There was a campus-wide shock when The Princeton Review left Dartmouth off its list of the nation's 25 most connected campuses. At Dartmouth, where the ratio of students to laptops surely nears or exceeds one-to-one and where, when BlitzMail lines get too long, checking BlitzMail on random peoples' computers is the social norm, this revelation was just shocking.
When all the initial outrage over this died down, it was revealed that Dartmouth, wired as it was, was not wired enough. Dartmouth was left off the list because it does not provide online courses for credit and because it does not provide streaming audio and video of its courses online. While a recent article in The Dartmouth ("Rankings do not tell the whole story," Jan. 27) argues that there is a fatal flaw in the ranking criteria, that "though these 'advances' connect more students to the internet, they seem to connect students less to peers and teachers." The possibilities of what can happen when a Dartmouth-quality education is available online is limitless for some.
In a bold statement that reenergizes the debate over online education and its merits, Congress recently passed a new provision that will no longer adhere to the "50-percent rule," a regulation that required colleges to deliver half their courses on campus in order to qualify for federal student aid. This provision was initially enacted to prevent online courses from turning into diploma mills that exploit federal student loans. As The New York Times reports (Online Colleges Receive a Boost From Congress," March 1) this lift represents how "an industry that once had a dubious reputation has gained new influence, with well-connected friends in the government and many Congressional Republicans sympathetic to their entrepreneurial ethic." This decision may reshape the online university industry as a whole by strengthening its legitimacy.
While the mention of online education might provoke associations with nontraditional students (working students, lower-income students and first-generation students, amongst others) it is important to note that there is more a whole unmentioned consumer sector: individuals who wish to make career advancements.
Other Ivy League schools seem to see this market and offer programs aimed at high-achieving, mid-career professionals who need more training to get advance in their careers but for a variety of reasons (steady job, steady pay check, rooted family, and so on) can not do a traditional master's program.
Cornell, for example, has eCornell, a degree-granting subsidiary of the university aimed at nontraditional students and career advancing professionals with its advertising motto as, "Ivy League Experience, Online Convenience." The school offers specialized programs in human resources management, strategic management, financial management, hospitality and food service management, as well as various career development licenses. Stanford University offers a masters of science in engineering. Columbia, Brown, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Yale offer online courses in some variation. Besides Princeton, Dartmouth is the only other exception.
Ideally, if Dartmouth was to establish itself as an online contender, then it must do so in such a way that allows it to reap the benefits that offering online education can bring while still preserving the reputation of a Dartmouth degree. Perhaps a way to do this might be through certification- rather than degree-granting courses. Another option might be to target a more specialized audience, whether Dartmouth alumni or high- achieving professionals, to offer such courses to. In line with the past, other Ivy League schools and other highly selective schools have offered noncredit minicourses online aimed primarily at alumni. Why not provide these courses online?
While Ivy League institutions have regarded their degrees as sacrosanct (perhaps rightly so) and though many might argue that there is no substitute for the experience of learning in a classroom and living on a campus, it's important that Dartmouth at least consider this innovation as a viable option as it looks to establish itself as a world-renowned institution.
