(4 of 7)
Just as more and more computer-wise workers will earn their keep from home offices, a growing number of students can expect to get their degrees without ever setting foot on campus. Susan Lerner, 40, of Burnt Ranch, Calif., is doing so now. An elementary school teacher at a remote Hupa Indian reservation, she has enrolled in a new M.A. program in educational technology offered by George Washington University in Washington, 2,500 miles away. Lerner takes two four-hour courses a week, beamed to her via the satellite dish in her yard, and keeps in touch with her professors through her computer's electronic bulletin board. "I want to integrate the use of technology in rural areas," says Lerner, who expects to get her degree in two years. "With a modem we can be connected to the rest of the world. With interactive video, we can offer opportunities that people in these areas don't ordinarily have."
Anticipating a surge in "distance learning," cable entrepreneur Glenn Jones in 1987 founded the Mind Extension University. Based in Englewood, Colo., it beams college-credit courses to 36,000 students across the country, under the aegis of such established institutions as the University of Minnesota and Penn State. Last fall a branch of the University of Maryland began offering the nation's first four-year bachelor of arts program via Mind Extension; 60 students are enrolled. "Today's students are often working," explains Paul Hamlin, the Maryland dean in charge of the program. "They need to be able to compete, and they want a flexible format. Because of time constraints -- children, jobs, commutes -- they can't go to the typical campus."
It's not only the students who have changing needs. So do the various communities that colleges and universities are trying to serve. Inside what was once the ivory tower, there is a growing interest in new kinds of alliances with business. In St. Louis, Washington University and Monsanto Co. have linked up in biomedical research projects involving proteins and peptides, as part of a search for more sophisticated drugs. On the campus of the University of California, Irvine, Hitachi has built a high-tech research lab, which it shares with U.C.'s top-flight biochemistry department. Critics worry about the ethics of this cozy arrangement, despite strict conflict-of- interest rules drawn up by the university. "What forms of industrial cohabitation should a state-funded university permit?" asks Michael Schrage, a research affiliate at M.I.T. "It's one thing for a campus to encourage private industry to participate in research. It is quite another to have facilities that blur the line between private and proprietary."