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Much of the technology N.T.U. plans for national transmission has been operating regionally in other programs for several years. Texas Instruments and a number of other companies participate in interactive video-phone lectures with several colleges under the auspices of the University of Texas, Dallas. Stanford pipes lectures to as many as 160 nearby corporate classes. And last week Hewlett-Packard, which owns the nation's largest industrial satellite, completed a nationwide two-way, two-week TV class in computer programs designed by M.I.T. and broadcast to eight locations around the country from a San Jose, Calif., studio.
) The Carnegie Foundation's Boyer is openly dazzled by satellite learning, saying that it may represent "the space-age model for the future." In fact, the report has a tendency to stand in awe of the whole phenomenon of corporate learning. While it acknowledges the difference between education for profit by a corporation and for life preparation by a university, there is a strong implication throughout that higher education should embark on a careful self- reappraisal based on the corporate classroom.
Many in academe, however, have a more guarded reaction. Emory Business School Dean George Parks worries about letting "technology drive the educational process instead of the other way around." As for the corporate tendency to teach a specific set of facts and practices, Parks says, "Sound practices need to be based on sound theory. Otherwise you're not going to be able to adapt to a world that's constantly changing." Director Erich Bloch of the National Science Foundation notes that very often "companies want universities to train people. This is not their mission."
For all the cautionary concerns of traditional academies, both camps inevitably will be drawn together in many areas and will have much to learn from each other. In fact they are already busy doing so, at places like N.T.U., whose entire concept is to carry university learning over jointly developed technological systems into corporate classrooms, where it will be put to practical use.