OFFICIALS who run distance-education programs have been pleading for yearsfor either Congress or the Department of Education to kill a regulation known as the 12-hour rule, arguing that it chokes off innovation in online education. But now that the rule is about to die, only a few institutions plan to do anything that it would have prohibited.

The 12-hour rule was originally intended to deny fly-by-night course providers access to federal financial aid. It requires college programs that don't operate on a traditional academic calendar to deliver at least 12 hours of course work a week for their students to be eligible to receive federal financial aid. Last month the Education Department proposed requiring those programs to offer at least "one day" of instruction a week instead.

The one-day rule is already the requirement for the vast majority of college programs offering federal financial aid -- those that operate on regular semesters, trimesters, or quarters. However, the precise meaning of "one day" of instruction has never been defined, either by department officials or by Congress.

Critics of the change, including faculty unions and groups representing students, argue that the one-day standard is too vague and could open the door to fraud. Meanwhile, some distance educators worry that creating programs that meet the new standard could leave them vulnerable if regulators scrutinized distance programs and disapproved of how officials interpret what constitutes one day of instruction when it is conducted online.

But many distance-education proponents say that if distance programs are ever to achieve their full potential, the 12-hour rule must be repealed along with its companion, the 50-percent rule. The latter regulation requires that for students to receive federal financial aid, an institution must enroll no more than half of its students via distance education. Unlike the 12-hour rule, which is an Education Department regulation, the 50-percent rule was created by statute, and can only be changed by Congress.

If both regulations are changed in ways that make it easier to provide financial aid for programs that let students study when and where they want to, backers of distance education say, more institutions may start offering nonstandard programs via online education.

For the time being, however, only a few institutions have indicated that they may develop course programs that would not have been allowed under the 12-hour rule because they would not have met the weekly minimum. With the loosening of the time restriction, officials of these institutions are thinking about breaking courses into smaller modules that would give students more flexibility.

Most colleges that offer distance-education courses don't plan to ditch the semester format when the student-aid regulation expires. Many institutions find the traditional system works well online, in part because students are used to it.

The University of Maryland University College and the University of Phoenix, for instance, are among the institutions that have testified before Congress and the Education Department that the 12-hour rule is too restrictive. Now that the department has moved to kill the regulation, however, neither of those universities has any plans to change its online programs.

Charles M. Cook, director of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges' Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, says that while getting rid of the rule is popular among distance educators, he doesn't see it prompting big changes. "In a practical sense, this change is not going to revolutionize higher education," Mr. Cook says. "Most institutions are, for all practical purposes, exempt from the rule already."

John F. Ebersole, associate provost and dean of extended education at Boston University, says the university doesn't plan to offer courses in nonstandard formats. Students who take online courses usually have other jobs, he says, and they benefit from the discipline of the traditional semester setup.

"Busy working adults, who are our typical students, need the structure," Mr. Ebersole says.

The few institutions that are planning program changes say they hope to attract more students by making their online programs more flexible.

John B. Muller, president of Bellevue University, says educators there have always wanted to create course programs in bite-size modules that run shorter than semesters, trimesters, or quarters. But the university couldn't do it without running afoul of the 12-hour rule in the past.

Now that the rule is all but dead, the university may develop new programs using smaller modules. The modules would be more focused than courses, concentrating on specific skills. Such a setup, Mr. Muller says, would work well for corporate training, business degrees, information technology, and management, in which the university specializes.

"In the online environment, you want to deliver programs in the format that's most convenient to students," he says, adding that getting rid of the 12-hour rule "just opens up the flexibility."

The rule's reporting requirements were also a difficulty, Mr. Muller says. The institution would have had to track students and make sure they were spending 12 hours a week in supervised learning. "If you were staying in a semester format, then that was a safe harbor," he says. "We just avoided it by staying in the safe harbor."

The 12-hour rule was established to combat diploma mills that were rampant in the 1980s and early 1990s, when many such institutions were created specifically to soak up federal financial-aid money while providing the least possible amount of education. The Department of Education came up with the regulation as a way to cut off their financial lifelines.

But as online education became popular, some educators began arguing that the amount of time students spend in the classroom is irrelevant to the quality of an education program.

Years of debate ensued. Distance-education providers pushed the department and Congress to throw out the regulation, but others raised fears that relaxing the rule would inspire a new generation of fraudulent programs.

The Education Department is gathering public comment on the proposed change that would eliminate the 12-hour rule. The final language for the financial-aid regulations is scheduled to be announced on November 1.

Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the department, says he doesn't anticipate any changes between the proposed and final versions of the rule, unless someone offers a better solution -- which he has not seen so far.

Elena H. Ackel, a senior lawyer for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, is among those who have argued that the vagueness of the one-day rule gives institutions too much flexibility and could lead to a resurgence of fraud. She says that although she had expected the department's action, she still doesn't approve of it.

"Now you're going to have these phony-baloney trade schools give these degrees without providing any real academic content," Ms. Ackel says. "It's an incentive to give as little amount of education as possible."

But Mr. Andrade says that the one-day rule is already in effect for a majority of institutions, and that the 12-hour rule has not accomplished anything. The proposed change's few detractors are "outliers," he says. The groups that oppose the one-day rule did not offer any other solution or show how adopting the one-day rule would result in fraud, he says.

"They were coming up with unsubstantiated fears," Mr. Andrade says. "We haven't found any abuse in this area."

But Mark F. Smith, director of governmental relations at the American Association of University Professors, says the 12-hour rule needs to be replaced with another standard that ensures a program's quality. Otherwise the fraud the rule was meant to prevent could return, he says.

"If you increase access and decrease quality, you're not improving the situation," Mr. Smith says. "I don't think we'll have the blatant massive violations. It will be more subtle."

And some distance-education providers are uncomfortable with the proposed change -- not out of fear of fraud, but because it doesn't solve the problems the 12-hour rule presented.

"Just like the department never defined what 12 hours of instruction was as an online concept, there's never been a definition of what one day of instruction was as an online concept," says Stephen Shank, chancellor of the online Capella University. "The department is just trading one ambiguity for another ambiguity."

The proposed change is a step in the right direction, Mr. Shank says. But online educators might still be afraid of venturing into nonstandard programs because the repercussions of making a mistake with federal financial aid can be expensive and punitive.

"The consequences of any mistake in [federal student aid] is so great, we don't want to make a mistake and have the department come in afterwards and tell us we don't like what you're doing," Mr. Shank says.

D. Quinn Mills, a professor of business administration at Harvard University who offers online courses, says the 12-hour rule isn't the only financial-aid regulation that needs to be altered if distance education is to reach its full potential.

"It's an important threshold, but more needs to be done," according to Mr. Mills. The 50-percent rule also needs to be changed, he says.

A bill that would loosen the restrictions of the 50-percent rule has been passed by the House of Representatives but has since stalled in the Senate. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions plans to hold a hearing on the bill this month.

The language in the bill, S 1445, also calls for the repeal of the 12-hour rule and for other regulatory changes that the Education Department is already undertaking on its own. And as department officials work their way down a list of changes that largely parallels those in the bill, the pressure to pass it is diminishing, one Senate staff member says.

But Sen. Michael B. Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, has indicated that he will push to relax the 50-percent rule either in the current bill or in another.

"Changing this rule would allow more students in distance-education programs to be eligible for financial aid and will ultimately allow for these students to have greater access to all of the advantages of higher education," Mr. Enzi said in a statement.

With both the 12-hour and 50-percent rules relaxed, "you would see a real move toward distance and online education," Mr. Mills says.

Now that the "12-hour rule" is all but dead, a few institutions plan to expand their distance-education offerings by providing programs for which students would not have been eligible for federal aid under the old financial-aid regulation. Among those making plans for new programs:

University officials had wanted to offer courses in modules that were shorter than semesters, trimesters, and quarters. But such nonstandard programs would have been subject to the 12-hour rule, requiring the institution to prove that students were involved in at least the minimum amount of course instruction per week. With the rule on its way out, university officials are planning to organize some of the institution's online courses in modules, as short as four weeks, which would focus on just one aspect of a course. This approach could be especially useful for corporate clients of Bellevue, officials say. Employees of the client companies would be able to take just those aspects of the business and technology courses that fit their needs and their employers' demands.

Many of the students who take courses through Fort Hays are in the military. University officials want to leave the start and end dates for online courses open so students have the flexibility to break from their course work to complete their service duties. The university chose not to take that route in the past because the courses would be considered nonstandard, and professors would have to verify that each student was receiving 12 hours of course work a week. The tracking and record-keeping is difficult, officials say, and they aren't sure what constitutes an hour of instruction when the course is online.

SOURCE: CHRONICLE REPORTING

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By Dan Carnevale

A constant theme in earlier columns is the notion that public information policies are largely frameworks that bind information creators, users, and libraries into a web of complicated relationships. With some policies, these webs of mutual obligations are quite explicit (the U.S. Federal Depository Library program); while others develop through a series of legal interpretations and/or regulatory practices spun from some very ambiguous statutory language (the electronic reading rooms mandated by the Electronic Freedom of Information Act of 1996.) The Internet's rapid growth, expansion of electronic government initiatives, along with the constant pressure to convert our civic literacy from a paper to digital environment create other forces that undercut the foundational relationships of academic libraries and their home institutions. Now, like the biblical dogs of war, Congress and the President have enacted legislation that unleashes another set of energies to weave a new pattern: copyright and long-distance education.

At a most elemental level, academic libraries are a technology crafted by users, publishers, and librarians to manage a specific set of intellectual property rights within a specific organizational environment. Before the historic changes enacted through the 1976 Copyright Law (Public Law 94-553; 90 Stat. 2541), this relationship was largely benign and passive. Individuals who sought to use books, articles, dramatic works, pictures, plays, reports, newspapers, films, and so forth, within a library were (generally speaking) left alone to read, share, copy (within reason), and transmit to others their "take" on what they were reading and researching. If they checked out a book (or other format) from the library, they could "lend" the copy to someone else, read it out loud to their children (or to strangers in the park), or carefully copy passages out in long-hand for future reference. "Fair use" was a kind of "gentleman's agreement" of what was acceptable and unacceptable (and not unlike the earlier notion of pornography: "you know it when you see it.") People took notice of fair use only when someone blatantly disregarded another's intellectual property through outright plagiarism, or "pirated" copies through illicit copying (often of substantially less quality) and sold them as if they were from the original creators or publishers. In this simpler time, it was easy to tell the "copy right" from the "copy wrong," and libraries were on the side of the angels in the struggle. Library lending was considered a necessary "free good" to promote the larger commercial enterprise of published free speech. Compare this arrangement with the legal concepts of Public Lending Right (PLR) found in the United Kingdom that "gave British authors a legal right to receive payment for the free lending of their books by public libraries. Under the Act funding is provided by Central Government and payments are made to eligible authors in accordance with how often their books are lent out from a selected sample of UK public libraries.(n1) Interestingly, the PLR has begun to influence the policy outcomes of European Union copyright governance, and one supposes it is only a matter time, given the issues discussed below, that some form of PLR will wash up on American soil.

Professors, great supporters and contributors to academic libraries, were another group largely forgiven of many copyright obligations. There was a general understanding that using copyrighted works in their classes and research (again within reasonable manner) counted as "a good thing" and a direct benefit from liberal interpretations of "fair use." Indeed, many publishers and authors (in the generic sense) considered the academic practice as a form of promotion and advertising, encouraging a larger audience for the material. And this fit in with the original idea of a "copyright," which granted the intellectual property owner a certain degree of economic self-interest (by using the government's legal and social machinery to go after those who break the copyright). But, in return for the public protection of a private good, this economic monopoly had limits, and most published works entered the public's domain after two renewals of the 28-year copyright protection. This allowed for a greater sharing of ideas and thoughts among the population and increased the general well being of the nation through the proactive diffusion of knowledge through the nation. In turn, this free distribution of what was once privately owned would stimulate more cultural works that could be protected under copyright for the necessary time for their creators to economically benefit. Similar notions of fair use and public domain can be found in the historic understandings of patents. The founders of American political enterprise considered this private-public exchange of ideas to be so fundamental to their democratic experiment that they included its basic provisions in the constitution.(n2)

However, by the early decades of the 20th century, a succession of electronic revolutions began to undermine some of the constitutional understandings: radio, television, electronic recordings, photography, photo-duplication, digitization, computer networks, and the Internet. The old notions of "copyright" (largely based on expensive paper printing technologies not easily deployed outside of specific concentrations of economic and social investments) began to come undone as individuals and organizations found the new technologies easier to obtain and use to copy, distribute, rearrange, and store material. Original owners of the copyright found their government protected economic monopoly challenged by new forms of piracy, and they agitated for revisions to the copyright law to protect their property. The initial changes, made during the 1950s and 1960s, extended the length of copyright protection for a longer period of time, in the vain hope that extending the length of copyright beyond 56 years would give the owners a better time of investment. During the 1970s, the law was further altered with the first legislative recognition (and limitation) on the impact of digital copying, along with a considerably more detailed description of what constitutes "fair use." For the first time, the burden of educating the public and assuring compliance was given to institutions where the fair use abuse might frequently occur: libraries and academic institutions. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Congress again extended the length of time copyright owners could exclusively control their intellectual property. Now, many copyrighted works created in the 1930s and 1940s, which under the old legal understandings would have gone into the public domain, by the late 1990s, remain protected for another 20 or 30 years, or well into the 21st century.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-304; 112 Stat.2860) created a new set of arrangements in an attempt to prevent further abuse of illegally made electronic copies and their wide distribution in using new recording technologies, or by taking advantage of the growing, and largely free, computer networks. It largely favored copyright owners over users and the expansive interpretations of "fair use." Its provisions sharpened the threshold between fair and unfair use to such an extent, that many public interest groups lamented the end of any kind of fair use in a new digital environment, undermining the constitutional foundations that originally supported the notion that the public domain of ideas would be replenished every generation. The Millennium Act essentially made the ambiguities and limitations surrounding fair use in academic institutions intolerable. And this became a critical concern for many in the academy (along with their like-minded colleagues in other research institutions) when the spreading use of distance education technologies constantly evoked the more troublesome aspects of the new law. Congress was aware of this, and through a particular section of the Act, it directed the Library of Congress to study the matter, and report back on specific changes to the legislation that would balance the conflict needs of fair use and copyright protection within the burgeoning area of distance education.

As a result of that report (Report on Copyright and Digital Distance Education),(n3) new legislation was introduced in Congress by early 2000. What would become known as the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act of 2002 was signed into law by President George Bush in early November 2002. Part of a larger appropriations bill, TEACH establishes a whole new level of formal expectations on academic institutions if they wish to use copyrighted material in their digital education programs with fair use protections. Again, following on earlier changes in copyright law, the relationships created do not affect individuals, as such, but rather put the burden enforcement on academic institutions and libraries to make sure any copyrighted material is properly protected in a digital environment. The law specifies particular circumstances of how the material will be transmitted electronically, as well how it may be used properly in a "class setting." The law does not encourage long term storage of material, in other words, it can't be saved after the class is over, and it must only be transmitted to students officially enrolled in the class.(n4)

An interesting question, therefore, is if the law would consider the storage of electronic material in libraries to be an extension of the classroom situation, and therefore covered by the law's exceptions to fair use limitations. In some ways, libraries are already doing this with license agreements contracted with commercial vendors who sell large databases of articles and other bibliographic information. There is even a comparable arrangement in the Federal Depository Library program, where a selected number of Web sites or government databases are only available for free to the public if they are viewed through the computer resources of the hosting library. We restrict access to officially recognized students, researchers and staff in our institutions, or restrict the use to specific machines in our libraries. The law resolves some of the more difficult aspects of fair use in an academic digital environment, but it increases the burden of ambiguity on libraries in how they will now relate to this form of electronic teaching.

It comes down to relationships. And again, academic libraries (and libraries in general) have got to begin to ask themselves if their copyright and fair use understandings, largely forged during the latter half of the nineteenth century, need to be reconsidered in radical new ways. Yes, the TEACH legislation was widely supported by library, academic, and private publisher lobby groups. Yes, the Web sites, testimony before Congress, and professional literature consider the balance struck in legislation to be worth the price of giving up a fair degree of ambiguity (and some would argue, freedom) of the older legislation. But, have we gained the strength of institutional arrangements at the cost of individual rights to read and partake of a larger national exchange of information. The idea of public domain and/or fair use assumes that the wellspring of public knowledge must be replenished every generation. That the ability to freely share what we read, watch, listen to and teach within a variety of scheduled and unscheduled moments goes a long way to support the private enterprise system that is built on a solid backbone of public goods and services. Have we limited the Internet's expansiveness, as well as its potential to be a tool of mass education, to further enhance information economic self interests that already enjoy a considerable amount of protection from the government? In this sense, an early embrace of Public Lending Right in this country might have created a vastly more socially responsible choice.

A small part of me thinks we sold our public rights for a cheaper version of private good.

(n1.) For more information about this. see the Web pages at: Available: <http://www.plr.uk.com/>.

(n2.) See Article 1, Section 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" found at the National Archives Web site. Available: <http://www.archives.gov/exhibit%5fhall/charters%5fof%5ffreedom/constitution/>.

(n3.) See the Web site hosted by the Copyright Office at Available: <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/disted/> for further information about the process to develop the final report, as well as the report itself.

(n4.) For an excellent detailed discussion of the new laws provisions, see the white paper published at: Available: <http://www.ala.org/ washoff/teach.html>.

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edited by John A. Schuler

Despite the collapse of the dot.com economy, the potential distance education market is still driving major changes for higher education policy making. Educational entrepreneurs, state policy makers grappling with tight budgets, and federal policy makers in the Department of Education and Congress are looking to modify existing rules and regulations to take advantage of that market.

Not surprisingly, given the market-driven sources of these changes, an antiregulatory rhetoric is being utilized to characterize these proposals. One example, the proposed repeal of "the twelve-hour rule," serves to make the point and to illustrate the complexities involved in repealing so-called burdensome regulations.

Congress created minimum-instruction-time requirements for higher education in the wake of well-publicized student-aid scandals during the 1980s. The Higher Education Amendments of 1992 defined an academic "year" as thirty weeks of instruction, but left the definition of a "week" to department regulation. For non-standard-term or nonterm programs, the department defined a week as a "consecutive seven-day period," which contains "at least twelve hours of regularly scheduled instruction or examinations." Standard-term weeks had to provide "at least one day of regularly scheduled instruction or examinations." Programs that met the twelve-hour rule or the "one-day rule" were eligible for federal student aid; those that did not, were not.

The development of Web-based distance education highlighted the difficulties of measuring education programs based on time, and proposals to eliminate the twelve-hour rule are being debated. Last October, the House passed HR 1992, "The Internet Equity and Education Act of 2001," proposing to repeal a number of regulations on student-aid programs, including the twelve-hour rule. The bill is currently in a Senate committee. Meanwhile, the department is proposing to repeal the twelve-hour rule through regulatory reform. The AAUP opposes both these efforts, because these changes should be considered within the context of the overall reauthorization of the Higher Education Act next year.

However, faculty need to be involved in the debate over these issues now. Over the last ten years, it has become increasingly clear that time is not the only, or even the best, way to quantify pursuit of higher education. Even aside from new delivery modes offered by new technologies, there are many ways of engaging fully in education that do not involve sitting in a classroom. But so far, no one has come up with an acceptable way to measure equivalency of effort and accomplishments across a variety of institutions, disciplines, and regions. As long as time is the basic component of the equation, the larger issues faced by nontraditional students and programs cannot be seriously addressed.

At the governmental policy-making level, the first need is to recognize the distinct roles different entities play and the different responsibilities those roles entail. The Department of Education plays a "consumer-protection" role in regard to national programs, ensuring that student-aid dollars designed to be used for higher education purposes are in fact used for such purposes. Accrediting agencies play a "quality-assurance" role in regard to institutions, determining an institution's capacity to deliver a program of study in higher education, and, therefore, need to be empowered to strengthen their reviews of institutional quality. Faculty play a quality-assurance role in regard to course and program integrity. Faculty have responsibility on the campus level for fundamental educational issues such as curriculum, subject matter, methods of instruction, and requirements for degrees. But faculty members need to go beyond their individual activity in the classroom and their collective action within campus governance practices to ensure educational quality. They need to integrate campus-based activities with disciplinary research to keep their programs up to the highest academic standards.

Although many campuses and some commercial enterprises are currently engaged in conversations about these issues, they need to join together in a larger conversation about the overall role higher education plays in society. The Department of Education's proposal to eliminate rules assumes that the market will provide adequate protection for students, innovation, and educational quality. However, in a climate where funding is already restricted, leaving issues such as educational quality to the market threatens to reduce higher education to the lowest common denominator. While the market works well in particular realms, the continued excellence of our higher education enterprise in an economy based on knowledge and information requires more than the market. It requires that all segments of the higher education community fulfill their appropriate professional responsibilities.

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By Mark F. Smith

Mark Smith is AAUP director of government relations.

You don't have to look too hard to see the imprint of lawmakers from New England on federal student-aid policy.

Pell Grants, the primary source of federal aid for students from low-income families, are named for Claiborne Pell, the former Democratic senator from Rhode Island, who helped create them. Stafford Loans, the largest source of federal student loans, honor Robert T. Stafford, the former Republican senator from Vermont, who played a significant role in shaping the guaranteed-loan program.

Over the past 35 years, Democratic and Republican senators from the six New England states have generally put aside partisan differences when working on financial-aid policy, striving together to create and expand student-aid programs during good economic times, and to fend off cuts during bad times.

Today, even as New England's dominance in the higher-education market is slipping, the region's domination of higher-education policy in the U.S. Senate is undiminished. New England senators hold 6 seats -- one for each state -- on the 21-member Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, the panel in charge of higher-education policy. Among those lawmakers are the panel's Democratic chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and its ranking Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.

Increasingly, however, the higher-education policies that New England senators have long promoted are being challenged. The 1995 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and the retirement last year of some key lawmakers have brought to power new leaders -- most of them Republicans and many of them from the West and South -- who do not share many of the basic values and assumptions about higher education that are sacrosanct to the New England senators.

For example, they don't understand why college has to cost so much and why federal policy should support the most expensive forms of higher education. They wonder why students are expected to leave their home states to obtain a quality education. Often from states where colleges are few and far between, they champion distance learning and want to make it easier for students in such programs to receive federal help. And they tend to support career colleges because their states are home to more for-profit colleges and are less tied to traditional colleges than New England is.

They also question why institutions in New England continue to receive a disproportionate share of funds from some of the government's student-aid programs when demographic changes have left states outside of New England responsible for educating many more needy students.

"There is a feeling that our states, historically, have not been as well represented in D.C.," says Diane Vines, a vice chancellor of the Oregon University System and a commissioner on the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, an organization that provides data and policy analysis for governors and legislators in 15 Western states. "And, as a result, the needs of our states have seldom been taken into account."

Ever since the Democrats took over the Senate, in June, the House and Senate have clashed frequently. But when it comes to making higher-education policy, regional differences in the makeup of the chambers' education committees can be just as divisive as partisan politics.

Unlike the Senate's education panel, the 49-member House Committee on Education and the Workforce has only one representative from New England -- Rep. John F. Tierney, a Massachusetts Democrat. While the committee is led by Rep. John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, a majority of the panel's Republicans come from the South and West. The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. George Miller, and its leader on higher-education issues, Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, are both from California.

The regional tilts of the two committees may be critical to their deliberations when they start working on the next reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the law that governs the $50-billion federal student-aid programs. The act expires next year.

Student-aid experts predict that the New England senators will find it more difficult than in the past to protect the interests of traditional higher-education institutions from attacks by House lawmakers and the Bush administration, which frequently sides with them.

The battle has already been joined over a bill that would pare back powers that Congress previously had given the Education Department to weed out unscrupulous institutions from the student-aid programs.

The bill (HR 1992), sponsored by Rep. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, would make it easier for distance-education students to receive federal financial aid by relaxing two rules. One denies such aid to students who aren't in class at least 12 hours a week, and the other excludes institutions from the federal aid programs if they offer more than half of their courses at a distance or if more than half of their students take distance-education courses.

The legislation would also alter a provision in the Higher Education Act that prohibits colleges from providing bonuses or other incentive payments to administrators based on their success in enrolling students. For-profit colleges say that the Education Department has interpreted the provision too broadly, making it almost impossible for them to reward their employees for performance. Officials at traditional colleges support some tinkering with the regulations, but they warn that any changes must preserve the spirit of the law, so that institutions cannot disregard students' interests in their zeal to increase enrollment.

The House approved the bill in October by a vote of 354 to 70, with two-thirds of the Democrats joining almost all the Republicans in support. Even so, the bill has not seen the light of day in the Senate.

Holding up the bill is Senator Kennedy, chairman of the education committee. It was Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Pell, as well as other key lawmakers from New England, who drafted those restrictions in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

At that time, the news media were flooded with reports that for-profit institutions were sending recruiters to welfare offices, where they would round up students who qualified for financial aid but weren't ready for college work.

Proponents of for-profit colleges -- including their supporters in the House -- say those days are long gone. They argue that the restrictions are making it harder for low-income students to take advantage of new educational opportunities.

An aide to Mr. Kennedy says that the senator has agreed to hold a hearing on the bill this spring. "Senator Kennedy looks forward to a full and open discussion of these issues," the aide says.

Although they are pleased by the news, lobbyists for career colleges say that they are still not optimistic about the bill's chances in the Senate.

New England lawmakers, like many higher-education leaders in that region, remain skeptical of the for-profit sector. Career colleges have never flourished in the region, as they have elsewhere in the country, in part because the New England states have more-stringent requirements for approving new colleges.

"Schools that deliver education in nontraditional ways have gone to states to operate where the rigor for who gets to play and who doesn't is looser," says Joseph L. McCormick, a former Washington lobbyist for the University of Phoenix, a fast-growing chain of for-profit institutions. "The University of Phoenix couldn't have gotten started in states like Massachusetts, because the regulators there are far more traditional in their approach. The Western states are far more open to novel approaches."

Some former Congressional aides say the New England senators' skepticism about the for-profit industry has a lot to do with the region they represent. "It has not been an easy row to hoe on behalf of proprietary schools in the Senate," says David V. Evans, who was a top Democratic aide to the education committee under Senator Pell for 15 years. "And I think that does come from their support for traditional postsecondary education, which has such deep roots in New England."

Bruce Leftwich, vice president for government relations at the Career College Association, agrees that his group and its members still have a lot of work to do to persuade college leaders and lawmakers from New England "that our students are making significant contributions to society and the economic well-being of the country."

But it's not only for-profit colleges that want Congress to make it easier for distance-education students to obtain federal financial aid. Officials at four-year institutions in the South and West say they wish the New England senators would consider how their policies affect people in all regions of the country.

Ms. Vines of the Oregon University System says distance-education programs that meet strict standards of quality may offer the only hope of a college education for thousands of low-income students in the Western states, who do not want to move away to go to college. "If we believe that access is important, which we do, then any way that we can make access more available, without making students leave their communities, is worthwhile," she says.

Another big fight is expected over the formula that the government uses to distribute funds in several of its major financial-aid programs.

The government's three campus-based aid programs no longer serve the country's neediest students well, some student-aid experts say. A select group of institutions, many of them wealthy and in New England, has benefited the most from those programs. That is because the programs' funds are divided largely on the basis of a formula set 20 years ago, even though college demographics have changed sharply since then. Now many more low-income students attend low-cost, public two-year and four-year institutions, especially in the South and West.

The campus-based programs -- the College Work-Study, the Perkins Loan, and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant Programs -- are intended to supplement Pell Grants for needy students, and to provide aid for others who just miss the cutoff for the grants. Unlike Pell Grants, which are awarded directly to students, campus-based aid is distributed to colleges, which add their own money to the programs and give the funds to the students.

One reason New England colleges get a disproportionate share of funds from those programs is that the formula used to allocate the aid takes into account the tuition that institutions charge. As a result, high-cost colleges common in New England get more money.

Even more significant, aid experts say, the formula essentially guarantees colleges the same share of federal aid that they have received since the 1970s, helping older, more traditional institutions and leaving little money avail able for colleges that have entered the programs since then, or for those that now enroll greater proportions of needy students.

Without support from the programs, low-income students would have to go deeply into debt to attend high-priced, private colleges, and probably would choose not to enroll, say advocates for those colleges. Needy students should not be precluded from attending private colleges, where their likelihood of succeeding is far greater than it is at two- or four-year public institutions, they say.

Mr. Kennedy and other New England senators have defeated past efforts to change the formula. In 1998, for example, the Clinton administration recommended that lawmakers redistribute the funds, reducing colleges' base guarantees by 5 percent a year. The New England senators objected to that proposal.

They agreed, however, to allow colleges to maintain their base guarantees, but permit all institutions to compete for new money coming into the programs based on their students' level of need. Before that change, colleges already in the programs received, in addition to their base guarantees, one-quarter of all new funds that lawmakers appropriated. The change took effect in 1999.

But increases in the programs' budgets have not been large enough to benefit many new institutions. Out of frustration, California's Congressional delegation, led by Mr. McKeon and Mr. Miller, last year helped persuade Congress to provide additional funds to two California State University campuses that get very small allotments from the campus-based programs. As part of a larger spending bill, lawmakers agreed to set aside up to $1-million for the Monterey Bay and San Marcos campuses from work-study funds that colleges return to the government that have gone unused.

Many student-aid experts believe that the California lawmakers are gearing up for a much broader fight over the formula for campus-based aid during the next reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

But Mr. Evans, the former Senate aide, predicts reform will be elusive.

"You're not going to find senators from New England saying, Oh well, let's just throw that formula out and start anew," says Mr. Evans. "Clearly, the formula is tremendous for colleges from New England, and they're not going to agree to changes that would harm their institutions."

Senator Kennedy, who turns 70 this month, has been in Congress for almost 40 years. Some college lobbyists and officials wonder whether New England will be able to maintain its dominance over the Senate education committee when Mr. Kennedy and other senior senators from the region retire.

Mr. Evans, for one, does not expect to see the region's influence over higher-education policy in the Senate wane. He cites the generations of senators from the New England states who have succeeded one another on the education panel. For example, Vermont has had a seat on the panel for the last four decades, from Winston L. Prouty in the 1960s, to Mr. Stafford in the 1970s and 1980s, to the current senator, James M. Jeffords, who has been on the committee since 1989.

Senators from Southern or Western states may start taking a greater interest in higher education in years to come, but for their constituents, seats on the defense, energy, or agriculture committees will always be more important.

"As long as higher education remains so critical to New England's economy and to the lives of its citizens, senators from those states will flock to that committee," Mr. Evans said.

Every one of the six New England states has a senator on the influential Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, accounting for nearly a third of its 21 members. Both the chairman and the ranking member are also from New England.

Chairman
Edward M. Kennedy
Democrat-Massachusetts

Ranking Member
Judd Gregg
Republican-New Hampshire

New England members:

Susan M. Collins
Republican-Maine

Christopher J. Dodd
Democrat-Connecticut

James M. Jeffords
Independent-Vermont

Jack Read
Democrat-Rhode Island

Democrats

Jeff Bingaman
New Mexico

Hillary R. Clinton
New York

John Edwards
North Carolina

Tom Harkin
Iowa

Barbara A. Mikulski
Maryland

Patty Muray
Washington

Paul D. Wellstone
Minnesota

Republicans

Christopher S. Bond
Missouri

Michael B. Enzi
Wyoming

Bill Frist
Tennessee

Mike DeWine
Ohio

Tim Hutchinson
Arkansas

Pat Roberts
Kansas

Jeff Sessions
Alabama

John W. Warner
Virginia

Campus-based student-aid programs

While New England's share of
the nation's undergraduate
population is only 5 percent...

New England     5.1%
Midwest        25.6%
West           25.6%
South          28.6%
Mid-Atlantic   15.0%

Distribution of undergraduate
students, fall 1999

Total: 12.7 million

...the region receives twice
that share in aid from
campus-based programs.

New England    10.4%
Midwest        27.5%
West           19.3%
South          22.3%
Mid-Atlantic   20.5%

Distribution of money from the College
Work-Study, Perkins Loan, and
Supplemental Educational Opportunity
Grants programs, fall 1999

Total: $2.9-billion

Pell Grants

However, New England's share of
Pell Grants--whose distribution is
not influenced by politics--is more in
line with its undergraduate
population.

New England     3.7%
Midwest        22.0%
West           23.4%
South          33.2%
Mid-Atlantic   17.7%

Distribution of Pell Grants,
fall 1999

Total: $6.8-billion

Note: Figures are rounded.

SOURCE: U.S. EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

~~~~~~~~

By Stephen Burd

Education leaders are lagging behind in draining policies to govern the use of online courses in the nation's schools, according to a report by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

The report warns that, as a result, an ad hoc educational technology system is evolving that features impressive “islands of innovation,” but one that may ultimately increase educational disparities between students, fail to promote a high standard of education for all students, and squander the promise of new “e-learning” technologies.

“Our work is a clarion call to policymakers to set thoughtful and coherent policy on issues surrounding e-learning and technology in schools,” said Jean Gulliver, the chairwoman of Maine's state board of education and the chairwoman of the study group that produced the report.

The 52-page report, “Any Time, Any Place, Any Path, Any Pace: Taking the Lead on e-Learning Policy,” was released last Friday. It calls on state board members and other education leaders to undertake a wholesale revision of their learning standards, to bring assessments online, and to guarantee equity and technology access for all students to facilitate the future use and expansion of instructional technology. NASBE billed the new study as a road map for setting priorities and developing policies.

The report says a historic makeover of public education is under way, fueled in part by the estimated $7 billion annually that state and local governments are spending to equip schools with computers, networks, and other hardware and software. Billions more are being invested in communications infrastructure through the federal “E-rate” program, which provides funding to schools and libraries for telecommunications services.

But the process of setting policies to harness technology for learning is being dominated by corporations, which are actively lobbying state legislators who feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject.

“The events are running ahead of the policymakers at the state and local levels; they need to address this right away,” said James Bogden, the report's principal author and a project director at NASBE. He said the Alexandria, Va.-based group is seeking funding for a multiyear project “to provide direct technical assistance to interested states on developing these policies.”

Among the key barriers to e-learning, according to the report, is the reluctance by educators to consider new approaches to teaching. It notes, however, that such an attitude is a difficult area to address through policy.

Other barriers, where NASBE believes policies can make more of an impact, include a lack of incentives and external pressures to promote change, insufficient training and professional skills for teachers in regard to technology, allocation of resources in a way that perpetuates the status quo, and governance obstacles, such as the overlapping jurisdiction of policy-setting organizations.

State and local boards of education will have to wrestle with adapting systems of accountability to an education system that crosses traditional geographic boundaries, the report said. Educators also must address who is responsible for payment, quality control, and other matters when students take classes over the Internet, the report adds.

Broad policy issues also need to be addressed concerning the acceptance of teacher licensure and professional development standards across state lines, the study says. The issue could arise when e-learning enables students in one state to take classes taught by instructors in another. Such issues make a difference in terms of educational equity, according to the report.

In making changes, the report noted, policymakers should remember that administrators, parents, and members of the general public take comfort in maintaining traditional institutions and practices.

“Any Time, Any Place, Any Path, Any Pace: Taking the Lead on e-Learning Policy” is available at www.nasbe.org and a print version may be ordered for $14 by calling (800) 220-5183.

~~~~~~~~

By Andrew Trotter

Policies are being developed to define and regulate distance education. Technology is one modality in the delivery processes of distance education. The Federal Communications Commission has adopted the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and established criteria for a technology plan that will receive monetary discounts under the Universal Service Program. Previous rulings were amended to include the "Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure." Purdue University's Distance Education and Information Technology Unit has five goals to their program. The Committee at the University of Texas at Arlington monitors the federal, regional, and state governing bodies of distance education. The staff of the Texas Woman's University believes monitoring of the learners' knowledge is imperative. Facilities and programs in which distance education can occur should be made available.

Distance education is the use of one or more forms of delivery processes for the acquisition of new information into a learner's pre-existing schemata. The delivery process is via a systematic modality(ies) that is sponsored by an educational institution in which the instructional environment is separated geographically from that of the learners' environments. A two-way communication provision(s) is established for the duration of the instructional/learning interval for feedback by the instructor(s) to the individual student and/or group of students. Policies are being developed to define and regulate distance education.

Since technology can be utilized in the delivery processes of distance education, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted several policies governing technology usage. The Telecommunication Act of 1996, Section 706, requires that the FCC conduct regular investigations to determine that advanced communication tools, including the computer, are becoming accessible for all Americans, particularly for students in elementary and secondary schools. The FCC must remove any barriers to invest and to promote competition of advanced telecommunications that "encourage the deployment of advanced telecommunications." (Other, 2/27/99, p. 3) The FCC is currently establishing their policies concerning the best implementation of Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The FCC has also established criteria for a technology plan that ensures educators and librarians who are implementing telecommunication networks and Internet access receive 20-90% discounts for their purchased services under the Universal Service Program. (American, 2/27/99, p. 1) To qualify for the discount services provided under this program, applicants must submit an approved technology plan. There are three criterion which must be included in an approved technology plan: (a) establish explicit connections between the proposed physical infrastructure of the information technology and professional development strategies that will lead to specific curriculum reforms or library service improvements, (b) develop a technology plan that ensures applicants have secured the resources effective use of-their telecommunications services and Internet access, including: computers and peripheral equipment, staff training, software., a budget for operating costs and maintenance, and (c) the technology plan must include .an evaluation process to help schools and libraries monitor their progress toward their goals. (Technology, 2/27/99, p. 1) The technology plan must be submitted for approval. Contacting the Client Service Help Disk via telephone at 1-888-203-8100 can do this. A referral will be given to the applicant for the appropriate state or region certified approver. A listing of certified approvers can also be accessed on the World Wide Web:http://www.slcfund.org and http://www.neca.org. (SLC, 2/27/99,p. 4).

Another FCC policy ruling resulted when Apple Computer, Inc. and WINForum filed petitions on May 6,1996 seeking a FCC ruling concerning spectrum, wireless Internet linkage devices. On January 9, 1997, the FCC amended their rulings to include the 300 megahertz of spectrum available for usage under a new category of unlicensed equipment, "Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (UNil) devices." It is claimed this new wireless infrastructure would allow classroom linkage to the Interact much easier for schools, especially schools that are asbestos-laden. (Others, 2/27/99, p.3) This linkage would allow students in the for real classroom to participate in distance education, via the Internet. The classroom teacher would then act as a facilitator in this form of distance education delivery.

In addition to policies governing elementary and secondary schools, universities are developing their own policies for their distance education programs. Purdue University's Distance Education and Information Technology Unit's primary mission is to enhance the university's outreach using "available distance education technologies and methodologies." The university is able to link themselves to extension offices throughout the state, region, country, and world via satellite, microwave, telephone land line, fiberoptic, computer network, and other advanced technologies. The Purdue Extension mission of "putting knowledge to work" is enhanced using the distance education technologies. (Purdue, 2/27/99, p.1) There are five goals to their program:

• To increase the awareness and knowledge among campus and county faculty and staff about distance education technologies and methodologies that have the potential to enhance the outreach mission of the university including the Schools of Agriculture and Consumer and Family Sciences and the Cooperative Extension Service.

• To increase the quality and quantity of courses and programs developed and. distributed through the Purdue Schools of Agriculture and Consumer and Family sciences to Indiana counties and the nation.

• To provide technical and programmatic support to the university and county Extension offices for maximum effective utilization of distance education hardware and courseware.

• To promote and facilitate statewide growth of the Purdue Cooperative Extension Distance Education Network.

• To develop and implement an effective marketing strategy for courses and programs available on a statewide and national basis.

The University of Texas at Arlington has a committee established to determine their distance education policy. The committee's initial goal is to monitor "the policy-making bodies/agencies responsible for developing distance education policy and tracking the status of important issues." (Texas, 2/27/99, p.1) They stated that a distance education policy is complex and is constantly changing. They feel that policy accumulates and develops at several levels: federal, regional, and state. Within these levels, agencies oversee different aspects of distance education. Some of these aspects include funding, telecommunications, and planning. The committee established at the University of Texas at Arlington to monitor the distance education policies is in its infancy stage, and their web pages are incomplete., They request that the user of their web pages be patient while they develop them: "or better yet, contribute your expertise." There are four sites, Federal Level, Regional Level, State Level, and Policy Issues that the user can access. Two. of these sites contained information. The first, the State Level, listed and briefly outlined four bills regarding distance education in Texas. (Texas State, 2/27/99, p,l-2) The second site, Policy Issues, listed four categorical headings: Funding, Accreditation, Technology/Telecommunications, and Telemedicine. (Texas Policy, 2/27/99, p. 1)

Another university in Texas, the Texas Woman's University, established proposals for their distance education program based on the belief that distance education activities are vital to the continuing success of any university seeking to address the needs of learners in the 21st Century. Technology is providing the means for collaboration amongst learners and is reducing the learner's dependence on instruction for their acquisition of knowledge. To assist the learners in this acquisition, it is felt by the staff of Texas Woman's University that a university with its staff leaders and faculty need to provide facilities, programs, and processes for the self-directed learners that includes continuous monitoring. This monitoring of distance learning will enable the staff of the University to verify a learner's progress and will assist the staff in creating learner-centered environments appropriate for the 21st Century. A Distance Education Program Evaluation Advisory Committee (DEPAC) was formed with representation from students, faculty, administration, and support staff to evaluate distance education activities. They drafted a "template" for evaluation of distance education activities. This template consists of the criteria they felt is imperative to distance education activities regarding institutional commitment, coordination, and five service providers (academic affairs, student life, information technology services, library services, and partnerships and liaisons). (Evaluating, 2/27/99, p. 1-6)

When planning and implementing a distance education program, as well as maintaining an existing distance education program, the policies regarding the program must be carefully developed. Since technology, one modality in the delivery processes of distance education, is constantly improving, the policies governing distance education will require constant updating. The updating of these policies will need to address these innovations, such as spectrum. As technology continues to improve, the policies governing distance education will become more complex and accumulative as the technology used in distance education advances. These policies will require constant revisions. A "template" such as that established by the Texas Woman's University will need to be open-ended. A "work-in-progress" would be more feasible than a fixed template. The work-in-progress would allow for the revisions that are required for distance education policies.

American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy. (2/27/99). [on-line]. American Library Association. http://www.ala.org/oit/univserv,html

Evaluating Distance Education at Texas Woman's University. (2/27/99). [on-line]. EITT Website. http://www.twu.edu/committees/eitt/ evaluation/default.html

Purdue University Agricultural Communication Distance Education and Information Technology. (2/27/99). [on-line]. http://info.aes.purdue.edu/acs/deit/acsde.html

SLC Technology Plan Policies and Procedures (1/5/98). (2/27/99). [on-line]. Schools and Libraries Corporation. http://www.slcfund.org/Reference/Tech%5fPlan%5f%5fdoc$/explain%5fTech.asp

Technology Plan Information. (2/27/99). [online]. Schools and Libraries Corporation. http://www.slcfund.org/Reference/techplans.a Texas Distance Learning. (2/27/99). [on-line]. The University of Texas at Arlington. http://distance.uta.edu/txdla/

Texas Distance Learning Association. Policy Issues. (2/27/99). [on-line]. The University of Texas at Arlington. http://distance.uta.edu/tx.dla/lssues.html

Texas Distance Learning Association. State Issues. (2/27/99). [on-line]. The University of Texas at Arlington. http://distance.uta.edu/ txdla/Issues.html

Welcome to LearnNet. (2/27/99). [on-line]. FCC Homepage. http://wwwfcc.gov/learnnet/

~~~~~~~~

By Camilia Anne Czubaj, ED.S., Muncie, Indiana 47304

Community colleges active in distance learning may reap significant gains under legislation moving through the U.S. House of Representatives.

A bill approved by the House Education and the Workforce Committee would make it easier for colleges to offer distance learning and still provide federal financial aid to students. Under a current law many groups view as restrictive, colleges cannot participate in federal aid programs unless at least 50 percent of their courses are taught in a classroom.

The new policy approved by the committee would eliminate the so-called 50 percent rule if a college already participates in student loan programs and has a three-year loan default rate of less than 10 percent.

Called the Internet Equity and Education Act of 2001, the bill also would support more flexibility on attendance in distance learning courses, thereby meeting federal law and maintaining eligibility for federal funds.

The bill would require the same set of attendance criteria for non-traditional programs as for traditional semester-long courses.

"This legislation provides needed changes to the Higher Education Act that will allow all learners to take the fullest advantage of what the newest technologies can provide for their education," said Rep. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., sponsor of the bill.

The legislation also comes on the heels of a report last fall from a federal Web-Based Education Commission urging more support for distance learning.

"If current policies limit the expansion of distance education, then we need to make changes in order to provide the benefits of distance education programs, both to students and to an economy that depends upon a highly educated and trained workforce," said Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., who chairs the House Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness.

But some Democrats as well as faculty groups oppose the bill, which faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The House committee approved the bill by a 31-10 margin, with Democrats representing most of the opposition.

Community college leaders say they are pleased with the legislation, particularly the move to eliminate the 50 percent rule that can inhibit distance learning programs. However, they also are seeking additional changes to exempt more community colleges, particularly those that do not participate in student loan programs or issue few loans.

Two-year college leaders have long cited problems in the federal system that penalizes colleges with high default rates, claiming it does not take into account issues unique to community colleges.

Few two-year college students take out educational loans, but one or two who default at a college can give that institution an unusually high default rate and the prospect of federal penalties.

As a result, some community colleges still may not be eligible to participate fully in distance learning if their default rates are above 10 percent. Higher education leaders raised the issue during a public hearing on the bill.

"Community colleges that have low student loan volume are especially at risk of finding themselves just on the other side of that 10 percent line," said Stanley Ikenberry, president of the American Council on Education, the umbrella association for higher education.

One way to resolve the issue, he said, is to allow the Education Department to grant waivers to institutions that have default rates above 10 percent but otherwise have a solid record in administering financial aid programs.

Another provision of the bill would require a detailed federal study on students in distance education programs, the aid they receive and changes in default rates at institutions with significant distance learning activities.

Overall, the number of students in distance learning doubled from 1995 to 1998, reaching 1.6 million, according to ACE.

~~~~~~~~

By Charles Dervarics

A STUDY of top distance-education programs has led researchers to compile a list of 24 benchmarks that they say can be used by institutions eager to create high-quality offerings.

The review, conducted by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, is a survey of six institutions widely considered to be leading distance-education providers. The researchers' aim was to collect reliable information about what contributes to quality online instruction, rather than the anecdotal evidence on which many educators have been relying.

The study, whose results were released last month, was sponsored by the National Education Association, a faculty members' union, and Blackboard Inc., a company that sells distance-learning software and services to colleges and universities.

The results make clear "that distance learning can be quality learning only if colleges and universities recognize the needs of the students," said Bob Chase, president of the N.E.A.

Among the 24 benchmarks are students' online interaction with instructors and other students, failsafe computer systems, and appropriate support services for both faculty members and students.

"Many of the benchmarks will sound like common sense," Mr. Chase said. "That's because they are."

The study also identified some factors that did not seem to affect the quality of a distance-education program. "We didn't get a sense that class size was an issue," said Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the institute. Courses included in the study ranged in size from 10 students to more than 300, he said, but quality didn't seem to be related to the number of students in the class.

Another fallacy revealed by the study, Mr. Merisotis said, is that institutions must offer professors incentives to encourage more of them to experiment with distance learning. Results of the study, he said, suggest that colleges would benefit more from working with faculty members who start their own distance projects than from forcing others to become involved.

It's difficult to measure how crucial a given benchmark is to the quality of a distance-education program, Mr. Merisotis added. "It is qualitative," he said. "It is based on what the administration and faculty say is important. We think we have a pretty good handle on the most essential of these benchmarks."

Matthew Pittinsky, the chairman and cofounder of Blackboard, said the study was a good first step in determining what makes a quality distance-education program.

Mr. Merisotis said that because online education is so new, institutions don't have a clear understanding of what is most important to maintaining a good program.

"We're really making it up as we go along in Internet-based education, to a certain degree," Mr. Merisotis said.

Contributors to the study have discussed sponsoring a broader study that would collect information from more than just six institutions.

"Clearly, this is just a first step," Mr. Merisotis said. "What we need is national data."

The institutions in the study were selected independent of their association with Blackboard, the company's Mr. Pittinsky said. Of the six institutions included in the study, only two are Blackboard clients.

The study will be released in its entirety soon, officials of the institute said. An executive summary of the study can be downloaded now from the institute's World Wide Web site (http://www.ihep.com/qualityonline.pdf).

~~~~~~~~

By Dan Carnevale