Spurred by fierce competition for students, colleges and universities from Florida State to New York University are plunging headlong into the rapidly evolving world of online education, a world that barely existed five years ago.
In recent years, technologically adventurous professors worked the Internet into their courses, posting the syllabus or readings, sometimes responding to student queries. Some of the more proficient put courses online. But only recently have universities begun to offer whole programs and degrees on line, where a student can sign up for a bachelor's, a master's or even a law degree - the 1990s version of a correspondence course.No college can be certain whether the programs will attract enough students to justify the considerable expense - $50,000 or more to create and support each class. But school officials say that if they do not stake out territory in cyberspace now, someone else will.
"This is the hottest and most sweeping development I've ever seen," said James Ryan, a vice president at Pennsylvania State University, who has been in higher education for 35 years. "It's like being in a roller coaster; it's a thrill a minute."
But even as universities stampede onto the Internet, significant questions have yet to be answered. How good is the education? Who owns the courses - the university or the professors who create them? How should faculty members be paid? What works best in online teaching? And will a degree from a virtual university be worth the actual paper it is printed on?
Frank Mayadas, a program officer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York, which has financed programs to improve online teaching, said the picture was mixed. Some online degrees, like Stanford University's master's degree in electrical engineering, are sound, Mayadas said. But he is skeptical that other offerings will endure.
"The predictability we associate with higher education institutions isn't there yet," he said, "and it needs to be there for this to become a credible source of education."
Still, online classes are a considerable step up from correspondence schools. Internet bulletin boards function as virtual classrooms for students and teachers who can participate at any time, from anywhere, using a computer and a modem. Instructors post lectures and assignments; students turn in papers and tests and discuss their studies with classmates and professors in online conferences.
Michele Acuna of Saugus, Calif., a 34-year-old mother with two teenagers who is working on a bachelor's degree from the University of Phoenix, signs on almost every day for a communications course. Her professor is in Utah.
No one knows exactly how many colleges operate on the Internet. But what is clear is that the trend is picking up speed nationwide.
The proliferation of online programs has many traditional educators scratching their heads. A committee of the American Association of University Professors concluded last year that online learning could be "a valuable pedagogical tool to increase access to higher education." But it warned that developments could compromise traditional notions of academic quality, academic freedom, intellectual property rights and instructors' workloads and compensation.
The student body for most online courses is part-time adults in continuing education programs or full-time degree-seekers who take most of their work in traditional classrooms.