CAMPUS & CAREER GUIDE : Advanced Degrees Earned Off Campus and On-Line : Home study: Lectures, class discussions, papers and exams are done via computer. Busy students set their own schedules.

Dr. Iver Juster’s idea of a good time is getting a master’s in business administration. Business fascinates him, and the degree couldn’t hurt in his career as a physician-executive.

But there was never time. Juster has a family and works 60 hours a week as medical director for a Cerritos health maintenance organization. In spare moments, he is an insatiable consumer of workshops and home study courses.

Then last year, Juster heard about an MBA program offered entirely by computer. All the lectures, class discussions, papers and exams took place on-line. Students came and went on their own schedules, signing on before work or after midnight. If they kept up, participated in class, did their papers and passed the tests, they could have an MBA within 2 1/2 years. It was perfect for Juster.

Now the HMO director signs on to the University of Phoenix’s on-line MBA program--usually before dawn, armed with a cup of coffee, at his home computer in Long Beach. But he has also logged on from a dance camp in Sequoia National Park over the Labor Day weekend. And from time to time he lugs his laptop to a Thai restaurant near his office and squeezes in some on-line time over lunch.

He spends 15 to 20 hours a week on schoolwork. By late next year, if all goes well, Iver Juster MD will become Iver Juster MD, MBA.

Juster is one of a growing number of busy adults--higher education’s “new majority,” known in the old days as non-traditional students--whom schools have begun courting with a high-tech bag of tricks capable of offering courses, degree programs, even an entire college education, to people who need never set foot on a campus.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, for example, offers a bachelor of arts in information systems via videotapes and a system of computer conferences it calls the virtual classroom. In the near future, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo plans to offer videotaped lectures and demonstrations combined with self-paced tutorials, electronic mail and conferencing.

Several other California state universities plan to offer college courses to students in rural high schools, relying entirely on videotapes, printed materials sent by mail, and computer and telephone conferencing. Northern Virginia Community College offers foreign language teaching by voice mail, enabling a teacher miles away to correct a student’s accent.

“We have multiple senses, right?” said Sally M. Johnstone, director of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications in Boulder, Colo. “So we might have some video, some computing, some audio conferencing, some faxing back and forth of quick written material. There’s now a whole basket of technological tools that can be used.”

About 1,000 students are enrolled in the University of Phoenix on-line degree programs. About 1,500 students have taken on-line courses through Connected Education Inc. in White Plains, N.Y., since 1985. And thousands of others have taken classes and earned degrees through other forms of long-distance learning.

Prices vary. A single three-credit course through Connected Education costs $1,344. Juster’s MBA will end up costing $16,000 to $17,000, he figures. In most cases, the telephone calls necessary to link up with an on-line service are local or toll-free.

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Part of the appeal of distance learning is obvious: In most cases, no one has to be any place at any time. An engineer, say, who hopes to keep abreast in a rapidly evolving field and be positioned for a lucrative promotion can take long business trips and even be transferred cross-country without ever missing a class or exam.

Barry Galloway, 40, of Springfield, Va., designs training programs for companies. He works for a consulting group but wants to eventually go out on his own. So he recently got a master of science degree in instructional and performance technology from Boise State University via computer rather than attend the University of Maryland, 90 minutes away.

Margie Whiteleather, 28, of Ashland, Ohio, found other advantages. She has an undergraduate degree from Yale College. Now she is working her way, on-line, toward a master’s degree in media studies from the New School for Social Research in New York City through Connected Education. Naturally shy and reticent in “in-person” classes, Whiteleather says she participates far more on-line.

Students with impaired hearing for whom English is a second language also thrive on-line. In addition, prejudices are undermined. “I don’t know if these people are white, black, yellow, fat, thin, tall, overweight or have a speech impediment,” said Mark Eisley, who runs the Boise State program. “Things that might cause a bias or a hesitation to participate aren’t there.”

For college administrators, too, distance courses are suddenly hot. Faced with dwindling resources, rising demand and shifting student demographics, schools in states such as California are finding it makes sense to try educating people at home or at work rather than squandering scarce money on new buildings that future students will be too busy to reach.

“Many universities are starting to see that this could be a path out of the problems they are facing, in terms of more students than they could possibly educate in their current buildings or with their current faculty,” said Lin Foa, deputy director of the Annenberg/CPB Projects in Washington, which supports the development of courses and course materials to improve the quality of and access to education.

But how good is this form of education? Students seem pleased, although they say some teachers use the technology more effectively than others. Some students feared that their courses would be too easy but have been pleasantly surprised. It’s easy to fall behind, they say; motivation and self-discipline help.

Unfortunately, few programs have been systematically evaluated. “Not enough effort has been put into assessment, frankly,” said Jay Donahue, a senior program officer at the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education.

The evaluations that have been performed are encouraging, researchers say. In New Jersey, researchers offered identical undergraduate and graduate courses on-line and in person over three years. When they compared each group’s exams and grades, the only significant differences had occurred in the computer science courses. The on-line students had done better.

Starr Roxanne Hiltz, a pioneer in the use of computer conferencing in education who conducted the experiment at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark and Uppsala College in East Orange, believes the main advantage of on-line classes is that they encourage collaborative, or group, learning. Students work more closely with one another, and the role of the professor shifts.

“There is a change in the role of the lecturer, who stood up there expounding truth with a capital T, to a kind of learning facilitator and coordinator who pulls together a set of resources, issues and questions,” she said. It is much more possible to give group assignments and require teamwork because the technology negates the usual barriers to getting together.

Remarkably, some evaluations have found that students and faculty prefer distance education because there is more student-faculty interaction, particularly when computer conferencing is used. “My on-line students are more personal with me than my traditional students,” Hiltz said.

Some professors, however, have other concerns. Sondra Farganis teaches social theory at the New School for Social Research and is about to teach her first on-line class. The prospect thrills and fascinates her. But she wonders if she will still be able to convey her passion for her subject.

“I would worry about it turning into a kind of chatty talk show,” said Robert Polito, a writer and poet who is also embarking upon teaching his first on-line course at the New School. “In a classroom discussion, a teacher provides a lot of focusing and redirection.”

There are legal, ethical and logistic questions, as well. Should faculty be evaluated differently than in the past if they are teaching on-line? What about copyrights? And if a professor agrees to videotape a course for later use, can the university continue to use the videotape long after the teacher has left for another job?

But while those issues are sorted out, Juster moves methodically toward graduation. “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t apply something that I’ve learned,” he said.

Where to Learn On-Line

Here are some of the educational institutions offering courses and degree programs via computer:

* Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, Ida. 83725. (800) 824-7017, Ext. 4079. Master of science in instructional and performance technology.

* Connected Education Inc., 65 Shirley Lane, White Plains, N.Y. 10607. (914) 428-8766. Master of arts in media studies with a specialization in technology and society. Offered jointly with the New School for Social Research.

* New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, N.J. 07102. (201) 596-3366. Bachelor of arts in information systems.

* New School for Social Research, Distance Learning Office, 66 W. 12th St., New York, N.Y. 10011. (212) 229-5880. Courses in the humanities and social sciences.

* University of Phoenix, 100 Spear St., Suite 200, San Francisco, Calif. 94105. (800) 742-4742. Master of business administration, master of arts in organizational management, bachelor of science in business administration and bachelor of arts in management.

Some Intelligent Talk--Without Saying a Word

During an on-line course last year called Artificial Intelligence and Real Life, offered by Connected Education Inc. of White Plains, N.Y., and the New School for Social Research in New York City, Prof. Paul Levinson asked his students to discuss computer theory pioneer Alan Turing’s famous test of artificial intelligence: If we can’t tell the difference between the way a machine behaves (or “talks” or “writes” to us) and the way a human does, then by what criteria do we deny the machine human intelligence?

The on-line discussion that ensued lasted for weeks, leaping from the subject of the soul to Star Trek and beyond. Here is a sampling of the E-mail exchanges.

2/2/93, 6:45 a.m.

* Student 1: I remember reading some of the text of . . . computer-human exchanges and thinking it fairly inane. But then I listened to a couple of teen-agers recently and perhaps it was not so far off.

2/6/93, 7:31 p.m.

* Student 2: “Smart” machines are indeed fantastic--within limits, machines have some of the capabilities of human intelligence. But, does the machine have the ability to reason? . . . So what does a machine have to do to pass my Turing test? Show that it’s alive? It’s not.

2/7/93, 11:07 a.m.

* Student 3: It may be true that we have the ability to distinguish reality from illusion, but we also have the ability to choose not to. My neighbor believes that her dead dog visits her nightly . . . I do not, however, choose to perceive an intelligent piece of plastic and circuitry to be a living being.

2/7/93, 5:38 p.m.

* Student 4: At first I thought this course (no offense) was going to muddel around in speculation and low-level, widely known facts (at least to me) but it seems you really are quite competent (giggle-ha-ha).

2/8/93, 11:08 a.m.

* Levinson: I was hoping someone would seriously introduce the notion of soul here. How about taking a shot at defining it for us--and in what way it is different from other qualities like intelligence, emotion, personality, etc.?

2/9/93, 11:13 p.m.

* Student 5: Tell me more about this dead dog thing. Might make a good pet for those of us who are allergic to almost all living things!

2/11/93, 8:35 p.m.

* Student 6: To continue with the debate on souls, . . . if the soul has something to do with “essential being” and “what makes us tick,” is our essential being something we all have in common or what makes each individual unique? I’d opt for the latter in my definition of soul . . . People in beer commercials and other lifestyle ads are good representatives of soulless beings.

2/14/93, 9:04 p.m.

* Student 6: Hey, (Student 2), I just reread all my questions to you about the divine and what not, and realized that in my editing frenzy in the wee hours I might have come across like a lawyer cross-examining a witness.

2/14/93, 9:31 p.m.

* Student 5: So, back to the question of what is a soul . . . I’m not sure a soul qualifies as matter but I’m still having a hard time grasping anything that’s not solid, liquid or gas.

2/15/93, 2:23 p.m.

* Student 3: (Student 6), I just read your new note--don’t worry about all of the questions--they make all of this much more interesting. Besides, challenges are good for the soul .