Two more distance education universities to open

BY FALL 2000, TWO MORE INSTITUtions plan to enter the expanding field of schools whose students may never set foot on a campus.

Harcourt General, owner of Harcourt Brace and Neiman Marcus, will join such schools as Jones International and Western Governors Universities in offering degrees completely online. The United States Open University, an affiliate of the British Open University, also plans to start making degrees available at a distance; it will rely on several kinds of media, including texts and computer-based technologies.

Robert V. Antonucci, director of Harcourt's project and president of Harcourt Learning Direct, says his institution will have schools of information technology, business, general studies, and health-care systems and administration. "We're aiming to get nontraditional, adult learners, around twenty-eight or older, who are working and have perhaps had some college but can't get to the traditional bricks-andmortar university," Antonucci reports. In the first year, the company says it hopes to attract between five and ten thousand students.

Harcourt plans to hire both part- and full-time faculty. Antonucci says that some faculty members will design their own courses, but others will work from a template. "But even in the courses with a template," he qualifies, "there'll be room for faculty members to draw on their own expertise."

According to Mark F. Smith, the AAUP's associate director of government relations, a breach of academic freedom can occur when professors can no longer design the courses they teach.

Harcourt says it will apply in Septemher for a license from the Massachusetts Board of Education to grant degrees, after which it will seek accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Charles M. Cook, director of the New England Association's Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, says his group, in considering accreditation for any online university, seeks to ensure that "people with adequate expertise develop, monitor, and oversee the curriculum."

Although the AAUP publicly questioned the accreditation of Jones International University, Smith points out that the Association has not addressed the general issue of accrediting institutions that offer bachelor's degrees through online education. "But what's out there now isn't very impressive. There's a qualitative difference between a chatroom and a classroom," he says.

While Harcourt is hiring, the United States Open University will start offering baccalaureate degrees in the United States. By September, the university, based in Wilmington, Delaware, will offer course work toward degrees in computing, international studies, European studies, and combined studies. Next year, the university plans to launch master's programs in business administration and computing.

The U.S. Open University is now a candidate for accreditation by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Its forerunner, the British Open University, has more than two hundred thousand students currently enrolled.

Copyright American Association of University Professors Sep/Oct 1999
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