Will Cyber-School Pass Or Fail?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 12, 2000 | by Aimee Howd

Students in Capella's programs will spend an average of five to 10 hours a week working through their electronic classes asynchronously and will interact online with their professor and peers about 10 times a week. Seventy percent of those who enroll make it through to graduation -- now a grand total of just 150, but enrollment has increased by more than 80 percent a year. "Capella's biggest issue is building a national reputation," Shank says. Already such schools have to compete against for-profit subsidiaries being created online by recognized institutions, including the University of Maryland and New York University. Does their competition come as vindication of his pioneering work? "Absolutely," Shank says. "Universities that knocked our initial efforts now are following our lead."

Technical courses were the first to move online. But as bandwidth capabilities increase, most experts anticipate that technology will enable professors working with students at remote locations to interact almost seamlessly and create a learning experience richer in many ways than traditional classrooms allow -- sharp computer simulations, for example, augmenting the current text-based teaching.

"I believe online learning is going to infiltrate all departments eventually," says Marcia Murray, who oversees US West's efforts to market online solutions to classrooms in a 14-state region. "Hopefully then it will leave more room for some of the richer things that can't be put online, reduce student-to-professor ratios and produce a better quality of education overall. But I don't think this is by any means going to displace the four-, six- or eight-year degrees. This is going to help the workforce meet known needs right now -- and that's basic, skilled labor."

The biggest challenge she finds in getting schools online is helping them think creatively about what the new medium will allow. "Institutions need to make sure they're not just taking a textbook and throwing it online, give serious thought to quality instruction and the method of delivery and what support the student requires."

Her goal, of course, is to sell online solutions to serve students of all ages. But, for the most part, online colleges are not yet trying to penetrate the 18-to 22-year-old population that's likely to enter a four-year residential college or university.

"For whom do online colleges represent new competition?" asks LeBlanc. "The evening programs, community colleges, the grad programs that serve working adults. The holistic experience of being in residential college is what that [18- to 22-year-old] cohort looks to." But a full 43 percent of college students are older than age 25 and fall into that nontraditional market where values of efficiency and accessibility tend to eclipse the value they place on socialization.

Research studies reviewed by the United States Distance Learning Association consistently show that distance-learning classrooms report results similar to those reported under traditional instruction and that students generally have positive attitudes toward distance learning. So it may be just a matter of time before 18-year-olds also consider logging on for college as an affordable option. Whether new online universities will penetrate that market is "the million-dollar question," says Ken Ramberg, CEO of jobtrak.com, an online job service that connects 1,000 university career centers with employers. "You've got Kaplan.com, you've got a lot of well-funded players out there that are trying to break into the Ivory Tower," he says. "And online Students -- at least those who get degrees from marquee universities -- are not going to have a more difficult time marketing their degrees. What we're seeing right now is a pretty unique time. The unemployment rate is at a 30-year low. There's virtually no unemployment among college grads."