virtual university--higher education 'on-line', The

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Summer 1999 by DiPiro, Joseph T

GlaxoWellcome HELIX. The pharmaceutical manufacturer, GlaxoWellcome, offers professional medical information and continuing education to physicians, nurses, and pharmacists under the program named HELIX (see http://www.helix.com). There are about 25 courses for pharmacists providing continuing education credit. Ten of the courses are offered `on-line' while the rest are offered in video tape or printed text format.

DeVry Institutes. DeVry Institutes has offered at-home study programs for many years and has 16 campuses in the U.S. and Canada. DeVry offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, primarily in business, accounting, computer systems, and technical areas (see http://www.devry.edu). DeVry also provides custom education to corporations. It is not clear from the material presented on the web if some of the many course offerings are available on-line.

Concord University School of Law. In the fall of 1998 Kaplan Education Centers offered the nation's first `on-line' law degree through the newly created Concord University (see http://www. concord. kaplan.edu).

ISSUES WITH `ON-LINE' EDUCATION(9)

Many of the issues and opportunities related to virtual universities have been well summarized in recent publications(2,8,9). While these programs can expand access to higher education there are potential down-sides to students, faculty, and administrators. The trend to develop electronic education may be unavoidable given the factors combining to cause restructuring of higher education; the expanding education market, new technologies and information transfer, and the need to lower barriers to entry in higher education

The potential risks of electronic forms of education were summarized by Noble(9) in the term "digital diploma mills." Regarding faculty, he suggests that "...their activity is being restructured, via the technology, in order to reduce their autonomy, independence, and control over their work and to place workplace knowledge and control as much as possible into the hands of administration." This is presented as a hazard of commercialization of higher education, where corporate and for-profit interests are now more involved. The resulting faculty to student ratio could dwarf that of the current large university classroom. Electronic forms of education may require faculty to have extended work hours because of chat rooms, e-mail, and virtual office hours. Also, electronic education allows universities to outsource courses as any other product or service, both selling and buying faculty educational materials products from others.

From the student perspective, while access to courses may be enhanced by virtual universities, both course quality and direct interaction with instructors may suffer. At this time, there appears to be a tremendous range in the quality of the courses offered electronically, as exists with traditional higher education. Some virtual universities are actively addressing the quality issues by creating standards and policies to assure that academic standards are maintained. The Open University has achieved recognition for high academic standards in comparison with traditional British universities. On the one hand, today's students have been described as "...technologically sophisticated consumers who expect services that are as userfriendly, accessible, and convenient as automatic teller machines."(10) However, there is a growing demand for accountability of higher education institutions with a focus on quality of the educational product. One aspect of quality has been the time for direct contact with the faculty member.