 Efforts to use television and other communications media to provide higher education to new groups of students are expanding dramatically as the 1980-81 academic year begins. No one is yet predicting that the long-awaited, often-delayed “technological revolution” has arrived in higher education, but interest in television and “telecourses” has grown sharply, according to both educators and TV executives. They attribute that interest both to technological improvements made possible by the use of communications satellites and to the exploration of new markets by colleges and universities in a period when the traditional college-age population is expected to decline. They also say that institutions and television networks hope to capture part of the expanding market in continuing education for dentists, doctors, engineers, nurses, teachers, and other professionals. Among the recent developments: * The National University Consortium for Telecommunications in Education this month will begin a pilot project to offer courses for undergraduate degrees via television and other non-traditional delivery systems. * The University of Mid-America, a consortium of 11 state universities with headquarters in Lincoln, Neb., has begun planning for the establishment of a nationwide “open university” that would offer both undergraduate and graduate programs on television. * The Appalachian Community Service Network, a project originally started as an experiment by the Appalachian Regional Commission, is planning this fall to become an independent, non-profit corporation that will distribute 64 hours of programming each week to cable television systems across the country. About half that total will be undergraduate and graduate courses for credit. Fifteen hours will be devoted to continuing education for professionals. * The Central Education Network, which comprises public television stations in 10 Midwestern states, has formed a “postsecondary council” that includes higher-education and public-broadcasting representatives from each state. The council will attempt to determine the needs for telecommunications at the 821 colleges and universities in the 10-state area, and to realize savings by group purchasing of “telecourses” and equipment. * The American Educational Television Network, a profit-making corporation with offices in Irvine, Cal., and McLean, Va., will begin broadcasting continuing-education courses for professionals this fall. * With the assistance of the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, the two-year colleges that have produced many of the television courses, or “telecourses,” used in higher education have begun to work together on both course development and marketing. In the background of the expanded activity is the prospect that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have as much as $150-milllion over the next 15 years to spend on what the corporation calls the “production of high-quality, college-level courses through existing and developing communications systems.” Money from Annenberg The money will be provided to the corporation by Walter H. Annenberg, founder of TV Guide magazine and former U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, through the Annenberg School of Communications in Radnor, Pa., a non-profit educational organization established by Mr. Annenberg. The graduate schools of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, both named after Mr. Annenberg, are operated jointly by the non-profit organization and the individual universities. The Internal Revenue Service ruled in July that Annenberg School can give and the corporations can receive the money without jeopardizing their tax status, but the exact terms of the gift have not been agreed upon. A committee chaired by William J. McGill, former president of Columbia University, is looking into the question. Once Mr. McGill’s group agrees upon the specific terms of the gift and the form the project will take, the plans must be approved by the boards of both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Annenberg School. An official at the corporation estimated that the committee would not complete its work before the end of this year and that the first grants from the project would not be available until the spring of 1981 at the earliest. College officials and representatives of public broadcasting say the most important difference between the planning this fall and developments in educational television in previous years has been a shift in emphasis from local efforts to regional and national projects. The shift has been made possible by the completion of public broadcasting’s satellite system, which can link transmitters with public radio and television stations across the country. The satellites provide higher-quality signals and are more economical than land-line systems, said Douglas Bodwell, director of educational activities at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “The satellite has afforded us the opportunity to bounce programs out of here and have them picked up anywhere in the States,” added T. Benjamin Massey, chancellor of the University of Maryland’s University College -- which is producing the courses being offered by the National University Consortium for Telecommunications in Education. The college and the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting jointly are sponsoring the consortium’s pilot program. Seven colleges and universities are cooperating with 11 television stations to offer courses leading to bachelor’s degrees in the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences, and technology and management. In addition to Maryland’s University College, the institutions in the consortium are California State University-Dominguez Hills, Iona College, Linfield College, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and Southern Vermont College. The project has been supported in part with a $400,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The consortium hopes to increase the sites where the courses are available to almost 30 in 1981-82 and to 60 in 1982-83. An American Open U. Mr. Massey stressed that the material offered in the courses was difficult -- designed for students who could cope with regular college work. Two of the first three courses to be offered are adaptations of courses developed by Great Britain’s Open University. “In time, we hope to develop more courses of our own, but we will also continue to adopt courses from the British Open University,” he said. At the University of Mid-America, officials are trying to raise from $600,000 to $1-million for the planning of an American open university. Next week, a group of consultants will meet at the university to attempt to answer a series of questions ranging from “Where will the money come from?” to “What degrees should be offered?” Milan Wall, the university’s vice-president, said the proposed open university probably would offer both undergraduate courses and master’s-degree programs. The chief market would be employed adults who want part-time, off-campus instruction, he said. That market would be somewhat different from that sought by the Maryland-based national consortium. “Their program aims at students who can work through difficult material in a short period of time. We have tended to look at a broader slice, those people who may need counseling and remedial work,” he said. “The trick is to develop materials where a mass market looks pretty good or where you can find common educational needs across several potential markets.” Hopes for Cooperation The approaches of the national consortium and the University of Mid-America also differ, with the consortium stressing relations with existing institutions and the university considering a separate, degree-granting institution of its own. Despite those differences, and despite the possibility that the two institutions will be competing for students and money, officials say they hope they’ll be able to cooperate. In the meantime, they remain cautious about how fast and how far their new efforts will go. A major role for television in higher education has been talked about for more than 25 years, they recall, and many early predictions of a television revolution have failed to come true. Nonetheless, said Douglas Bodwell of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, educational institutions face a series of problems that have made them look at television with new interest. “The context in which the new activity is taking place is different,” he said. “People are much more aware of the true potential of television, and they have a much greater sense of reality about what it can accomplish.” Mr. McGill, chairman of the committee investigating the Annenberg-C.P.B. project, added, “The time is just about right for the emergence of a much more serious effort than we have seen in the past” to use “high-technology methods to improve the educational level of the whole population.” | 
