July 7, 1996
New York TimesWhen the Alma Mater Ends With '.Edu'
By STEVE LOHR
The educator James B. Conant once said, "He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground." Obviously, the famed Harvard president had never heard of Virtual U.
Last month, the governors of 10 Western states announced they would cooperate to create a "virtual university" by next year, which students would be able to tap into on their computers. In this university, there would be no ground, hallowed or otherwise.
Many schools already offer courses on the Internet and a few of them, like the on-line campus of the University of Phoenix, grant undergraduate and graduate degrees to cyberstudents. But the governors' initiative is the most ambitious venture yet, and it lends an official endorsement to Internet education.
For cash-strapped states and harried administrators, Internet schools look sweet indeed. At Virtual U., there is no need for costly land, buildings or roads. There are no books, no protests, no students griping about food, parking or surly roommates. And space is never a problem. In cyberspace, there is always room for more.
The money that states save on education can be spent on other pressing needs. "Oh, this is wonderful," observed Clifford Stoll, the author of "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway." "Thanks to the Internet, we can convert all these old red-brick, ivy-covered buildings into prisons."
For students, Stoll predicts, the rise of Virtual U. will be liberation itself. No teacher will be able to detect cut-and-paste term papers, plucked from the vast resources of the World Wide Web. And any students who have trouble on a test can simply pass along their password to a bright and willing friend. "You can even get your diploma by E-mail," said Stoll, who is a computer security expert.
Internet enthusiasts do not find Stoll's brand of sarcasm the least bit funny. They believe that computer networks can open the door to a low-cost, flexible and more productive education system.
Using the power of personal-computer technology, they say, learning can be tailored to individuals. Bright students will no longer be held back, while problem students can be lured into learning with computer game-style entertainment. Trouble with Shakespeare? Your computer will sing the sonnets to you.
Skeptical educators aren't worried, because they don't think cyberschools will ever catch on. Over the years, they point out, one new technology after another has been accompanied by bold predictions of educational reform, which inevitably flounder.
"I believe that the motion picture," Thomas Edison wrote in 1922, "is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks."
In the early 1960s, there were high hopes that "instructional television" could transform elementary and high school education. Then, there were predictions that classrooms would be staffed by teaching assistants whose duties would be to turn on the television and keep the children quiet. In early trials, though, the benefits proved elusive, and enthusiasm soon waned.
"The virtual university concept has echoes of instructional television," said Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford University. "Both ideas came out of the impulse to somehow increase the productivity and reduce the costs of traditional education."
Still, some members of academia insist that the Western governors' virtual university is merely a modest first step toward the high-tech future of education. In the old model, people trudged to repositories of information like classrooms and libraries. In the new model, information goes to people.
"That shift is inevitable and the university as we've known it for thousands of years will largely become unnecessary," said Eli Noam, director of Columbia University's Institute for Tele-Information.
There will still be jobs for professors, says Noam, but their role will be very different. Basic lecture teaching might be the work of a handful of on-screen stars, so some universities would need far fewer instructors.
At elite colleges, Noam predicts, professors would not be lecturers but mentors, advising students and guiding them in their educational pursuits. Technology-aided education, he adds, may even prompt tutorial-style teaching.
That would be a paradoxical turn of events indeed. The last time tutorial learning was considered revolutionary was at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the 13th century.
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Last modified: Thursday, 11-Jul-1996 23:31:44 EDT