Columbia University announced last week that it would shut down Fathom, its for-profit online-learning venture, which was designed to sell Web-based courses and seminars to the public.
In its two years of operation, the venture offered material from a dozen prominent institutions and attracted widespread media attention, but it was never profitable. In December, the board that runs Fathom voted to dissolve it and move some of its resources into other digital-media projects at Columbia. The Web site will probably go offline in March.
The university had contributed millions to the undertaking, although officials would not divulge the exact amount.
“The decision reflects the belief that, having invested really meaningful resources into Fathom, at this point the university is going to be better served if we focus them on the campus-based initiatives,” said Robert Kasdin, Columbia’s senior executive vice president. “Although digital media continues to be a critical innovation, it will continue to take some time to sort through what the best commercial opportunities are.”
A number of prominent intellectual, artistic, and scientific institutions in the United States and Britain had joined Fathom as partners. They will keep the rights to the material they produced for the site and can use it as they see fit, Mr. Kasdin said. Columbia itself might use some of Fathom’s digital content on the university’s Web site and in course software.
Columbia’s partners in the venture were the American Film Institute, the British Library, the Cambridge University Press, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Natural History Museum in London, the New York Public Library, RAND, the Science Museum in London, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan system, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“I think Fathom was a great experiment,” said James L. Hilton, associate provost for academic information and instructional technology affairs at Michigan. “The problems that Fathom was trying to address -- how to connect with lifelong learners, how to provide authenticated information -- are an important challenge. ... I wish that the national economics could have supported a longer experiment.”
Ann G. Kirschner, president and chief executive officer of Fathom, said the flagging economy had put pressure on the venture. In May, the Columbia University Senate recommended cutting back on the institution’s investment in Fathom, although the university reportedly had already cut back.
In 2001, Columbia gave Fathom $14.9-million, while the venture earned $700,000 from fees from other institutions and sales revenue.
“The reality is, we’re in tough economic times,” Ms. Kirschner said. “No institution, particularly the ones involved in the Fathom consortium, wants to do anything without the highest academic quality.”
She added: “Fathom was an expensive vehicle for innovation. In tough economic times, it’s natural that our investor would look for ways to reduce that investment.”
“I think we’re going out on a high,” Ms. Kirschner said. “We’ve outlasted nearly everybody.”
Indeed, for-profit online-learning ventures already have closed at New York University, Temple University, and the University of Maryland University College.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 49, Issue 19, Page A30
