Report says
Internet improving school life for college students
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By ANJETTA McQUEEN
WASHINGTON (March 15, 2000 5:32 p.m.
EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - A report
on the growth of college online services said Wednesday
that increased use of the Internet is improving school
life for students on and off campus.
In just a year, the number of colleges
offering online degrees doubled, said the report from
Market Data Retrieval, a Dun & Bradstreet
educational research company. But the study showed
colleges also spent more money on technology and added
computers to dorms and classrooms.
Besides classes, students could also
get study help, professors' lecture notes, register for
classes, obtain parking permits and pay tuition - all
online.
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 1999-2000,
34 percent of two- and four-year colleges offered
degrees via computer, compared to 15 percent a year ago.
"The Internet is making life
easier for students attending class and living
on-campus," said Mike Subrizi, director of
marketing for Market Data Retrieval.
Today, more than a third of colleges
provide computers in their dorms, up from just a quarter
of schools last year. And campuses, nearly a quarter of
which allow complete online registration, spent $2.7
billion on software and hardware for the 1999-2000
school year, a 9 percent increase from the previous
year.
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," said Stan Ikenberry,
president of the American Council on Education, a
Washington-based organization of colleges. "That's
the whole reason for having a campus in the first
place."
However, Ikenberry said new technology
can enhance campus scholarship. Students who get a
professor's lecture notes, download reading assignments
or even buy books online could actually 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, just 4 percent of colleges insist
that all of their students have a computer, the report
said.
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-based philanthropists on Wednesday that he
will donate $100 million to create a nonprofit,
tuition-free online university that would offer an
"Ivy League" education to anyone.
"What this says is that education
no longer solely belongs in the university, and we've
seen that coming for some time," said Joani Finney,
vice president of the National Center for Public Policy
in Higher Education, a San Jose, Calif.,-based group
that advises institutions on governing and finance.
"Technology has made access to the best thinkers in
the world available without college."
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