 |
||
In Global Peace Through The
Global University System
2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and
W. R. Klemm
University of Tampere, Hameenlinna,
Finland
For the
Global University System
GUS development efforts have necessarily focused on
telecommunications requirements to deliver broadband Internet to remote regions
of the world. Sufficient progress
has been made in technology to bring us to the point where academic planning
needs to begin. This chapter
addresses academic administration issues that will arise in the implementation
of GUS. Here, I hope to start a
dialog that will lead to answers to the following question: How does one
organize and run a Global University System?
I begin with the premise that academic administration
must be driven by the GUS mission, which is to provide educational opportunity
that will promote wisdom, justice, prosperity, and peace. Next I consider existing e-learning
consortia that might serve as partial models for GUS operation. Then, I suggest a form of governance
for GUS that bears similarity to traditional university governance but takes
into account the unique nature of GUS.
Then, I present some options on how GUS might develop and implement
administrative policy regarding such matters as tuition and fees, academic
majors, core curriculum, degrees and credentials, credit hours, student
services, and marketing. These
considerations lead me to the conclusion that GUS can begin implementation, at
least on a selective regional basis, in the next few years.
Mission-driven Academic
Administration
Creation of the academic environment of the Global
University System (GUS) should begin with reference to the GUS mission. Because this is so important, I
re-state the mission here, as taken from the chapter by Varis, Utsumi, and me
in the opening part of this book:
GUS aims to provide global education in the broad
context of wisdom, justice, and peace.
It is not enough to educate people with knowledge and marketable skills
if they live in a culture that is ill-suited to accommodate the hopes and
dreams that such education inspires.
Indeed, cultural disconnects with modern education may lead to
frustration, despair, and perhaps ultimately to war or terrorism. A GUS education thus will be aimed at
promoting world prosperity, justice, and peace.
At some point, probably
soon, we need to start a dialog on just what kind of academic administration is
needed to contribute to world prosperity, justice, and peace.
The early history of GUS
development, conceived and accomplished by Tak Utsumi and his numerous
collaborators, was focused on technology issues. The driving questions have been from the outset: How does one bring modern telecommunications to under-developed parts of the world? How does one solve the "last mile" problem of linking the Internet at major facilities to remote facilities where it is not feasible to string telephone lines or cable?
In a keynote speech at the EGDL
Conference in Tampere, Findland, Marco Antonio Dias, former Director of Higher
Education of UNESCO and Vice President for Administration of GUS, points out
the disparities of Internet access that were revealed by a United Nations
study. The 29 richest countries, with 19% of the world population, have 91% of the world's Internet users. More than 50% of these users are in the
United States, which represents only 5% of the world population. In an information age that is
increasingly dependent on access to the Internet, implications for education in
the underdeveloped world are ominous.
See also the greetings by Dr. Dias in Part I of this book.
Technological answers to
these questions are being found, and Dr. Utsumi and his collaborators have
successfully tested model systems on a global scale, as described in other
chapters of this book. The time is
therefore nearing when GUS leaders will need to focus on academic policy issues
and actually launch a Global University System.
How does one organize and run a GUS? This question will not be answered by any one person and certainly not by me. It will take multiple
planning committees from multiple participating universities and other institutions
to develop an academic administration plan. But I contend that now is the time to start such planning.
This chapter will present
some ideas that may serve as a starting point for the planning process. First I describe a few distance
education systems that are already in operation that might serve as models for
GUS. Then, I present some options
for governance structure and policies, followed by consideration of curriculum
issues, student services, and marketing.
All of this is in the context of the unique mission of GUS.
I know of no e-learning
college that serves as a clear model for GUS. Most electronic campuses are sponsored by a single
university, and all the courses offered originate from that campus. Some "e-campuses" are system-wide, such as the one at the University of Texas System, which coordinates faculty and on-line courses at multiple branch campuses.
Some organizations have
created consortia of on-line universities. These typically are coordinating groups that help
universities market their on-line offerings. Such consortia do not offer degrees of their own, but rather
the degrees are offered by the member institutions.
One well-known example is
the Sloan Foundation Consortium
(http://www.sloan-c.org/programs/index.asp). The Sloan Web site provides a catalog of courses and degree
programs from its member institutions.
Membership in the consortium is automatic for institutions that have
received grant support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to teach and give
degrees over the Internet. Other
institutions become members through a peer review process. Each degree is offered through online
courses.
Another consortium example
is the United States Southern
Regional Education Board (SREB, http://www.electroniccampus.org/), which is
a clearinghouse for e-courses offered by multiple universities. SREB offers no degree of its own, nor
does it provide academic services to students other than routing e-mail
inquiries to institutional representatives and listing e-courses available at
some 213 participating universities.
SREB does, however, offer electronic library services through a contract
arrangement with one of its participating institutions (University of
Georgia). They have selected
programs that allow out-of-state students to enroll at in-state tuition rates.
Another approximate model is
the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC)
(http://www.adec.edu/), which is a group of international land grant
universities that cooperates in sharing educational technology programs and
services. ADEC does not grant
degrees. Rather, students obtain
degrees at their local university, but may take ADEC-sponsored courses or
courses that are facilitated by ADEC satellite technology. ADEC also maintains a searchable
database of distance learning degrees and programs available at their
sponsoring institutions. This
searchable cataloguing function will probably be a vital component of GUS, with
a GUS Website acting as a portal to distance learning courses from GUS partner
universities.
National Technological University (NTU)
National
Technological University (http://www.ntu.edu/offers/index.asp) (awards 19 master's degrees in engineering, technical, and management subjects. NTU relies on more than 1,400 courses from 52 member
universities, whose professors create and teach the courses. Most are delivered through a
satellite-television network.
Students mix and match
courses from different institutions, but receive their degrees from NTU. In the past 18 years, the institution
has awarded more than 1,700 master's degrees. Started in 1984 as a nonprofit institution, NTU quickly drew
enrollment increases and widespread acclaim. NTU's fortunes started to change in 1998, though, when its
Board of Trustees decided to form a for-profit company that focused on
noncredit, corporate-training courses.
Over the next three years,
the for-profit company raised $22-million in venture capital and pumped all
profits from the engineering programs into the new courses (Arnone, 2002). The company was too small to do both
its new and old missions well and enrollments dropped. The new company lost all its money.
NTU is currently in the
process of being acquired by Sylvan Learning
Systems Inc. (http://www.sylvan.net/), a major provider of engineering and
technical degrees through distance education. NTU will become part of Sylvan's Online Higher Education
division, fitting into Sylvan's strategy to offer degrees to working
professionals in specific markets (Arnone, 2002). Sylvan has also recently bought a 51-percent interest in Walden
University, which provides online graduate degrees in business, psychology, and
other subjects.
Sylvan also owns Canter and
Associates, through which elementary- and secondary-school educators can get
master's degrees in education.
Bringing in roughly 2,000 NTU students will increase Sylvan's graduate-level
enrollment to about 14,500.
eArmyU
Another model is the eArmyU (http://earmyu.com/) program of distance education (Lorenzo,
2002; Johnstone, 2003). The
Department of Defense has committed about $1 billion to this program, mostly in
payment of fees for military personnel to take distance-learning courses at
participating universities.
Currently, soldiers are taking classes from Australia, Honduras, Kosovo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Japan, Egypt, the United Kingdom, Kuwait,
Singapore, Germany, Korea, Macedonia, Italy, and Jordan. The program offers Associates Degrees, Bachelor's Degrees, Master's Degrees, and technical certificates. It is too new to know how well this
program will work, but clearly the U.S. military aims to become a major player
in distance learning. Part of the
rationale for the military interest in distance learning is that the constant
movement of troops, sometimes to remote areas, makes traditional
bricks-and-mortar education impractical.
The old correspondence-course model that the military used to use is
made obsolete by telecommunications technology.
The program is administered for the U.S. Army under
contract with IBM. The Army acts
as a broker for on-line courses and degree programs offered by participating
universities. This program went
from no enrollment when inaugurated in August of 2000 to 50,000 in just two
years, and 80,000 are expected by 2005.
The Web site portal is more than a gateway to a group
of schools. The Web site has a
program search function and a downloadable 337-page document with detailed
degree maps of every program being offered. All applications and enrollment are mediated via the
portal. When students register,
they get a user ID and password that gives them access to their classes and to
student services. IBM's role seems not so much as to act as a broker for eArmyU, but rather to act as an "Integrator" to provide "Customer Relationship Management," which includes:
Such customer services will need to be included in
GUS, although the means of implementation is likely to be different. While GUS will not have the resources
of the U.S. Army or of IBM, GUS does have similar core resources: namely, a
cadre of distance education universities that GUS students can access. Moreover, GUS is developing regional facilitator networks
that can provide much of this support service at a more local level.
There is yet another aspect of the Army program that
should probably be emulated in some form by GUS. To insure student commitment and initiative, eArmyU students
must sign a contract that commits them to completing 12 semester hours in two
years, or else they must pay back the costs of tuition.
One of the more encouraging aspects of eArmyU is that
this program shows the feasibility of educating tens of thousands of
students. Paradoxically, armies
are commonly thought to educate soldiers to prepare for war, while the eArmyU
model shows us a way to educate people for peace. As Lorenzo put it, eArmyU provides "unprecedented significance in the history of higher education."
Western Governor's University (http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/index.html)
This is a consortium originally conceived by Western
Governors in the United States.
The organization is very similar
in design to GUS, in that it offers on-line degrees, but the courses originate
from dozens of partner institutions.
This consortium has a philosophical perspective that GUS planners should
consider. The President, Robert
Mendenhall describes this philosophy
as follows: "Competency-based education basically means that we award degrees based on students demonstrating competence - what they know and can do - rather than by accumulating a certain number of credit hours. For each of
our degrees we carefully define the competencies expected of a graduate, using
the input of both academic and industry experts, and then, working with our
Assessment Council of national experts, we define the assessments to measure
these competencies. These
assessments combine objective tests, performance tasks, portfolios and
projects. We ensure that each
student actually has the defined competencies in order to graduate. We are unique also in that we don't develop and teach our own courses.
Instead, we identify the best available online courses, and other learning resources, and "map" them to our competencies. Our faculty, who are generally PhD's in the field, are not course instructors but are student mentors. Each student at WGU has an individual
Academic Action Plan tailored around the competencies they possess and those
they need, and each has an assigned faculty mentor that will work with that
student until graduation. In addition, all students are part of one or more learning communities, and they collaborate electronically and via telephone." (http://www.distance-educator.com/dnews/?name=News&file=article&sid=8714)
Applying the Models to GUS
None of these models exactly fit the needs of
GUS. But they do show us that
certain key ideas can be made to work:
Large-scale funding resources from multiple resources
are essential. Examples include the Japanese government's ODA fund and the recent investment of U.S. $2 million by the government of Norway (see http://www.grida.no/inf/gaunu/index.htm).
The GUS will probably most resemble traditional
universities in terms of its governance structure. All universities have certain shared responsibilities, to the students, to the institution, and to the institution's patrons. For GUS, a possible organization chart is
shown below:
|
||
Officials are needed to serve in the role of
President and his management team for administering academic programs,
registration and records, student services, university finances, graduate
studies and research. Some
traditional roles that are probably not needed in such a university as GUS are
personnel for facilities and human resources, librarians, faculty, and
department heads, because these will reside with the partner universities for
which GUS will act as an integrator of distance learning instruction. However, GUS will probably need an
official for information technology, whose task will be to help identify new
communication and instructional technologies and to direct the growth of the
GUS technology infrastructure.
It seems logical to me to call these top-ranking
officials Vice Presidents. The
duties of each officer more or less parallel the counterpart in
bricks-and-mortar universities - with some notable exceptions. The Vice President for Student Services
has special challenges in providing such services as counseling (personal and
career). The Vice President for
Admissions, Registration and Records has the unenviable tasks of setting
admission standards that provide opportunity for students with modest academic background,
yet who are able to be successful in the academic courses of the participating
universities. Arrangements for
remedial programs and college preparatory schools may be crucial. There will also be challenges in
coordinating registration in GUS from students taking academic courses at the
various participating universities and in collating transcript data from such
diverse sources. The Student
Services VP will have the challenge of trying to duplicate an array of vital
student services such as those found with eArmyU. The Finance VP will have the obvious financial
responsibilities of counterparts in traditional universities, but perhaps with
the added responsibility of arranging financial aid for students. Finally, the Vice President for Information
Technology will have a much more comprehensive role in GUS than counterparts
elsewhere, because all instruction in GUS will be delivered exclusively over
the Internet and associated wireless systems and often in remote areas of the
world. The Development VP will be
responsible for fund raising via gifts, grants and contracts.
Accreditation
The partner universities are already accredited
within their own countries. This
accreditation provides the necessary credentials for GUS courses, inasmuch as the
GUS courses actually originate from these accredited universities. Nonetheless, it is important for GUS to
obtain accreditation in its own right, because GUS will be setting candidacy
for degrees and will be packaging courses into degree plans. Accreditation can be sought either from
the home country that houses the administration of GUS or from some
international organization.
Tuition and Fees
Who will pay for the costs of a GUS education? GUS and participating institutions have not yet worked out the matter of student fees. Fees will be a particular
problem for students from poor countries.
GUS hopes to arrange support from national governments, local corporations,
foundations, G8 countries with Official Development Funds, the U.N., as well as
scholarships from the participating institutions, most of which have a vested
interest in attracting foreign students and in expanding their international
reach.
We anticipate that some students may have their own
funds, perhaps because they come from the elite families in their home
countries. Because of their
wealth, many such students would ordinarily attend on-site classes at major
world universities. But GUS may be
attractive because of its global service and peace emphasis, which could carry
significant political currency in the home countries.
We anticipate, however, that the vast majority of
students will have limited financial resources and will need financial
aid. Such aid can come from
government or corporate scholarships and loans. Subsidized tuition and fees should come with incentives to
insure student commitment. These
incentives would probably vary with the source of subsidy. A company or government may require a
certain number of years of service after graduation. There probably should also be specified course loads each
year.
GUS may want to negotiate tuition and fees with
participating universities, as is the practice at eArmyU (Lorenzo, 2002). Their currently negotiated rates are $153 per credit hour
for undergraduate courses and $300 per credit hour for graduate courses.
Educating for Peace
How does one create a curriculum that promotes
peace? How does one create graduates with the wisdom of the recently deceased U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan who said that he had learned the conservative's truth that culture, not politics, determines the success of a society and the liberal's truth that politics can change a culture and save it from itself? Both conservative and liberal truths hinge on culture.
The question now becomes one of how to structure the education of
leaders who will influence their cultures in positive ways.
But let us first consider the limits of
education. Many well-meaning people seem to put too much faith in education, embracing a simplistic notion that education will somehow turn "swords into plowshares."
Let us consider the roots of terrorism, for
example. While the definition of
terrorism is in the mind of the beholder, most rational people would consider
suicide bombing as undeniable terrorism, because the purpose is to terrorize
innocents. Scott Atran, a social
scientists working at the CNRS-institut Jean Nicod in Paris, has recently
published in the premier journal, Science, a very unsettling review of the scholarly literature on the "Genesis of Suicide Terrorism" (Atran, 2003).
He presents compelling evidence against the prevailing view that such terrorism can be
combated by education and reduction of poverty. As he puts it, "What research there is, indicates that suicide terrorists have no appreciable psychopathology and are at least as educated and economically well off as their surrounding populations." One only needs to recall that many of the World Trade Center suicide bombers were college students or graduate students.
But in case the reader is unconvinced by this small sample, Atran
reviews a survey of 1,357 West Bank and Gaza Palestinians 18 years and older,
noting that only 40% of those with graduate degrees favored dialog with Israel,
versus 53% of those with college degrees and 60% with 9 or less years of
schooling. Hezbollah militants,
when compared to an age-matched random sample of Lebanese, were less likely to come from poor homes and more likely to have had secondary school education. Atran reviews another study showing that suicide bombers "exhibit no socially dysfunctional attributes (fatherless, friendless, or jobless) or suicidal symptoms." Atran asserts that attributing terrorism to psychopathology, lack of education, or poverty, is not only false, but also blinds us to the real causes of terrorism.
My explanation of Atran's point is that the real cause of suicide terrorists begins with human nature. We humans are genetically programmed to seek and follow
charismatic leaders, the alpha males in our midst. We share this trait with many other primate species. The corollary is that most humans tend
to accept uncritically what their alpha male leaders teach them. Such teaching can become glorified in
the guise of religious doctrine or ultra-nationalistic fervor. Such leaders typically create an
organizational structure in which peer influence is mobilized to contribute to
the development of a public belief system in which killing people is not only
be a virtue but a holy or patriotic duty.
Peer influence over personal beliefs is conspicuous in radical
Islam. Atran cites a survey of
educated Saudis shortly after the 9/11 attack and found that 95% supported Al
Qaida. A survey at the end of 2002
found that 73% of Lebanese Moslems thought suicide bombing was appropriate.
How is college education going to change such belief
systems? Or prevent their emergence in the unconverted? Indeed, education of the wrong kind will be counterproductive, actually serving, as we have seen in radical Islamic schools, to spread the teaching of belief systems that ultimately lead to war.
In addition to religious or political belief systems,
people go to war for such equally fundamental reasons as:
College education can affect belief systems in a positive way if the
instruction helps people to understand the biology and psychology of their
human nature and shows them better ways for people to live and work
together. Part of this
understanding has to include the objective lessons of history and political
science. GUS officials must use
great care in selecting appropriate courses for a core curriculum in such
subjects as history, political science, and religion to prevent the courses
from being used as platforms for indoctrination and propaganda.
GUS is to be a "peace" university, but it is too facile to assume that all we have to do is teach that war is bad. Many wars throughout history have
promoted long-term peace. Such
wars, even in relatively modern times, have promoted real peace by abolishing
slavery, crushing brutal dictators and liberating oppressed people, turning
back invasions, and stopping ethnic cleansing.
Peace is more than the absence of war. Real peace thrives only in cultural and
economic systems that are built on the ideals of freedom and justice. A GUS core curriculum must espouse
freedom and justice as values that promote peace. However, "freedom" and "justice" mean different things to different people. Perhaps GUS
curriculum officials should select courses that at least help students learn
the different definitions and their rationales.
Obviously, it is the humanities courses in a core
curriculum that are most likely to serve as platforms for ideological
indoctrination and propaganda.
What may not be so obvious is the importance of having rigorous biology
instruction in the core. The
interests of peace are best served when we accept the fact that humans are not
perfectible, as assumed in Communist ideology, but rather are constrained by
their biology. Biology confirms
that humans do not inherit acquired characteristics. Competitiveness, aggressiveness, and the herd behavior
underlying tribalism are biological imperatives that are not eliminated by the
veneer of civilization and education, no matter how thick the veneer.
Core Curriculum
While there are many options on which courses are
appropriate, I would suggest courses in political science, natural science
(especially biology and anthropology), comparative religion, philosophy, psychology,
economics, world history, and perhaps a few others. These are the kinds of courses that typically come to mind for core curricula, and are inspired by the tradition of a "liberal arts" education.
If we take the common U.S. standard of 32 semester
credit hours per academic year and a typical course having 3 semester credit
hours, this means that approximately 11 core-curriculum courses could be
completed in one year.
In today's world, a classical liberal arts core is not adequate. We need science and
technology courses in a core curriculum.
The U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan (2004) has pointed out that lack
of science and technology is a main reason that underdeveloped countries are
undeveloped, are undernourished, and have too much pollution and disease. The number of scientists per capita in
undeveloped countries is 10 to 30 times smaller than in developed
countries. The lack of scientific activity, in his view, "accelerates the disparity between advanced and developing countries." A GUS
education should contribute to remedies for such disparity.
Practical Education
We can be satisfied with a GUS curriculum only if it
teaches students how to think and provides them with practical skills. GUS curriculum development is on safer
ground when it comes to academic majors outside the core curriculum. Practical training is vitally
important. The backwardness of a
country or culture can be defined in terms of deficiency of practical
competencies of its people. A
college education that helps people to become more competent and competitive in
a global economy at least helps to reduce the influence of envy and greed as
driving forces of war. Every
advanced country must have a large cadre of trained people who can work in
medical fields, agriculture, business, and engineering. That is why I urge that at least 2.5
years of GUS curriculum be devoted to practical subject matter.
Professors
GUS will need to create a mechanism for vetting
professors for evaluating their teaching skills and course content. In the case of the humanities, the
distinctions between education, indoctrination, and propaganda are blurred, and
many humanities professors around the world are not particularly committed to
teaching students to examine evidence and to think for themselves. I stress the need to teach the objective lessons of history and politics, because too many
college professors have a biased ideological and political agenda. How GUS will keep such professors out
of the curriculum is not clear, but a vetting mechanism of some kind is
necessary. GUS needs professors
who will educate, not indoctrinate.
In the case of technical and scientific courses,
different problems arise. Some
researchers are not interested in teaching. Some teach their research, without proper consideration for
the needs of undergraduates to understand the core knowledge of the
discipline. At the other extreme, some professors focus exclusively on the "facts" of their discipline without conveying the changing nature of scientific and technical fields and the role of research in creating knowledge.
Majors
Development of curriculum (see below) will be driven
by the choice of academic majors offered by GUS. What GUS offers as academic majors should be demand
driven. Most likely, students in
one region may have greater interest and need for certain academic majors than
others. We can anticipate that
certain majors should have more practical appeal to developing countries.
Especially in the beginning, only a few academic majors should be available, in order to facilitate program management. The decision on which majors to offer should be influenced by the mission of GUS. In other words, what kind of academic background will promote peace and prosperity in a global economy? What kind of education will make students and their nations find a happy niche?
One major must surely be Public Service or some
equivalently titled program that prepares students to become public servants
(political leaders, diplomats, employees of government agencies). Other academic majors should serve
practical purposes that promote prosperity. The obvious areas of specialization involve agriculture,
business, engineering, and health care.
There are others, but it seems wise for GUS to start small and grow slowly
into a larger-scale enterprise.
To be true to the mission of GUS, all students should
complete a core curriculum that emphasizes the value systems that promote
understanding and peace among nations.
In a four-year curriculum, at least one year's worth of courses should be in the core.
Courses
Much discussion will be needed to design
curricula. Having served on
curriculum committees at two universities, I know how difficult and frustrating
this work can be. GUS does have
the advantage of being new, and thus is not saddled with heavy baggage from
historically vested interests.
Moreover, because GUS will be a broker and not house the sources of
instruction, there will be less temptation to protect turf. Hopefully, the suggestions below will
serve as a starting point.
I suggest a core curriculum
(aimed at justice and peace). The
total number of hours devoted to the core should be the equivalent to 1 to 2
years of college work. Then, the
rest of the curriculum (aimed at prosperity) could include such majors as
agriculture, business, and engineering.
Here, the specific courses can be tailored to particular needs of the
student and his home country.
Courses for Academic Majors
Course requirements for given Majors are rather well
standardized around the world.
Reaching agreement on what courses are needed for a degree in Business,
for example, is a relatively straight-forward matter. The degree programs of GUS partner institutions are already
well defined and could serve as a guide for GUS administrators.
More problematic will be decisions on course
requirements for sub-specialty degrees.
For example, what kind of Engineering degrees (electrical, mechanical,
civil, etc.) will GUS support?
Similar decisions have to be made in the other academic major areas as
well.
Once agreement is reached on
which courses belong in the core curriculum and in each academic major, GUS
policy makers will have the challenge of deciding which courses from the
various partner universities are equivalent to the GUS specifications. This problem is similar to that faced
by all universities when decisions are made about transfer of credit. Typically, decisions on which courses
are equivalent are made by counselors or Registrar officials. Hopefully, GUS administrators will
engage the faculty in partner institutions in making these decisions. One approach may be to ask partner
institutions to submit syllabi for their distance education courses. Then a committee chaired by the VP for
Registration and Records and the VP for Academics could rule on which courses
in a given area are equivalent.
Degrees and Credentials
The norm in higher education, including most of the GUS-collaborating universities, is the Bachelor's degree, and that would also seem appropriate for GUS. Perhaps it would be an issue worth
debate as to whether the degree should be a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) or a
Bachelor of Science (B.S.) or either.
One simple solution is to limit the B.S. degree to majors in health
science, agriculture, or engineering.
GUS should also consider a two-year degree, called "Associates Degree" in the U.S. This might be particularly important
for students who lack the time, funding, or other resources to pursue a
four-year degree.
Similarly, it might also
make sense to offer Certificates for completion of a certain set of course
hours in a given specialty. GUS
could also structure the Certification programs in a way that would allow
applying the credits earned for the Certificate toward work on a full degree. Nurses-aid Certificate programs are an
example that would satisfy a great need, while at the same time keeping doors
of opportunity open for Certificate holders to purse baccalaureate-level
education in a GUS degree in Public Health, for example. Another example is the new distance
education program for Advanced
International Affairs (http://bush.tamu.edu/programs/cpaia/admissions/),
offered by the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas
A&M University. Enrollment in this program requires a Bachelor's degree, but GUS could create an undergraduate-level Certificate course package on world affairs and international relations that would fit in with a GUS degree program in Public Service.
GUS should also be prepared
to offer isolated courses for working professionals. The trend toward life-long learning seems irreversible,
because changing and information-based economies demand continuous education of
work forces.
Credit Hours
GUS partner institutions probably use different
credit accounting systems. Some are based on semesters (14-17 weeks long), while others may be based on a "quarter" system of 8-10 weeks.
Also, some schools have summer sessions lasting 6 to 10 weeks. Credit hours assigned to a course are typically based on number of "contact" (class hours), which makes little sense in an on-line world. Nonetheless,
on-line education has generally adapted these standards, because they are the
only generally recognized benchmark and because many on-line courses began as
adaptations of pre-existing face-to-face courses.
Registrars know how to deal with the confusing array
of academic credits, and presumably such problems can be resolved by GUS as
well.
Student Services
Student Financial Aid
Many GUS students (especially in developing
countries) will be poor and therefore in need financial aid. GUS administrators will be expected to help find financial aid sources, through agencies within the students' home countries (government agencies, employers), charitable foundations, or international organizations such as UNESCO or World Bank.
GUS should not have the problem of fraud that many
e-universities have, wherein students get loans to pay fees to non-existing
schools or schools of worthless quality.
GUS can control which universities are eligible, and GUS could even
require that payments be made to GUS, with the funds then forwarded to the
appropriate participating institution.
GUS may wish to negotiate a service or membership fee with partner
universities, which would help support GUS operating expenses.
Counseling
Many GUS students will not
come from families with college experiences. Few GUS students will have friends who went to college. Thus, obtaining a university education
will be stressful under the best of circumstances and likely to be more
difficult when students learn on-line without the social support service
normally found at a bricks-and-mortar university. Thus, GUS students will need more than the usual amount of
counseling and social support.
Because GUS will rely heavily on local recruiting and local facilitators, some student counseling capability may be built-in. Hopefully, someone at regional hub sites or in the local communities can act as a counselor, especially if GUS provides on-line guidance. The kinds of on-line guidance that GUS should provide include:
Following the model of
eArmyU, GUS should provide an assigned mentor for each on-line student. This may be a professor at a university
where most of the courses are taken, or a former GUS graduate from the same
cultural background, or a local official/teacher/employer. Finding such mentors may be difficult
in some circumstances, but on-line students need such assistance more than
traditional students. That is why
GUS has already begun developing relationships in developing countries that can
facilitate creation of a cadre of student mentors.
I predict that the ultimate success of GUS will depend on the quality of student services it provides.
Marketing
Attracting students is difficult for on-line
universities. Some institutions
have shut down their on-line operations because of lack of student support (for
example, the Columbia University on-line venture - http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=21538
).
GUS has the added problem of trying to reach students
in remote or undeveloped parts of the world. On the other hand, GUS will have high visibility with its
regional hub universities, and these schools are well suited for developing
marketing outreach.
GUS will need to answer the following question from prospective students: "Why should I get my on-line degree from GUS when I could get it directly from one of the participating GUS universities?" This answer will no doubt include at
least several points:
1.
GUS allows a "cafeteria" selection of courses that enables greater customization of education to serve the needs and interests of the student. Local government or company sponsors of
students may also wish their students to have more curricular flexibility.
2.
GUS promotes a more
international learning experience.
Classmates will come from many countries and cultures, greatly enriching
the learning in on-line forums and team projects. This will be a 21st century version of the
Fulbright program, which is aimed at informing working professionals about
different cultures, political, and economic systems.
3.
GUS arranges for the
hardware infrastructure that is necessary for on-line instruction in remote
areas. Perhaps most of the GUS
students would not have the Internet connectivity needed for on-line education
were it not for GUS-supported telecommunications.
The latter point raises an issue concerning how much
control GUS should retain over the hardware connectivity that is made possible
via GUS. If GUS controls the
connectivity, then it is much easier to recruit students to GUS educational
programs.
In the initial phase, we intend to have a private
virtual broadband Internet which will be available free of charge to faculties
and students of GUS. In the
subsequent phase, the high cost of broadband trunk line satellite is to be
subsidized by the commercial enterprises who will also use the broadband
Internet.
Deployment
How to proceed? It seems prudent to identify regional universities that have the telecommunications capability and potential interest to serve as a GUS hub. One
regional university at a time can be integrated into a family of GUS partners. Specific steps that might be taken
include:
Once GUS begins actual operations, I think it is
imperative for GUS to show positive results quickly in order to establish
credibility and to attract funds for full-scale development.
Toward that end, three things must be done:
1.
Have a comprehensive
set of academic policies and implementation plans in place before deployment is
attempted.
2.
Focus on limited
initial deployment in a region of the world where GUS has already developed
substantial contacts with government and education officials and where
infrastructure exists and has been tested in the areas to be serviced.
3.
Have a pre-arranged and
large set of students from government agencies and corporations in the region
whose academic needs are known and can be accommodated by GUS in the early
stages of program development.
Conclusions
This brief introduction to academic program issues
will hopefully encourage GUS officials and its partners that GUS can become
operational in the next few years, at least in certain regions of the
world. While many problems can be
anticipated, these are generally the same problems that traditional and
e-universities have been coping with successfully. In other words, I believe GUS can work! Given the
over-riding importance of the GUS vision and the uniqueness of its approach to
e-learning, all stakeholders should be motivated to do their part to make GUS
happen.
References
Annan, K.
(2003). A challenge to the world's scientists. Science. 299:
1485.
Arnone, M.
(2002) Sylvan learning
systems to acquire national technological U. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8, 22, A33.
Atran, S.
(2003). Genesis of suicide
terrorism. Science. 299:
1534-1539.
Johnsone, Sally M. 2003. An army of distance learners. Syllabus. February, p. 18
Lorenzo, George. 2002. EarmyU
and the future of distance education.
The Technology Source. May/June.
Author Biographical Sketch
|
W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Professor of Neuroscience
Texas A&M University, Mail Stop 4458
College Station, TX 77843-4458, U.S.A.
E-Mail: wklemm@cvm.tamu.edu
Webs: www.cvm.tamu.edu/wklemm
|
|
Bill Klemm's scientific interests include such areas as brainstem mechanisms of
behavior, membrane and cell-level mechanisms of biological water and alcohol,
learning/memory, chemical signals, human cognition and brain electrical
activity. See his list of about 400
publications (including 9 books and 45 book chapters. His work as an educator includes
teaching upper-division undergraduate courses in Introductory
Neuroscience and Science & Technology:
Practices, Policies, and Politics. He has also created a web site "Publications on On-line
Collaboration and Educational Technology" of his publications
dealing with collaborative learning and distance education. He is co-developer of a Web-like
computer conferencing and document-sharing system, called Forum MATRIX. He also co-developed the computerized self-quizzing game,
called Get Smart! His honors include serving on the Board of Editors of seven
journals: The Technology Source
(1998 to present), Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology & Biological
Psychiatry (1988 to present); Archives
Clinical Neuropsychology (1992 to
present); American Journal of Veterinary Research (1995-1999), Psychopharmacology (1980-1985); Journal of Electrophysiological
Techniques (1978-87); Communications
in Behavioral Biology (now Behavioral
& Neural Biology
(1970-1973). He has been selected
as an ad hoc Reviewer for 34
scholarly journals, 8 book publishers, and several U.S. government agencies
(NSF, NIH, USDA, U.S. Air Force).
He has been listed in some 17 Biographies and has Distinguished
Researcher awards from Texas A&M and Sigma Xi, Texas A&M. He served on the international Board of
Directors of the 70,000-member Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. A more complete resume is available here.
