Distance Learning also Benefits Students on Campus

Degrees at Home:

WASHINGTON -- As colleges increased their use of the Internet to provide more distance learning classes and degrees, students on campus also reaped benefits that improved school life, a new report on the growth of college online services says. In just a year, the number of colleges offering online degrees doubled, says a report from Market Data Retrieval, a Dun & Bradstreet educational research company. But the study shows that colleges also spent more money on technology and added computers to on-campus residence halls and classrooms. In addition to taking Internet-based courses themselves, on-campus students also gained online access to study help, professors, lecture notes, class registration, parking permits and tuition payment. Researchers, who surveyed 4,000 institutions, found that seven in 10 colleges now offer some form of distance learning, including courses, lecture notes and online study groups. For the 1999-2000 academic year, 34 percent of two- and four-year colleges offered degrees via computer, compared with 15 percent a year ago.

Yet as interest in online education grows, with one computer software billionaire even offering to provide it free to all takers, researchers and other educators say it's too soon to predict a nation of college students perched in front of dorm or home computers instead of in class. "It would make no sense to bring people together in a physical setting and not have interpersonal interaction," says Dr. Stanley O. Ikenberry, president of the American Council on Education. "That's the whole reason for having a campus in the first place." But Ikenberry says that new technology can enhance campus scholarship. Students who get a professor's lecture notes, download reading assignments or even buy books online actually could be free to spend more time with professors, discussing subjects and analyzing research projects. While it is becoming commonplace for professors to instruct students with the help of a computer, the report found that just 4 percent of colleges insist that all of their students have a computer. Distance learning's greatest impact may be on those who never went to college. As schools facing more competition from for-profit groups create their own online offerings, a college education might one day be available for free. Michael Saylor, chief executive of Microstrategy in Vienna, Va., told a group of Washington, D.C.,-based philanthropists last month that he will donate $100 million to create a nonprofit, tuition-free online university that would offer an "Ivy League" education to anyone.