From the issue dated January 28, 2000

Distance-Education Company Woos Bastions of the Liberal Arts Amherst, Brown, and Williams consider plan to let their classes be offered online By SARAH CARR A new company has caught the attention of administrators at several elite liberal-arts colleges with a plan to offer their courses on the Internet. So far, ALSO SEE: Colloquy: Join a debate on issues raised in this article Brown University, Williams College, and Amherst College are seriously weighing the possibility of venturing into distance education with the company, or at least expanding the use of online components in their existing courses. The three institutions are among several colleges that the company, Global Education Network, has approached with a plan that, if accepted, would represent one of the first major embraces of online education by some of the oldest and most elite colleges in the United States. And even if the company's plans never come to fruition, officials from several institutions say the colleges' careful consideration of the proposal indicates the importance that even leading colleges are attaching to new online endeavors. Organizers of the company have approached eight or nine institutions. The company was founded by Mark Taylor, a professor of humanities at Williams, and by Herbert Allen, president of the venture-capital firm Allen & Co. and an alumnus of Williams who recently donated $20-million to the college to build a performing-arts center. The company, which is private, has no official connection to Williams. At Williams, a faculty committee is studying the proposal, and professors say a major issue is whether the plan would take too many scholars out of the classroom. At Brown and Amherst, faculty members are generally unaware of the proposal, but administrators say they plan to discuss the proposal in the next few months. Company officials declined to provide specifics about the Global Education Network or to identify the colleges and universities that they have contacted. But spokesmen at Brown, Williams, and Amherst confirmed that those institutions had been approached by the company and were discussing the offer. Spokesmen at Stanford and Princeton Universities said it was doubtful that their institutions would get involved, and a Harvard spokesman said the university was approached, but is not currently discussing the offer. At Dartmouth College and Cornell University, spokesmen also confirmed that administrators had had some discussions with representatives of the company, which is known by the acronym GEN. Kim B. Bruce, a professor of computer science at Williams and co-chairman of a committee formed to consider the company's proposal, said it called for Williams professors to work with technicians and other employees at GEN to put existing courses on the Internet using a variety of technologies. He said the courses would not be taken for Williams credit and that target audiences might include Williams alumni, continuing-education students, and advanced high-school students. Some figures show that an auditor would be able to take an online course for approximately $500, according to Mr. Bruce. Projections show that colleges that work with the company could earn $250,000 per course, he added. He said that if Williams did accept the company's offer, it would most likely have 5 to 10 professors per year working on the effort. Mr. Bruce said the company's plans had served as a springboard for broader discussions of online learning and the incorporation of technology into courses at Williams. "We are not just looking at the GEN proposal, but are interested in considering the general issues involved in online learning, and whether or not it would be a good thing for Williams to be involved in," he said. Newell M. Stultz, associate provost at Brown, said officials there were optimistic about the idea. "We are considering it in a positive light and expecting something to happen," he said. "On a provisional or pilot basis, we are interested to see how this works out and are expecting it to be the beginning of something that may not be a permanent change, but an adaptation of the way our education is delivered to its audience." Mr. Stultz added that the university had little experience with online or distance learning, but that officials had begun to look at specific courses that could be put online through the company. Susan Pikor, the executive assistant to the president at Amherst College, said administrators had talked to the company, and that there was a "great deal of interest on both sides." "Amherst is very interested," she said. "But we are waiting to see how they develop and where they go with their plans." Ms. Pikor emphasized that administrators had only had very preliminary conversations with the company, and would like to discuss the the issue on campus before deciding. The college has never offered distance-learning courses, she added. Princeton was approached by the company but will probably decline to participate, said S. Georgia Nugent, associate provost at the university. "We haven't absolutely said, 'Oh yes' or 'Oh no,' but my sense of things is that it's something that we're unlikely to do," she said. "I think we are unlikely to feel that we want to partner in a venture-capital kind of way, you know, a for-profit kind of way." She added that the university was watching the issue of distance education closely, and had had conversations with "a number of different parties" about possible partnerships. Geoffrey Cox, vice provost and dean for learning technology and extended education at Stanford, said he met with a GEN team last summer, but that Stanford would most likely pursue other options for offering online courses. Stanford, which has offered distance-learning courses for more than 30 years, has committed to work with another company, UNEXT.com, to offer courses online. Officials at Harvard University said that Global Education Network had approached the institution, but had little further comment. "There are so many people wanting to get into this business that it gets a little bewildering," said Michael Shinagel, Harvard's dean of continuing education, who notes that companies regularly approach the university with proposals. For the moment, however, Harvard has placed a moratorium on entering any distance-learning partnerships, preferring to hold off until a university committee decides how distance education fits into Harvard's long-term strategy. Gregory A. Jackson, chief information officer at the University of Chicago, said that as far as he knew his institution had not talked with the Global Education Network. The university is also working with UNEXT.com. "Everybody has this I.P.O. fever these days," said Mr. Jackson, who added that there were "many too many" ventures competing to offer high-quality distance education. "No one really knows how to take elite university education and translate it into online education." That is an issue with which Williams is currently wrestling, said Michael F. Brown, a professor of anthropology and chairman of the college's educational policy committee. "GEN is really trying to capture the high end, but the question of whether there is a market is really unknown," he said. "It is such a fast-moving area that GEN's own vision of what they are doing and how they are going to do it is changing," he said. "We are looking at a constantly moving target, and that complicates things, but in interesting ways." Both of GEN's founders are admittedly complicated people. Mr. Taylor, who has taught at Williams since 1972, has constantly tried to defy the boundaries and barriers of traditional academe, teaching a popular course called "Cyberscapes" to undergraduates and taking students on a trip to research the culture of Las Vegas. More than five years ago -- before online education was on the radar screen for many institutions -- Mr. Taylor offered a seminar in postmodernism simultaneously to students at Williams and the University of Helsinki using teleconferencing technologies. In 1995, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching named him the nation's college professor the year. "Mark Taylor was using all sorts of technologies when I was trying to figure out how to get on e-mail," said Morton Owen Schapiro, who was recently named the president of Williams and who currently serves as the vice president for planning at the University of Southern California. Mr. Allen's $20-million gift to Williams to build a performing arts center has stirred considerable controversy among the faculty of the college, some of whom have criticized Mr. Allen's role in the planning process and have questioned whether the college needs the new center. But Mr. Brown says he believes that Mr. Allen has attempted to keep the GEN proposal separate from the issue of the performing-arts center. "I think he genuinely wants the proposal to be taken at face value," he said. Mr. Bruce at Williams said members of his committee would present details of its discussions to the college faculty next month. He added that the committee was particularly concerned with issues of course ownership, start-up costs, and the amount of faculty time involved in online endeavors. "Williams would need to release some of its faculty from portions of their regular teaching, because I don't see how they could continue with a full teaching load and work on the development of an online course," he said. "And if we are going to be pulling faculty away from the classroom, we need to find a way of making up for that." Regardless of the final outcome, Mr. Bruce said he thought the Global Education Network proposal would spur a useful discussion on the campus. "The committee was formed because the administration felt that it was very important to think about these issues," he said. "Even though we are a small college focused on a residential student body, we need to see what is going on in the world, and not just close our eyes and pretend that these things have nothing to do with us," Mr. Bruce said. Jason Healy, a senior at Williams who is the sole student member of the committee considering GEN's proposal, says he is somewhat skeptical about the prospect of offering Williams courses online, but plans to keep an open mind. For now, he has more questions than answers. "Distance education in the abstract could work really well, but on the question of whether Williams should get into it and sell the Williams brand, I don't know whether something would be lost," he said. "The whole point of going to college here is to have small, intimate classes, and I don't know whether those things can get conveyed well on the Web right now." While Williams has inaugurated a discussion of online learning, Ted Goslow, the chair of the faculty at Brown, said the GEN proposal had not been discussed widely among Brown faculty yet. "I think it will be a relatively new idea for most people," he said. "In good faith, though, I believe there will be a lot of open discussion and everyone will have the opportunity to discuss their views." Sherron Knopp, a professor of English at Williams and co-chairwoman of the committee considering the proposal, said GEN initially approached Williams administrators, who asked the committee to make a recommendation. "It would not be very good for faculty morale if administrators made the decision, and it certainly wouldn't be the way Williams works," she said. Ms. Knopp said the committee members had a variety of perspectives on online learning, but she added that the GEN proposal had not yet sparked a polarizing debate on the campus. "If the battle lines are going to be drawn, we haven't drawn them yet," she said. Ms. Knopp said she worried that colleges were under too much pressure to put their courses online as quickly as possible. "There is an enormous pressure coming from companies in terms of putting courses online," she said. "There is a mindset that if you don't get on the plane and seize the future, you will be left behind and ruined forever, and I think we have to resist that." "If there is a risk of getting left behind, there is a risk of what the college should do with its name and reputation, and we have made our name and reputation for being a small, residential school with a lot of individual attention to learners," she added. Jeffrey R. Young contributed to this report. http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A43 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article