Maryland College provides worldwide training for Hitachi - NEWS - Brief Article

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, Feb, 2001 by Al Branch

In an interesting departure from reports about corporations offering courses and programs that compete with colleges and universities, the University of Maryland University College announced a partnership with the multinational Japanese electronics corporation Hitachi to offer online courses to qualified company employees worldwide. As a first step, the agreement with the Hitachi Institute of Management Development outlines a plan for management and pre-management level students to work at a distance toward MBA degrees.

UMUC is considered by many analysts to be one of the world's leading providers of online courses, and the university offers 28 degrees and more than 40 certificate programs that are completely online. With approximately 40,000 online enrollments last year, UMUC is highly regarded for delivering online content that satisfies corporate training requirements including concentrated study, online research emphasizing the most current information on topics, interaction with professors and global classmates in small online classroom settings, and continuous evaluation. The university has approximately 70,000 students in 29 countries and has won national awards from the University Continuing Education Association (http://www.nucea.edu), and Peterson's (http://www.petersons.com) for its innovative distance education.

Commenting on the partnership, UMUC Provost Nicholas Allen said "I am pleased that Hitachi has decided to work with University of Maryland University College to tap the power of the Web to offer education and training to its worldwide employees. We look forward to a long and productive relationship between these two world-class organizations." For more information, visit the UMUC Web site at http://www.umuc.edu.

--OED