From 1995 to 2003 a plethora of online institutions and consortia emerged for the delivery of higher education via new Internet technology that transformed the face of higher education generally. These became the virtual universities (VUs). They also stimulated the simultaneous emergence of strong, competing online distance education courses and programs at most institutions of higher education. This small volume chronicles and analyzes that VU evolution through the lens of various scholars and researchers about funding, advising, models of collaborations, and institutional case studies. Most authors were also actors in shaping the organizations that surfaced. In sum, Meyers states:
Clearly, VUs are fascinating and novel higher education organizations. They disprove the old saw that change in higher education happens at glacial pace, and they prove that innovation is alive and well in public higher education. VUs have innovated with new organizational structures, new collaboration models, new delivery models, new policies, new assessment models, new funding models, and new skills on the part of students, faculty, and administrators. (p. 110)
I would recommend this work to administrators, staff, and policymakers (and those aspiring to become such) at VUs or at higher education institutions with online distance programs seeking collaboration with other parties to grow their programs and create synergy from their joint resources.
My interest in this monograph arose from my involvement with one of the pioneer VUs, Western Governors University, over the past decade. Seeing a chapter devoted to it (chapter 5 by Katrina Meyer), along with cases derived from many similar start-ups in both the private and public sector, I was intrigued to find out how it and they were portrayed from inception to what they have become today. It also includes a case study of the U.S Open University—that met its demise in but a brief three years. WGU was the first collaborative virtual higher education among 10 governors then (now up to 20 governors of states and territories today). Meyer states that it was unique – a product conceptualized in 1995 primarily by governors Mike Leavitt (Utah) and Ray Romer (Colorado) who promoted and shaped it until regional accreditation in 2003. It was characterized by being: (1) competency based, (2) assessment focused, (3) disaggregated faculty roles, and (4) brokering of learning resources. A key decision Meyer states was to focus on offering its own degrees and give up the service of being a broker of the online course offerings from other institutions in the public marketplace. Following its evolution until 2008 she declared that WGU has found its niche and its now successful by most measures. I agree. Indeed, WGU today, fully accredited, has over 20,000 full-time students in 60 degree programs and has produced over 5,000 graduates (http://www.wgu.edu). However, since this writing the institution continues to refine its model of mentoring, assessments, courses, and technology—shifting quickly, nimbly, and simultaneous, as it negotiates the ever-changing online environment to grow and thrive competitively. WGU has recently focused on core institutional success metrics that are monitored continually and shape corrections to our course: (1) enrollment growth, (2) student satisfaction, (3) satisfactory academic progress, (4) retention, and (5) graduation. Many of these are expressed as WGU participates in a collaborative VU effort, “Transparency by Design,” to make its practices and successes visible to prospective students and employers (http://www.collegechoicesforadults.org/).
In response to the governors' creation of WGU, the first VU outside of their higher education institutions, the governors of other states sought to work within their systems for innovative change. “By 2003, at least sixtyone state-level virtual higher education entities had been established across forty-five states” (p. 56; from Epper & Garn, 2003, p. 5). Four of these, the California Virtual University, the Florida Virtual Campus, the Michigan Virtual University, and the Kentucky Virtual University are analyzed by Myk Garn (chapter 7). All of these have since evolved from their original mission, based on shifting educational, political, and financial forces. Though most remain refocused in more modest operations today, their legacy brought about important change in higher education, reminding us that “now, more than ever, higher education needs catalytic and disruptive entities” (Garn, p. 63). Similar case study chapters outline the State of Georgia's development of a common online “eCore” involving 83 faculty members from 5 campuses to develop 25 online courses for use across the system (chapter 4 by Morris & Finnegan), and a comparative study of state-level VUs: Kentucky Virtual University, Ohio Learning Network, and the UT (University of Texas) TeleCampus (chapter six by Xu and Morris). A remarkable quote from NCES (2003) emphasizes the widespread growth of such initiatives: “As of 2002, 83 percent of public 2 year and 68 percent of public 4 year institutions participated in some type of distance education consortia” (p. 45)—which begs the question as to what that number would be today. Similarly, chapter three (by Connie Broughton) explains the evolution of Washington State's Online Learning consortium (WAOL), comprised of 34 community and technical colleges over an 11-year period. These chapters contain useful analyses of what worked and didn't, as well as lessons derived for future ventures. In the case of WAOL the lessons learned were:
Build centralized business processes, take advantage of decentralized instruction and support services, and outsource technical services.
Create equality of opportunity for all colleges in the consortium.
Always ask, “What is best for the students?”
Put a high value on faculty professional development.
Do not overcommunicate the details, and do not undercommunicate the value (p. 17).
“How can a virtual university go from founding to closing within three years?” (p. 65) is the question posed by Lynette Krenelka in her analysis of the short-lived existence of the U.S. Open University (chapter 8). While successes were “in progress,” the shocking news came that the fledgling institution would be closed because of financial, credibility, structural mismatches between the United States and British educational systems, and the loss of its founding leader, Sir John Daniel. Among the lessons learned were: partner with other institutions, allow more time for a start up initiative, realize the pivotal role regional accreditation plays, and to start off with fewer, strategic, successful degrees.
Another informative piece addressed funding models for VUs (chapter 9 by Poulin and Michelau). From a survey of 39 VUs in the United States and Canada they conclude that the “central enterprise model” was the most successful because those adopting it purposely built essential revenue streams to become selfsustaining.
Many lessons can be learned from the experiences of the VUs. After ten or more years of operations we know that successful VUs focus on adding value for the institutions and their students. They constantly evolve to meet changing needs. Finally, they monitor state/provincial politics and defend themselves with both data and arguments that prove their contributions to the public. (p. 83)
Steele and Thurmond's chapter 10 on academic advising in a virtual university just whet the appetite for other such aspects of student services at VUs (e.g., libraries, financial aid, testing, job and placement services, etc.)—which would have made this a much larger volume. This piece didn't seem to quite fit in with the rest since it was more theoretic and not grounded in specific VUs per se.
Insightful observation taken from unstructured interviews with leaders at online university giants like Penn State's World Campus, SUNY Empire State College, University of Central Florida, Southern Regional Electronic Campus, Rio Salado, and Dallas County Community College District comprise chapter 11 by Karen Vignare. She concludes that VUs came about because the Internet provided greater access to students. Growth in VUs remains at 20 percent a year, and online learning increasingly attracts students newly graduated from high school—not just adult learners. Administrators must collaborate with faculty and staff services to succeed and many (like UCF) are showing tremendous returns on investment. Some leaders argue for changes in accreditation and regulations to eliminate inversus out-of-state tuition, promote competency-based education that affirms prior learning, and allows greater credit transfer between institutions. Successful VUs have operated as internal profit centers, overhead/service centers, and independent for-profit centers. Students come to VUs for greater convenience, flexibility, and control over their own learning. Open or short-course enrollment, 24/7 student services, and customer relationship management augment the student experience. Her research found that faculty need support: incentives to teach online, training, and instructional design and technology to teach. Marketing approaches have made the for-profits very profitable, such as developing highdemand degrees and targeted outreach to students most likely to enroll and be successful online. Public VUs are catching on and are giving the for-profits a “run for their money.” Vignare concludes that “the clear preference among the early virtual university leaders interviewed is to integrate the VU within a larger college or university” (p. 103).
This short work is not without its limitations. With each chapter I got the sense that “the elephant of VUs” was being described to me from a different perspective; I could see the parts but not the whole beast clearly. For the most part we see VUs from an overall institutional perspective, and the analysis could be greatly enlarged if specific comparative aspects of VUs were addressed—like operations, course design and delivery, policy and political development, and so forth. Of course, the monograph almost entirely reports on the American experience but elsewhere (e.g., the European Union) organizations have been grappling with collaborative, online, interinstitutional, and transnational endeavors over this past decade as well. A key question goes unanswered: “Was the rise of these VUs dependent on the euphoric and prosperous national milieu that preceded the bursting of the dot.com bubble?” Certainly, higher education and VUs specifically have weathered the storm during the rough economic era that followed but, to my knowledge, few new bigplayer institutions have arisen during this time. Some of the authors state that the interest in funding start-up ventures such as these has passed—the foundations and industry partners are more interested in other educational causes. Efforts of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and its Cooperative for Educational Technologies, Sloan C, Merlot, distance learning associations, and the open source movement have fueled the VUs and online distance education in general. The VUs are here to stay and as they thrive, they will evolve and morph with the technology that formed them, the institutional collaborations and organizational structures that enabled them to grow, and the student and workplace demands for convenient, rigorous, and relevant credentials.
