Stanford's grad courses cast wide web

Oakland Tribune, Nov 24, 2006 by Lisa M. KriegerSTAFF

Some of Stanford University's most diligent students are never in class -- or even in the same time zone.

These foreign students, earning a master's degree in engineering through a program available entirely online, concede that they miss the sports, sunshine and the easy camaraderie of fellow Cardinal.

But they gain an education -- and a competitive edge in the workplace -- not available in their home countries.

"It was my dream to study in the best engineering school in the world," said Bing Ma of Beijing, who is studying economics and finance at Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering.

"It is a much more prestigious degree than any schools in China," wrote Ma, 34, a finance director at a Beijing-based U.S. company, in an e-mail.

Partha Sarathy Murali, 25, studies from his home in Hyderabad, India. "I grabbed at the opportunity," wrote Murali, who develops wireless technologies for San Jose-based Redpine Signals. "I've been haunted by the desire to graduate from a top school."

The degree, in the Honors Cooperative Program, can be earned over five years by completing 15 courses, on campus or off. While many of the 250 degree-seeking students live in the Bay Area, others live in Boston, Seattle, Phoenix, and Austin, Texas. A smaller number are overseas; all of these are required to hold a valid student or visitor U.S. visa. Admission is offered only to students who are proficient in English.

Distant students are admitted and held to the same academic standards as students on campus, said Andy DiPaolo, executive director of the Stanford Center for Professional Development, which sponsors the program. The degrees they earn through Stanford Online, established in 1996, are identical to those of other students.

"No distinction is made," said DiPaolo. "The quality of students away from campus is the same as the quality of students on campus."

So-called "distance learning" has come a long way since the 1870s, when the nation's first correspondence school -- The Society to Encourage Study at Home, founded by the wife of a Harvard professor -- was created to educate women, who were shut out of universities.

Online education mushroomed with the Internet. But most degrees are from for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix, not traditional brick-and-mortar institutions.

The nation's elite universities have largely steered clear of the trend, saying that a computer cannot replicate the rich intellectual exchange offered by in-person classes.

The new online degree offered by Stanford and a handful of other respected universities breaks that tradition.

Duke University's new Global Executive MBA is completely Internet- based. Johns Hopkins University offers an online master's degree program in bioinformatics.

"There can be no more obvious sign that distance learning has arrived than the fact that the nation's nameplate universities are venturing into online learning," said Michael P. Lambert of the Washington, D.C.-based Distance Education Training Council.

Engineering is the best suited of the academic disciplines for online study, said Stanford's DiPaolo, who also is associate dean of the Stanford School of Engineering.

Before being offered online, engineering was successfully taught on the Stanford Instructional TV Network, he said.

Online education is not appropriate for undergraduates, who benefit from on-campus socialization, he said. Nor does it work for Ph.D. candidates, who work one-on-one with faculty.

But a masters-level degree from the School of Engineering is a good fit for older students who are working and cannot attend class, he said. Many employers help pay for a worker's graduate degree.

India-based Murali, who started his Stanford studies in September, said that in electrical engineering Stanford is rated among the top few graduate schools in the world. There are good Indian schools but none as good.

"I would never want to leave the industry to pursue my dream of graduation," he added. "This is the right program for working professionals who need to be on the move."

The students concede that online learning -- in a foreign language, from thousands of miles away -- can be tough.

"It is made more difficult because you need to take care of office work, in parallel," said Murali. "If you are unlucky and your office deadlines and exams clash, you are in for big trouble."

Stanford-based team projects are challenging in Beijing "because I have a different time zone than other students," said Ma. "But most of the professors, TAs and classmates are pretty helpful.

"I appreciate that Stanford provided this opportunity," she said, "to allow more international students to study and share the knowledge they have."