Universities

Two dozen years ago I designed the first BSBA degree program for what has become the University of Phoenix, and I've been tracking practical university education ever since.

The Virtual Diploma, Upside (4/00)

"Already hundreds of traditional colleges -- including Stanford University, Georgetown, and Florida State -- have added ".com" to their names, with others soon to follow. Dozens of independent startups have joined the fray as well, either by developing unique courses or by partnering with existing schools to create and promote online programs."

Universities Won't Survive Source: An Interview with Peter Drucker, Forbes Magazine, March 10, 1997, pp.126-127.

"Thirty years from now, the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive… Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? …Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis… Already we are beginning to deliver more lectures and classes off-campus via satellite or two-way video at a fraction of the cost. The college won’t survive as a residential institution."

unext -- Michael Milken's money + Stanford, Colulmbia, and Chicago's names + Don Norman

What is UNext.com?
UNext.com is an education company dedicated to delivering the highest quality online learning experience to adult students throughout the world.
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How is UNext related to Cardean University?
UNext.com owns Cardean University, an online university for business education. For more information, see www.Cardean.com.
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Where does the content for Cardean University courses come from?
Our academic consortium consists of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. These schools work with us to develop academic content for Cardean University.
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How is UNext different from other distance learning providers?
UNext.com's consortium of elite academic institutions, together with our own cognitive, Internet, and learning professionals, produce a unique, state-of-the-art educational experience. Further, we have a testing process that ensures the efficacy of Cardean courses before we release them.
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What types of courses will Cardean University offer?
Cardean University currently offers business courses and intends to broaden its offerings over time.

Ivy Online, The Standard, October 22, 1999

"Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, meanwhile, have struck deals with Pensare, a Silicon Valley company that creates online courses. Harvard will receive stock warrants in Pensare, as will Duke University, which is licensing a complete MBA curriculum to the company.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent in the next few years on a gamble that middle managers in Singapore or Heidelberg are as hungry for U.S. education as they are for Baywatch.

"No one knows if this is going to work," says David Brady, an associate dean at Stanford's business school. "You're riding the wave. Is it going to be a big wave or little wave? You don't want to be the first mover. If it's a bad wave, we all want to slide down together."

Company/launch date	Courseware
Capella University/1993	500 courses by end of 2000; M.B.A., master's degree and Ph.D. programs
Cenquest/1997	100 graduate business courses; 3 certificate programs; 2 master's degrees
Fathom/2000	7,000 undergraduate and graduate courses by end of 2000
Jones International Univ/1995	80 courses; 26 certificate programs; M.B.A.
Pensare/1998	30 business education courses; M.B.A.
UNext/1997	100 graduate-level business courses by end of 2000 via its Cardean University
Univ of Phoenix Online/1989	800 undergraduate and graduate courses; 35 degree programs; M.B.A.

Sources: Companies. Forbes, May 15, 2000

 

A worthy skeptical view appears in the July 1999 Scientific American.

In other words: we're racing headlong into a new set of educational techniques we don't really understand. Given that an ever increasing percentage of the U.S. economy depends on knowledge workers and that those workers need to be highly educated and skilled, this move to cyber learning could be really stupid.

Historian David Noble (Digital Diploma Mills, 1997-99) contends that university administrators, in collusion with high-tech corporations and emerging educational industries, are plotting the top-down, profit-driven commercialization of higher education as "courseware." In the ensuing power struggle, pitting classroom against the board room, the stakes are no less than control over higher education. If the board room wins, warns Noble, "we will look upon the wired remains of our once great democratic higher education system and wonder how we let it happen" So says a Disenting Voice in First Monday.

 

Chronicle of Higher Education -- Daily Distance Education Updates

People searching for diploma mills sometimes end up on my site. In this morning's email:

"I'm interested in buying a MBA diploma. Send me the price, name of university and delivery time to Colombia."

USA Today reports, "MicroStrategy founder and CEO Michael Saylor, saying he wants to push higher education into the 21st century, announced plans to contribute $100 million toward founding a cyber-university that would offer a free "Ivy League" education to anyone with access to a computer and a modem." The Microstrategy free university strategy says, "the greatest minds ...would not be paid...no actual interaction between teachers and students." Lotsa luck.

The Virtual University & Educational Opportunity - Issues of Equity and Access for the Next Generation from the College Board

Educause -- transformational change in higher education through...information resources and technologies in teaching, learning, scholarship, research, and institutional management. Policy issues.

Proprietary Higher Education: Intellectual Capital for the Knowledge Economy, SunTrust Equities Research (1/2000)

The Crossroads between Lifelong Learning and Information Technology: A Challenge Facing Leading Universities