by the state, and by individual
schools. Should teachers, for example, receive the same pay for an Internet course as for a traditional class?
Who gets the tuition money when a
student takes a course at a school other
than the one he is enrolled in? Who owns
the copyright to an Internet course,
teacher or school?
In most cases, the Board of Higher
Education has deferred to local institutions to set their own policies on these
questions. And most schools already have
rules that can be applied to the Internet.
For now, copyright is being decided on a
case-by-case basis.
There are other, more philosophical
concerns, too. Businesses have begun
contracting with universities to train
employees online, and that's good for
academia's bottom line. But some educators worry the technology may shift control over educational content off-campus.
"Employers have a larger say in designing
the curriculum. That may be a problem in
that their goals tend to be short term,"
says James R. Mingle, executive director
of the National Association of State
Higher Education Executive Officers.
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Others worry about access. What of
those students who can't afford the
$1,000 or more for a personal computer? Do they end up
with an inferior college education?
Schroeder, for one, admits cost remains a
problem. But he notes computers are getting cheaper and more people are buying
them. And many schools and libraries
offer free use of the machines.
Still, programs are moving forward in
other states. The privately owned, for-
profit University of Phoenix, for example, earned $391 million last year and
now counts 56,000 students. Nine percent
of its degree-seeking students are getting
that degree online. The University of
Michigan offers a degree in the Sociology
of the Automotive Industry. And the
University of Georgia has designed a
master's program for the accounting firm
Pricewaterhousecoopers that includes
online and site learning.
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And Illinois has stepped up the pace in
the face of such offerings. The move to
upgrade its Web presence isn't just due to
competition for students. Research
schools like the U of I fight to attract the
best and brightest talent for their
staffs. The university likely still
smarts from the 1993 loss of Mark
Andreessen, who created of the
user-friendly Mosaic Internet
browser while he was an undergraduate at the Urbana-Champaign
campus. In 1994, Andreessen revolutionized the Internet when he cofounded Netscape, an influential
software firm.
Among the projects the higher
ed board approved is the
Illinois Virtual Campus,
designed to consolidate
course information for all
of the state's Internet
courses on one Web site.
The IVC received a
$627,000 grant to accomplish the task. Further, the
Virtual Campus is working
with community colleges so
that students will have a local
place to go for course advice
with a counselor. Three schools
are already participating:
Waubonsee in Sugar Grove west
of Chicago, Sauk Valley in Dixon
and College of Lake County in
Grayslake. There are plans to add
another 15 by this summer.
Meanwhile, the Web site will
be a one-stop source for online course
offerings from all the state's public and
private two-year and four-year schools,
says Cathy Gunn, director of the virtual
campus.
"The Web offers new ways to access
information that we never had before,"
says Gunn. "This will be like a shopping
mall where a course from one school fits
one need and a course from another
school fits another need."
Illinois Issues February 1999 23