Few would argue that the quality of health care has improved as a result of its corporatization through HMOs and drug companies. Patients are often limited in their choice of doctors. Doctors’ hands are often tied in recommending treatments for patients. Drug prices are manipulated so that people find it cheaper to buy their prescriptions in Canada or Mexico than at home. As in all enterprises applying the corporate model, the primary mission of significant parts of the health care system has become the maximization of profits, with the secondary mission being the maximization of patient health.

A similar corporatization of higher education is underway throughout the United States, and the corporatization is nowhere more apparent than in the areas of intellectual property and distance education.

Although at its best distance education may have the potential to bring quality higher education to those unable to access it otherwise, at its worst distance education has the potential to destroy the quality of higher education by serving as a vehicle for corporate interests. But before corporate-minded purveyors of distance education can control intellectual content on the Internet, they must first gain control over intellectual property rights.

Intellectual Property

There are probably dozens of universities across the nation trying to seize the rights to faculty members’ intellectual property, but in Texas it’s the Texas A&M University System. The A&M System appears to be trying to set legal precedents that may prove harmful to faculty and ultimately higher education not only in Texas but also across the nation. In its enthusiasm to keep tabs on faculty creativity in case there might be some profits, the A&M System states that “It is the responsibility of the creator to notify the System component of the initiation of Technology-Mediated Instruction” (17.02.02, Section 5.1). In fairness, it must be noted that the Texas legislature directed the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop a plan to implement distance learning, so the A&M System’s enthusiasm could be read as merely conforming to the spirit of the law. However, in other policies, the A&M System went much farther than the spirit of the law mandated.

Although the Copyright Act of the United States unambiguously gives complete copyright ownership to the creator of a work except in cases of work for hire, Texas A&M System policy declares that “If a faculty member retains title to copyright in teaching or course materials that are not works for hire ... such as class notes, curriculum guides and laboratory notebooks, the System and/or the System component shall retain a royalty-free right to use the materials for educational purposes” (section 5.1.1, System Policy 17.02.01). In other words, the A&M System maintains that a faculty member may own the material, but the System may use it royalty-free if it wants. One may be prompted to ask “of what use is a copyright if one does not control the royalty rights?” In any case, it violates copyright law, plainly and simply.

“Could this contradiction of the U.S. Copyright Act be a fluke” (one might charitably ask)? A&M System policy 17.02.02 (section 4.4.) states that “In all cases where Technology-Mediated Materials are deemed owned by faculty, in whole or in part, the component shall retain a license to use the Technology-Mediated Material for its own noncommercial educational purposes, without payment of royalties.” So the pattern is clear. Anywhere the A&M System thinks it might make large amounts of money, it claims the right to use faculty members’ intellectual property even while disingenuously saying that the faculty members still own the copyright.

Is it possible that A&M System administrators are unaware of the conflict with copyright law (one might optimistically ask)? The Texas A&M-Kingsville Faculty Senate sent A&M System Chancellor Graves two letters dated June 21, 2001, and May 6, 2002, stating that these policies violate the Copyright Act. Amazingly, Chancellor Graves answered “It is clearly stated in the work for hire doctrine that all work created by a System employee is owned by the System” (letter dated July 18, 2001).

The notion that faculty were hired to produce a specific product, which would be “work for hire,” runs counter to the historical fact that the vast majority of teachers choose whether they use lecture, Internet pages, discussion, cooperative education, service learning, or any of a variety of other teaching methods, and in many cases they even choose whether they will do most of their work as teachers, researchers, or service providers. The work-for-hire label fits few faculty members. Moreover, Chancellor Graves’ statement contradicts the A&M System’s own policy 17.02.01 (sec. 5.1.1), quoted above, which recognizes that some faculty works are not works for hire.

Apparently A&M System administrators hope that they will win the inevitable court challenges. Allen Martin, Past President of the Texas Association of College Teachers, and THE top nationally recognized expert on intellectual property and distance education, and Mark Smith, AAUP Director of Government Relations, have examined these policies and say that A&M is on very shaky ground. Allen Martin notes that “most every university in the country has adopted a modern policy (directly or indirectly modeled on the [University of Texas] policy) that grants copyright to the creator” (personal communication, 10/29/02). But all it takes is one university system to establish a legal precedent to the contrary, and if this issue is taken up in the courts, there can be no certainty about the outcome. In fact, the legal climate regarding intellectual property seems to be shifting in the big guys’ favor as Disney and other corporations push to retain ownership of copyrights for ever lengthening periods of time.

Distance Education is Being Pushed by Corporate Interests

Not only in intellectual property but also in distance education itself, the Texas A&M System is one of the entities taking the lead in corporatizing higher education with potentially detrimental implications. A&M System Policy states that “... each component will adopt a rule, guidelines and/or procedures governing, facilitating, and promoting distance education on its campus” [17.02.02, section 4; bold letter emphasis mine].

Why are some university systems so aggressively pursuing distance education? No other educational technique has ever been pushed so vigorously by the powers that be, not to mention with so little evidence of its effectiveness (more on that shortly).

One answer is that it placates the legislators who hold the purse-strings and who often are in the business of placating the corporations who hold the purse-strings. In the Fall of 2000, Ruth Flower, then AAUP’s Director of Government Relations, reported that $2.3-billion had already been spent by industry in distance learning and projected that by 2003 $18-billion would be spent (Fall, 2000, meetings of the Texas Council of Faculty Senates).

Whether this promotion of distance education is motivated by compliance with the spirit of legislators’ desires or corporate greed (not mutually exclusive), or concern for students without access to higher education (still not mutually exclusive, but getting warm), such promotion threatens to strip faculty of their traditional right to determine the best way to deliver course content and places such decisions in the hands of bureaucrats, thus threatening to ruin the quality of higher education.

Distance Education is Not Proven Effective and May Increase the Gaps

A major study of the effectiveness of distance education entitled “What’s the difference” by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (1999) stated that "Most of the research is based on anecdotal evidence offered by persons and institutions with vested interests in the techniques being evaluated or in the very programs they are evaluating.” The report concluded that “the research and literature reviewed for this paper indicate that the higher education community has a lot to learn regarding how, and in what ways, technology can enhance the teaching/learning process, particularly at a distance.”

Some better-designed and conducted studies since 1999 have not been encouraging. A study by professors at Michigan State University “found that students who took an economics course online didn't do as well as students who took the same course in a traditional classroom” (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 15, 2002).

The June 10, 2002, Chronicle of Higher Education reports another study by professors at Texas Tech University finding that students with high comprehension scores benefitted most from distance education, leaving disadvantaged students even further behind. Because distance education appears to differentially benefit the well-prepared and technologically-savvy student, it is not likely to help close the gaps in education level between minorities as championed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and it may in fact mitigate toward increasing the gaps.

The Texas Tech study also found that even the better-prepared students did not like on-line instruction as well as traditional classroom instruction. This poses an interesting dilemma for the corporate-minded educator. According to the corporate model, aren’t students customers, and aren’t we supposed to cater to our customers’ likes and dislikes? What do corporate proxies advocate if the customers don’t like the product that is going to propel their corporate venture forward?

Of course, there are some studies with positive findings regarding distance education, but the preponderance of evidence seems to be that, conservatively and scientifically speaking, the educational effectiveness of distance education has not been proven.

Other Unintended Consequences

Not only is the educational effectiveness of distance education in serious doubt, but the promise of increased access is also highly suspect. The “What’s the difference” study found that analysis of distance education

“often does not take into account the high drop-out rates of distance-education courses -- itself an important issue for examination, the report says. Although proponents say a major benefit of distance education is that it increases students' access to education, the report notes that ‘if a substantial number of students fail to complete their courses, the notion of access becomes meaningless.’ ” (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 1999).

And even if such access is achieved, other studies find that the effect of spending time on the Internet can itself be harmful to psychological health. In the American Psychologist (September, 1998), researchers at Carnegie Mellon University

“found that people who spend even a few hours a week online experience higher levels of depression and loneliness than they would have if they used the computer network less frequently. ... Those participants who were lonelier and more depressed at the start of the two-year study, as determined by a standard questionnaire administered to the subjects, were not more likely to use the Internet. Instead, Internet use itself appeared to cause a decline in psychological well-being, the researchers said. .... [the study] raises troubling questions about the nature of ‘virtual’ communication and the disembodied relationships that are often formed in the vacuum of cyberspace. ....” (New York Times News Service, 8/30/98).

Distance Education in Real Universities is Failing Economically

Perhaps partly as a result of such studies of questionable effectiveness and unintended consequences, but also because of the steep costs, universities outside Texas have begun to realize that the multi-billion-dollar distance-education gamble in which they and government entities invested had a cost-to-benefit ratio that was too high. The New York Times (May 2, 2002) reported that a number of virtual universities that were created by brick-and-mortar universities have been redesigned to include non-degree programs (E-Cornell) or abandoned altogether (California Virtual University, Virtual Temple, NYUOnline, and SUNY Buffalo’s E-MBA). Also, “African Virtual University has dropped plans to offer its own degree programs ...” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/2/02). Allen Martin, Past President of TACT, points out that the University of Maryland “sends the faculty to the students, live and for real. Maryland did try on-line courses but not for long” (meetings of AAUP, June, 2002). More recently, it was announced by Columbia University that its on-line learning program, Fathom, would be shut down (Chronicle of Higher Ed., 1/7/03).

Do these brick-and-mortar university failures spell the end of distance education? (Hint: billions of dollars have been invested by corporations.) Distance learning corporations such as University of Phoenix, which are not constrained by institutional mission statements to actually provide quality education, claim to be flourishing economically. One has to wonder, however, whether we can believe any financial reports of corporations in the wake of Enron and Worldcom, so it may be possible that distance education will fail also in the private sector.

However, those billions invested in distance education, some of it doubtless toward lobbying, seem to be paying off for corporations in another way. Professor David Noble, a visible critic of distance education, sees evidence that the military, through its $453-million online program eArmyU, as well as other government entities, will create and subsidize a market for distance education and thereby perpetuate something that might otherwise not flourish and survive on its own (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2002). For example, even while distance education has been faltering at well-endowed universities, Texas A&M-Kingsville recently obtained a federal grant of almost $1 million from FIPSE (Fund for Improvement in Post-Secondary Education) to create an infrastructure to support distance education and help create a market and respectability for distance education that corporations can then exploit.

Corporate-Style Distance Education Threatens Academic Freedom

However, David Noble’s main point was not the artificial subsidization of distance education. His main concern was that “distance education threatens the privacy of students and professors because online class discussions can be monitored in ways that are impossible in traditional classrooms” (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2002). Not only can universities monitor faculty, but they can control what is distributed at distance. In the September-October issue of the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) publication “Academe,” Professor Terry Meyers of Virginia reports that by state law he must obtain permission each time he downloads or transmits over the Internet any sexually suggestive nineteenth century Victorian poetry, which is his research specialty. In the August 9, 2002, Chronicle of Higher Education, it is reported that at the University of Southern Maine, after a distance education student complained about a professor’s remarks on a videotape, “the university administration set up the committee to study diversity issues related to distance learning and then make recommendations.” More recently, “the faculty union and administrators at Southern Maine are now debating that policy, among others, as part of a collective-bargaining negotiation” (Chronicle of Higher Education, October 18, 2002). This incident should be a wake-up call to all who value freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression.

Corporate-Style Distance Education Threatens to Dismantle Higher Education

Noble also fears that the involvement of the military in distance education will bring about, among other things, “uniformity, standardization, modularization, ... system compatibility, interchangeability ...” (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2002). In Texas, however, there was a campaign to standardize and modularize higher education long before the military began to take an interest. First, core curricula were standardized so that they could be transferred from any Texas community college or university to any other. Also, many individual courses were given statewide numbers so that they would transfer to any campus. Finally, the early portions of field-of-study curricula are in the process of being standardized so that they will transfer even from a community college to U.T. Austin, despite dramatic differences in these institutions’ missions. This standardization would facilitate the trading of distance education courses across the state, treating courses and faculty like interchangeable widgets in a factory.

Just as frightening, Ruth Flower, AAUP’s past Director of Government Relations, stated that according to the new paradigm that industry is trying to sell, faculty in higher education will no longer be referred to as professors but as “content providers,” and instead of higher education, they will work in the “knowledge services sector” of the economy (Fall, 2000, meetings of the Texas Council of Faculty Senates). In this corporate vision, faculty would no longer be needed to “bundle” such components of education as background research, planning of lectures, presentation of lectures, interactive feedback, and assessment of student learning. Instead, these components would be “unbundled,” with each component being provided by a different person. Thus, a professional actor might deliver the lines over a non-interactive medium, and students would never get a chance to dialogue with professors actively doing research in their disciplines.

What purveyors of distance learning are hoping, despite the evidence from Columbia and other universities, is that distance education will provide economy of scale. Most professors’ positions could be eliminated, as there would need to be only one introductory course in the entire state for each discipline, delivered at distance. Never mind the lack of learning effectiveness and the emotional and intellectual isolation encouraged upon students.

What Can We Do to Stop Corporate Takeover of Teaching Methods?

To save itself, higher education must move in positive directions that reflect academically driven, not corporately driven, concerns. Such an example is service learning, already endorsed by Campus Compact, a national coalition of 860 college and university presidents (see Texas Campus Compact). Service learning integrates community service with academic instruction so that students can learn how concepts in the classroom apply to the real world.

Another academically-driven alternative is cooperative learning, “a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject,” Education Consumer Guide. This pedagogy has been used successfully at Texas A&M and many other top universities. See also University of Minnesota’s Cooperative Learning Center.

Promoting yet another alternative to distance education, in an address at the meetings of the American Association of University Professors, Allen Martin, Past President of Texas Association of College Teachers, suggested that rather than using technology to implement distance education, a wiser investment would be “smart classrooms” that use technology to enhance physical classrooms:

... the really smart classrooms also have multiple projectors for multimedia presentations and multiple presentations at the same time (not all students have to be on the same page). A cacophony? No, because individual headphones can allow the students all sorts of flexibility in the parts of the course that they are tuning in to. Furthermore with each student having a networked computer in the class (actually the PCS are individualized but stored on racks in specially designed closets), they can focus individually that way, too. For science classes and other classes a perfect 3-D projection can allow detailed views of molecules (yes, the 3-D glasses are provided, and the quality is a match for 3-D Imax theaters) or whatever presentation would benefit from 3-D, GIS for example, or as close as we get to seeing a four-way ANOVA. Students can listen to the professor and other students at the volume that they need, even students with severe hearing problems, all from a little box high on a wall. Students can ask professors questions, basically by an intranet e-mail, without interrupting the flow of the presentation. The professor can see the student (and the student's picture) to be able from the first day of class to know to whom to direct the answer and see if the student is satisfied with the reply. The methods and applications are without end and the experience can be learning at the apex of human abilities. (Allen Martin, June, 2002)

Using these technologies to enhance traditional instruction will create competition with distance education for limited financial resources. As demonstrated by prominent universities abandoning the enterprise, distance education is simply not worth the expenditure. In contrast, adding technology to the traditional classroom will produce a more favorable cost-benefit ratio.

Finally, faculty must work to educate the public and legislators of the dangers of a method of content delivery that threatens to stifle freedom of inquiry and expression, cornerstones of our economy and our democratic society.

Conclusion

Higher education is in grave danger of going the way of health care, where profit is the primary motive. Distance education is a symptom of this corporatization.

Improving on a model that has evolved over the centuries, the United States fashioned a system of higher education that is the envy of the world. It produced the scholars and researchers that developed the world’s first modern democracy, went to the moon, mapped the human genome, and created the Internet (with apologies to Al Gore). In contrast to centuries of development, distance education has evolved only a few years. At best, distance education might prove to be a valuable supplement to our present educational system, providing better access for remote students. At worst, our system of higher education could be destroyed by corporate promotion of distance education, a method of content delivery that has not been shown to be effective, that isolates students emotionally and intellectually, that has not been proven to significantly increase the access that proponents claim, that has not proven to be economically feasible but must be subsidized, that encourages the undermining of faculty intellectual property rights as in the case of the Texas A&M System, and that entails the reassignment of teaching responsibilities to non-academic personnel. To prevent the corporate foisting of distance education on academia and the public, faculty members and the public must unite in reasoned but vocal opposition and promote educationally sound alternatives such as service learning, cooperative learning, and smart classrooms.

Personal Point of View

Lest the reader conclude that I am techno-phobic (poor guy) or anti-corporate (gasp!), I will point out that I have programmed fluently in three computer languages and that my retirement income is tied to how well corporations fare generally. My belief is simply that many corporate ideas have no business being in education. And so I recommend to you the blueberry story that appeared in Education Week. It’s well worth the read!