A committee of the Columbia University Senate says the institution should cut back spending on its for-profit online-learning venture, Fathom, and encourage the company to develop content from Columbia and other partners in the Fathom consortium, instead of creating material on its own. The company’s president responds that Fathom must be judged as a work in progress, and that its spending has already been cut.
The report submitted to the Senate from the Online Learning and Digital Media Initiatives Committee says Fathom has “failed to identify and capture a market segment sufficient to warrant the resources dedicated to [it].” The report continues: “It is difficult to thus justify the expense of producing new online content, especially when it is completely separate from the instruction offered in Columbia’s traditional degree programs.”
The two-year-old Fathom is an independent company created and primarily financed by Columbia. It offers noncredit and credit courses and other content developed by faculty members at the 14 institutions that belong to the consortium, including the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Chicago, and the New York Public Library.
In 2001, Columbia gave Fathom $14.9-million, $11.9-million for operating expenses and $3-million for research and development. The venture took in $700,000 from fees from other institutions and sales revenue.
Striking a Balance
Ann Kirschner, Fathom’s president, defends her company. “Fathom’s value to the university is both strategic and, in the long term, will be financial as well,” she writes in an e-mail message. “As we proceed with careful allocation of resources, speed to profitability has to be balanced with the requirement to be consistent with the mission and values of the university.”
Ms. Kirschner says Fathom is already following the course suggested in the report. “Columbia reduced its financing of Fathom to basic operations in January 2001,” she says. “There were layoffs as well as a sharper focus on meeting basic strategic objectives. Fathom has focused on core services to its consortium members since then.”
The University Senate is made up of faculty members, students, administrators, alumni, and staff members. Its online-learning committee was formed last year to investigate concerns about where Fathom was heading, but it soon expanded its mandate to look at all of the online-education ventures that Columbia is supporting, says Herve Varenne, a committee member who is a professor of education in the university’s Teachers College. The report comes at the midpoint of the committee’s two-year examination of online learning at Columbia.
Despite the critical assessment of Fathom, the company isn’t the focus of the committee’s energies, says Mr. Varenne. The report says all of Columbia’s online-education efforts should focus on its core academic mission, he notes. The committee believes that the university should support online-education efforts by its own departments and schools before financing outside companies such as Fathom, which Mr. Varenne calls a “distraction.”
Lack of Coordination
The committee says it realizes that few start-ups make money, that Fathom’s technology platform is useful, and that the company’s Web site showcases Columbia to a wider audience. One reason for Fathom’s lack of success so far, the report says, is that the company was not designed to coordinate efforts with the university’s traditional academic departments. Fathom develops online tools that have little benefit for the rest of the university, the panel says, adding that the company’s efforts should be better integrated into Columbia’s overall online strategy.
“If Fathom is not going to be a profit center in the short to medium term, then it should either enhance the university’s other online initiatives or reinforce its core missions of research and the dissemination of knowledge,” the committee says. The report suggests five ways of improving the company’s performance, including rethinking its long-term business model and seeking additional financial support from its consortium partners.
“The committee correctly identifies Fathom’s core mission as furthering the aims of the faculty,” says Ms. Kirschner, adding that the company doesn’t create its own content, but packages content made by instructors at its member institutions.
Fathom has been working to increase its market presence and the value of the consortium, says Ms. Kirschner. Two weeks ago, the company announced a partnership with America Online, the largest Internet provider in the United States.
Fathom’s courses and content are now featured on AOL’s Online Campus, a distance-education portal for AOL subscribers.
Fathom also recently added the British Museum as a consortium partner.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A41