Online School Frontiers

On any given day, tens of thousands of students, from Hungary to South Africa, Brazil to Singapore, can be found beavering away on courses transmitted over the Internet by the likes of California’s Virtual University network and Britain’s Open University. Most of these “distance learning” ventures are losing money, but that hasn’t stopped them from ambitiously expanding. Unfortunately, amid this explosion there’s also a ballooning need for better quality control to weed out scams and frauds.

Internet schooling has much to offer; it is the only avenue open to some students with busy or varying work schedules. And it’s expected to attract greater numbers when online delays disappear with the advent of cable modems and the Internet 2 network now being built by U.S. universities. At that point, students will be able to see and talk with one another in “virtual classrooms.”

Government has so far been distance learning’s heartiest cheerleader. Last fall Congress passed a bill allowing federal student grant and loan money to be spent on certain distance learning programs. Last month President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore announced financial aid for more programs. And in the coming summer California State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed will launch TeacherNet, a distance learning program in which 30,000 teachers who lack state credentials will be able to finish in half the usual time.

Though the Internet is an educational tool with great promise, it’s also a dangerous zone of “diploma mills”--new versions of an old scam. When the Chronicle of Higher Education examined the Web last year, for example, it found scores of bogus distance learning sites, from “the University of the United States,” which claimed accreditation from the nonexistent “World Assn. of Universities and Colleges,” to “American State University,” whose operators promised a bachelor’s degree in journalism if the applicant would kindly mail a check for $1,890 and a 2,000-word essay.

The Clinton administration has asked the Department of Education to monitor distance learning institutions eligible for federal funding. The department will have to be vigilant in California, which pretty much wiped out state oversight of private trade schools under then-Gov. Pete Wilson.

To protect the Internet’s freedom from government meddling, Congress and the administration have opted not to oversee distance learning directly. But the Internet’s self-policing agencies have been much too lax. For instance, the University of the United States was allowed to use the suffix “.edu,” just like USC or UCLA, even though the school was bogus. Some federal regulation may be unavoidable.

Whatever degree of government scrutiny develops, students should be wary. Web users can check the site of the Council on Higher Education, https://www. chea.org, to see whether the distance learning programs they are considering have been accredited by the Department of Education.

There were too many grabby “consultants” when the government put up $1.3 billion in federal funding to help wire public schools for the Internet. There’s no reason to think online schooling will avoid a similar influx unless tough rules are put down.

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Up-to-date national figures on distance learning are not available, but at California State University, the rise in students taking courses online or via satellite or video is steady.

1999: 26,300*

* Conservative projection

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Source: Cal State Chancellor’s Office of Extended Education