Distance education

Douglas E. Hersh’s close crop of auburn hair and neatly trimmed goatee are clearly visible in an expandable window on my desktop. So are his light tweed blazer and matching tie. On a table behind his desk sits a purple orchid, lending color to his office -- 2,600 miles away from mine.

The technology that allows me to see Hersh’s face as he speaks to me is not new. But Hersh, dean of educational programs and technology at Santa Barbara City College, believes it may hold the key to solving an old problem that has plagued distance education since its beginnings: the retention gap.

Is the “bundled” model of higher education outdated?

Some higher-ed futurists think so. Choosing the academic program at a single university, they say, is a relic of a time before online education made it possible for a student in Oregon to take courses at a university in Florida if she wants.

The University of Texas System announced Thursday that it would shutter its pioneering UT TeleCampus, laying off 23 employees and reconfiguring the online education entity into a smaller operation within the system's central office.

Middlebury College has been known for years for immersion-based language instruction and liberal arts education. So when the college announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with a for-profit company to build an online language program aimed at middle- and high-school students, it raised some eyebrows.

Officials at the Distance Education and Training Council, a Washington-based accrediting body, woke up Monday morning to find that the agency had acquired an unwelcome twin overseas.

The body was tipped off to the existence of a Web site for an organization with the same name, with a British Web domain and a Cyprus address, that claims to be “the leading global membership organization for the open and distance education community.”

Having watched its sister school of education more than quadruple enrollment in its master's in teaching program by going online, the University of Southern California's social work school is now following suit with its own highly ranked master's program in social work.

Brigham Young University's Independent Study program appears to be wildly successful. At any given time, students are taking more than 100,000 high school courses and 22,000 college classes, for a variety of reasons: to get courses out of the way in the summer, finish high school or college early, or improve their performance in classes in which they struggled.

E-textbooks might be the most-talked about and least-used learning tools in traditional higher education. Campus libraries and e-reader manufacturers are betting on electronic learning materials to overtake traditional textbooks in the foreseeable future, but very few students at traditional institutions are currently using e-textbooks, according to recent surveys.

The question facing universities looking to compete in the booming market for online higher education is not so much how to do it, but how to distinguish themselves from the rest.

In this, Christian universities appear to have a built-in advantage. And many are seizing the opportunity to expand their footprint.

WASHINGTON – Given the influence of rapid globalization and the emergence of knowledge-based societies, the universities of the future will bear virtually no resemblance to those of today. Or so argued a group of American and Asian education leaders who gathered here Monday to speculate on how the sector may evolve to meet future challenges.