Silicon Insider: Class Competition at College.com

May 11, 2006 — -- Picture that September morning in the future, when all of the new high school graduates pack up their clothes, laptops and stereos and head off to college … down the hall to the spare bedroom.

The notion of a "virtual university" is about as old as the Internet. Correspondence schools, of course, have been around for generations, mostly teaching trade skills. Then along came the University of Phoenix and the new wave of "professional" universities that enabled working folks to pick up MBAs and other trendy degrees at home in the evenings, leavened with regular weekend jam sessions.

The Internet, as it has with so many human endeavors, opened up the prospect of something entirely new: the chance to study at home or after hours at the office, while still partaking in the lectures, dialogues, and give-and-take of real college life.

The initial notion was to somehow combine television or videotapes of lectures with interactive Web sites and e-mail interactions with a professor. Broadband has changed all of that, with its ability to present multimedia lectures, downloadable podcasts, and real-time interaction between students and instructors.

If this sounds like a less-than-ideal learning experience to you, then it's probably been awhile since you sat in a 150-person Chem 101 lecture hall surrounded by unwashed, sniffling students, watching a television monitor of the instructor or teaching assistant -- the professor rarely shows up -- who in real life isn't more than a tiny figure in the distance.

The day of the virtual university appears to be upon us.

Online Education Hits Mainstream Schools

This week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article by reporter Daniel Golden, describing how a growing number of students were choosing to pick up new online degrees from prestigious universities. Golden told the story of a brother and sister, Pratiksha and Jignesh Patel, who decided to earn their bachelor's degrees over the Internet. Jignesh went for the new, Web-based degree program at the University of Phoenix, but his sister decided to go upscale and pick up her online degree at the University of Massachusetts.

Didn't know that UMass offered online degrees? Surprise, surprise: The online program has 9,200 students, which makes it bigger than many well-known liberal arts colleges around the country. Indeed, UMass online offers 63 different programs, including, as Golden writes, everything "from a master's degree in business to certificates in gerontology and casino management."

That's nothing compared to some of the really big online programs, such as the University of Maryland -- 51,000 students; and the Apollo Group, which runs the U of Phoenix, with 160,000 students. You can also pick up online degrees at Penn State and even Stanford. In 2003, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation found that 51 percent of public colleges in the United States offered online business programs; that percentage has only climbed from there.

Why have these colleges so quickly traded their ivy-covered walls for phosphorescent displays? Money, of course.

Going Online Boosts Enrollment, Money

Though a few professors have sniffed at the prospect of an online college degree -- mostly those who don't think they'll get a piece of the royalties -- colleges and universities have learned to love the idea because it means scaling up the enrollment and tuition revenues without having to make the capital expenditure of adding new classrooms and dorms.

Most even get away with charging more for the tuition, saying that because online courses are state-subsidized they cost more to deliver -- a pricing scheme that will enable UMass, for instance, to make an extra $10 million this year to pay for "other university endeavors." Online students are willing to pay that premium to keep their day jobs -- sparing them the expense and hassle of driving to class or renting a place near campus.

Nevertheless, a number of private colleges and universities have resisted the trend, arguing that part of their appeal is their distinctive campus culture. This is basically just code for saying that they haven't figured out a way to port their exclusiveness and distinctive culture onto a Web page. You can be sure that when they do -- streaming live video of tailgate parties, a freezer, and a bag of fallen leaves with each tuition payment, free online courses in sedition -- they will jump onboard this digital gravy train as well.

If you're thinking this sounds like the latest example of a cultural revolution being sparked by technological innovation, you are right -- but perhaps not in the way you think.

Changing the College Timeline, Creating Competition

There's one thing I haven't told you: Almost every one of these thousands of online college students is a working adult, far older than your typical college undergrad. Even the Patel siblings are in their 30s: Pratiksha works as a procurement manager and does her schoolwork after she puts her two children to bed.

So what we are really seeing in the virtual university movement is the rise of two college-level educational tracks. In one, you attend college right out of high school, not really knowing the application of most of the stuff you're learning, having mom and dad pay your tuition, and then go out into the work force four, six or eight years later. In the other, you enter into the working world first, get some experience, then, wiser and more motivated, go back to college and your own way.

I don't know about you, but I smell real a competition emerging. Sometime in the next few years, the news media will carry the story of a research study that finds that one or the other of these tracks results in greater career success, higher lifetime income, and greater happiness. When that happens, what is now a polite co-existence will turn into cutthroat competition. That in turn will likely have a profound effect upon our education system and our society.

As I've noted before in this column, technological innovation doesn't always push us forward, sometimes it sends us hurtling forward into the past, regaining old cultural structures that have been lost. EBay, for example, is essentially the medieval crossroads marketplace expanded to cover the world, and the iPod is a supercharged -- mediocre sound, great selection -- malt-shop jukebox.

By the same token, this two-track college education system harkens back to the days -- a lot of days, in fact, from the late Middle Ages to "Brideshead Revisited" -- when going to university was reserved for the children of the wealthy. There they could be locked into very elegant, minimum-security prisons to drink, get laid, raise hell, and occasionally go to class … all with minimum impact on the surrounding community. Meanwhile, the children of the middle and working classes were expected to get a basic education, then enter into apprenticeships where, after a period of years on the job, they would be taught master skills … all while embedded in the everyday world of work, play, church and family.

The difference, of course, in this newly emerging world of Mouse & Gown, both the upper-class wealthy and the lower classes will be getting the same education, if not the same lifestyle. The interesting question is: Should the online track prove superior? Will America's moms and dads, faced with keeping their 18-year-olds home for four more years, ever let it succeed? Surely they'd rather embrace the empty nest.

Actually, they may already be too late. Consider a second, related item that also ran in the news this week. It seems that a school district in Washington state is preparing to open an online high school. Apparently it is designed for teenagers who would otherwise "fall through the cracks," i.e., the very kids we all want locked into a schoolyard eight hours each day.

Virtual High. If you're a parent and that doesn't send a shiver down your back, your kids have already killed you and you don't know it. Think of it: "Ferris Bueller's Four Years Off." "No Time at Ridgemont High." "Mousepad Jungle." And the most popular new excuse? "The computer ate my education."

Tad's Tab: The latest from the teen tech trenches from my 15-year-old son, Tad Malone:

A lot of people are amazed at how kids these days can multitask. Right now, I am chatting on AIM, watching "Lost," eating cookies, checking Fark, working on a PowerPoint presentation for school, downloading music and guitar tabs, and writing this.

This may seem amazing to you, but it's pretty ho-hum for me and most kids my age. What I do find exciting is randomness, the unpredictable in my predictable suburban world. And the best place to find that on the Internet is Stumble. It is a FireFox plug-in that learns your interests, then takes you to a new Web site every time you click the button. Using Stumble, I find on average 10 cool Web sites each day. Even randomness has never been this fun.

This work is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone, once called the Boswell of Silicon Valley, is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News, as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is best-known as the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public-television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNEWS.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.