Duke is one of several schools, including Ohio University and Purdue, that have recently launched Inter-net-based M.B.A. programs for far-flung execs. Other institutions have begun offering electronic graduate programs in fields from computer science to nursing, and would-be liberal-arts majors can collect B.A. degrees from places like the University of Alaska without the need to invest in earmuffs. About 300 colleges and universities now offer virtual degrees, says Pam Dixon, author of the book “Virtual College.” And, as we head into the next millennium, she predicts, professors will increasingly trade their ivory towers for spires of silicon. “In 10 years, cybercolleges will definitely be part of mainstream education. There’s no escaping it,” she says. Richard Staelin, director of the Duke program, is similarly optimistic. “This is a paradigm shift in education,” he says. “In five years, I believe, we’ll have as many applications for our [online] M.B.A. program as for our regular one.”
Trading pomp and circumstance for plug and circuit board has obvious advantages for Joe Martin, whose employer put up $75,000 for the 19-month Duke program. “My job, combined with the fact that I wanted to keep a family life, has made it impossible for me to go back to school these last 20 years,” he says. “The traditional programs didn’t have the flexibility I needed.” Lisa Haddock, an online instructor at the University of Phoenix, took the new medium’s flexibility to extremes when her second daughter opted to arrive in the midst of two ongoing classes. “I logged on three times during labor,” she says.
Virtual colleges, of course, still struggle with the stigma of their forebears, those back-of-the-magazine correspondence courses. Not all online offerings are accredited, and prospective students should be cautious–for the time being, anyway. “By the millennium, I think some of the really bad programs will have run their course,” says Dixon. “We’ll be out of the honeymoon phase, and more realistic about what really works for students.”
We may have to be, especially when faced with the educational demands of the future. Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt has spearheaded the formation of a sort of electronic consortium of some 20 universities in 18 nearby states-dubbed Western Governors University (WGU)–that would allow online students to take classes from any of the institutions or from a combination of all of them. Leavitt conceived the plan as a response to projections that his state’s college enrollments would double by 2015. Utah can’t afford the $3 billion it would cost to build the nine new campuses required. Some futurists even go so far as to predict the demise of conventional teachers. Joseph Coates, coauthor of “2025: Scenarios of U.S. and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology,” envisions a virtual education system from kindergarten to grad school that would eventually dispense altogether with age-based grades and allow pupils to progress independently. But not even staunch proponents of online education believe academia’s hallowed halls will disappear any time soon. Says WGU executive director Jeffery Livingston, “There’s no anticipation that it’s either technology or a traditional campus–this is just another alternative.” And so it will likely remain, at least until they devise a way to download beer.
