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Washington Watch: Build It and They Will Come
By Mark F. Smith
There is a Field of Dreams quality to the arguments advocating virtual education: build the online campus, and the students will come. A corollary to that idea drives many educational administrators: if we don’t build it, others will, and the students will go there. The untapped potential of the Internet has led proponents to envision an unlimited market of students, including those who now attend traditional institutions. Business guru Peter Drucker has gone so far as to predict the end of the residential campus within twenty-five years.
Commercial educational companies, entrepreneurial administrators, and governmental policy makers are the main groups on the virtual education bandwagon. Commercial entities exist to make a profit, and they are driven to exploit what they see as a huge market in continuing education. More traditional educational institutions have become involved for different reasons, including fear of losing market share to commercial enterprises and a desire to implement new, allegedly more efficient and businesslike managerial strategies. Policy makers see virtual education as a way to provide widespread delivery of a popular service at a low cost.
Government promotion of virtual education is occurring mainly at the state level, with most states developing their own virtual universities. The Western Governors University opened in 1998. And the National Governors’ Association has just announced a task force on the future of higher education. The two governors picked to lead the task force, Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Paul Patton of Kentucky, have stressed their commitment to technology and higher education as a key qualification for their leadership of the effort.
The role of the federal government in higher education, unlike that of the states, has been limited mostly to student-aid programs. With the advent of virtual colleges and universities, those programs have become a new battleground. The Department of Education has promoted distance education for some time and is now responding to congressional mandates to examine rules and regulations that might in some way hamper the development of distance education. One rule, for example, limits full financial-aid packages to full-time students (those taking at least twelve credit hours a semester). Proponents of virtual education argue that the rule, which measures "seat time" in a class, should not be applied to virtual classes. The AAUP will participate in hearings the department is sponsoring to examine such issues.
The 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act established a Web-based Education Commission to look into other potential regulatory barriers to distance education. The commission, which is co-chaired by Sen. Robert Kerrey of Nebraska and Rep. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, began holding hearings this past summer, with a report to follow by the end of the year.
At a July hearing of the commission, AAUP general secretary Mary Burgan was almost alone in raising questions about the quality of Web-based education. The focus of the commission seems to be on determining how quickly Web-based education can be implemented, not on reviewing its purposes or questioning its capabilities.
But faculty members and the AAUP need to ask some fundamental questions, not only about faculty workload, intellectual property rights, or academic freedom, but also about the basic claims of the new mode. Virtual education promises unprecedented access, but that must mean more than just the ability to sign up for a course. Students also need access to technical support, libraries, and consultation with teachers. The Web presents unlimited amounts of information, but it does not provide much help for students asked to interpret, sort, or evaluate that information.
Eight regional accrediting associations have agreed on a new set of guidelines for assessing the quality of Web-based education. The AAUP is convening a group of educational policy leaders from among faculty, administrators, accreditors, and government agencies to reflect on questions raised by these and other policy guidelines.
For the Association’s policy statements and other pronouncements on the issue, including a transcript of Mary Burgan’s testimony before the Web-based Education Commission, visit the distance education portion of the AAUP's Web site.
For information on legislative developments affecting faculty, visit the Government Relations section of the AAUP Web site.
Mark Smith is associate director of AAUP government relations.
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