COLUMN: Distance learning is closer than you think

From Binyamin Appelbaum's, "Carving Marble," Fall '00 From Binyamin Appelbaum's, "Carving Marble," Fall '00Correspondence courses were once the ugly ducklings of higher education. Only universities with no reputation to lose offered them, only students with no other options took them. It would have been even stranger for a university president to propose that his or her school begin offering its own correspondence courses. But now, the Internet has changed the face of distance learning. And online correspondence courses are making waves. In January, professors at the University of Illinois took time out of their presumably busy schedules to blast the educational value of distance learning. And last month, the president of Cornell University announced that his institution would launch a for-profit distance-learning subsidiary, e-Cornell. Why all the fuss? Because most people would rather use e-mail and EB.com than snail mail and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And so, the commercial potential of online courses vastly exceeds that of traditional correspondence courses. For night schools, community colleges and technical schools in particular, the competition for students is rapidly becoming that much more intense. Adults who already have jobs, people who cannot afford the time or money for a traditional education and retirees looking for something to do all previously turned to such schools to meet their needs. Now, they can go online instead. And why log on to a virtual community college when you can take courses from, say, Harvard.com? The best brand name in higher education is just one of the high-profile schools said to be sniffing around the distance-learning business. In the meantime, the University of Maryland, Columbia University and Cornell University, among others, have already created for-profit subsidiaries to market distance-learning programs. For schools like these, distance learning is an opportunity, not a threat. Take Penn, for instance. Students come here to make friends, participate in extracurricular activities and, most of all, get away from home. The University trades on the idea that your classmates will be interesting, intelligent, provocative individuals. That you will have the chance to do research with an expert in the field, chat face to face with the person who wrote your textbook or dissect an animal under an instructor's watchful eye. In sum, the school's role in bringing people together is every bit as important as its role in educating them. And the school's ability to attract students does not stand to be impacted by distance learning. Those who currently pay to attend schools like Penn will keep on paying for the brick-and-mortar version. And those who do not have access to a traditional education will increasingly have the opportunity to learn online. Of course, faculty members are not necessarily thrilled with the notion that their universities will profit by selling their course content over the Internet. For some professors, the very idea of selling courses online is objectionable. For others, the concern is only about who gets to do the selling. Storm clouds are already forming over the question of whether the university or the faculty member controls the dissemination of course content. What happens, for example, if Penn wants to offer courses by History Professors Alan Kors or Thomas Childers online when Kors' and Childers' lectures are already being sold on audio cassette? What if "Penn.com" and some other virtual university both want to use a Penn professor's lectures? Can the professor choose to license his lectures to whomever he pleases? Naturally, schools have tended toward a hard-line stance. In the absence of geographical boundaries and space constraints, each online course purveyor necessarily competes against every other purveyor. And only the dumbest of companies would allow its own primary resource -- its faculty -- to be utilized by its competitors. That logic was readily apparent to Cornell's trustees, who noted in the announcement of e-Cornell's creation that it came in response to third-party bidding for the services of its faculty. It is likely only a matter of time before Penn takes similar action.