Essay Question: The Web is Transforming the University. How and Why? (Please Use Examples.)
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By Paul Keegan, December 2000 Issue
The Internet has dramatically accelerated the shift, Noble says. If taxpayer-funded research could be turned into a lucrative commodity, why not actual classes? Again, the primary customer has been corporate America, as companies outsource their training and educational needs to keep employees up to date in a fast-moving economy.
Columbia University embodies what Noble sees as the inexorable destruction of the traditional college campus by commodification. The fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the country, founded in 1754 by King George II, Columbia capitalized on the Bayh-Dole Act to lead the nation in patent-licensing revenue -- $144 million expected this year, a significant portion of its $1.7 billion budget.
Now it's trying to figure out how to sell instruction over the Internet -- and not just with UNext. Columbia has been one of the most aggressive schools in cutting deals with companies such as AMBI, a nutritional-supplements company that will sell both classes and health products on a site called NutritionU.com. The university has even spent $20 million to start its own for-profit arm, Fathom.com, in conjunction with other highbrow institutions like the British Library and the Smithsonian Museum. A "knowledge mall" that offers nondegree classes in subjects like history and jazz, Fathom will also be glad to sell you a book by historian Barbara Tuchman or a Miles Davis CD. "We've just scratched the surface," says Todd Hardy, executive director of Columbia Media Enterprises, formed a year ago to forge such alliances.
Though Noble harshly criticizes universities like Columbia for selling out their educational mission, the universities contend they have little choice. The Internet is making higher education a very big business. If they don't exploit the prestige and high-voltage intellectual capital on their own campuses, somebody else will.
Harvard found itself in that position last year, when law professor Arthur R. Miller sold a series of videotaped lectures to the Concord University School of Law, an online outfit owned by the Washington Post Co. Miller claimed it was no different from putting his lectures in a book or going on television because he never interacted with Concord's students. But Harvard said Miller violated university rules that restrict outside teaching gigs. Even more galling was that this upstart competitor was promoting Miller as a Harvard law professor. Harvard and Miller are still negotiating the matter.
In June, Columbia approved a policy that considers courses created by professors "work for hire" that the university owns. But the profs can share in any licensing revenue. Critics like Noble say such arrangements could destroy academic freedom. Traditionally, each course reflected the style and biases of a particular professor. If the university owns the content of a course, that also gives it editorial control over what's being taught. Any sort of intellectual totalitarianism, from the right or the left, would be much easier to enforce if a university had a standardized curriculum that it owned and devised. Monitoring would be simple, since online courses leave digital records of everything that happens in class.
Perhaps most troubling for the faculty is that once a university creates an online course -- or, more likely, purchases it from a company that has the money to develop a best-seller -- the school needs only a part-time staff to actually teach it. What does that mean for full-time tenured professors? Noble says it's not unlike what happened to gunsmiths and longshoremen, whose jobs are now performed by machines: "This could be the destruction of the occupation of the teacher and professor."
Digital-teaching revolutionaries like Schank agree but see this as a positive development. "Let's face it, a professor of history at York University is probably not going to have a job in 20 years," Schank says. "No one needs him.
Digital-teaching revolutionaries like Schank agree but see this as a positive development. "Let's face it, a professor of history at York University is probably not going to have a job in 20 years," Schank says. "No one needs him."
Even those who abhor Schank's views fear that the reentry of a familiar 800-pound gorilla may have given the advance of techno-education unstoppable momentum. In July, the U.S. Army announced it will spend $600 million over the next six years to subcontract with colleges and universities to create virtual degree programs that would give its soldiers more convenient ways to study. This makes the Army far and away the largest player in online education. Just as it has long done with university research, the federal government is now giving a huge boost -- at taxpayer expense, and in the name of national defense -- to the development of online education infrastructure.
Noble, who in 1983 co-founded the National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest to battle the influence of corporations on academic research, already sounds nostalgic about what may be lost. "Universities are unique," he says. "There's no other space in the culture, other than houses of worship, that are not on a commercial foundation. Imagine walking into a church and seeing an ad for Apple Computer. Some spaces in the culture should not be about commerce."
But traveling the country warning people about what's happening, says Noble, is a thankless task. "I'm getting very depressed," he says. "This is not a happy story."
Mike, the emergency-room doctor in Tokyo, e-mails me a note on the fourth day of class saying he blew up because he didn't see the smiley face I'd put on my joke about people exaggerating their backgrounds. All is forgiven, and I get down to work. Our facilitator, Bob Arganbright, introduces himself as a 57-year-old father of three, a former hippie who spent 20 years in the Navy before becoming a business consultant.
Arganbright seems like a nice guy, but he's no pushover. Not only do I have to keep up with the reading from two textbooks on organizational behavior, but I also have to write three papers, take a final quiz, and post comments both to the class as a whole and to my study group five days a week. All in six weeks. Keeping up with the postings is a bear: There are only 12 students, but when I check the main classroom each day, there are as many as 100 messages to sift through. They are responding to Arganbright's discussion questions and each other's comments. Some students are real BS artists, but others post finely crafted mini-essays.
Much of the discussion feels like a group therapy session, where the students grapple with sticky management issues they face -- lazy subordinates, a young woman whose skimpy dress offends co-workers. Arganbright seems to be everywhere, answering nearly every post. Where does he find the time?
After a week, I drop out. Had I been a professional manager wanting an MBA, the course would have been ideal. The convenience is seductive. The students are motivated, the material is challenging, and the teacher smart. Still, I miss the camaraderie of being on a campus, meeting other students in person, that sense of being part of a larger community.
The world's biggest virtual university is still primitive, nowhere near Schank's digital dream of high-speed connections and 3-D simulations. Nor is it the cynical rip-off that Noble fears. For far-flung or busy people, it's a miracle. And future generations may become so accustomed to online environments that they won't miss the lack of physical interaction. But for now, Steven Crow of the North Central accrediting agency puts it best: "Today, distance education is everybody's second choice."
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