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Monday, September 25, 2000

U. of Oxford Joins Princeton, Stanford, and Yale in a Distance-Education Venture By SARAH CARR The University of Oxford will join an alliance formed by Princeton, Stanford, and Yale Universities to offer distance-learning courses. The three institutions announced last spring that they would collaborate to offer online courses to their alumni. But Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Princeton's provost, said on Friday that representatives of the four universities may eventually consider other forms of joint offerings in distance learning. The alliance will name a chief executive officer for the project within the next week, according to Mr. Ostriker. He added that each institution had agreed to provide several million dollars as "an initial dowry" for the project. Charles Junkerman, the associate provost and dean of continuing studies at Stanford, said his university was creating two courses for the alliance -- both in classics -- that will probably be ready to offer to alumni and families of students this winter. "One of the interesting things for all four institutions is to figure out how our contributions can complement each other," Mr. Junkerman said. "We don't know if there will be a standardized format for these different courses. But we are all working on pilot projects to see how expensive and time consuming this all is." Tom Conroy, a spokesman for Yale, said the university planned to make an announcement about the alliance this week, but declined to comment further. A spokesman at Oxford could not be reached for comment. On Friday, The Yale Daily News quoted G. Leonard Baker, a Yale Corporation member who is on the board of directors for the alliance, as having said that the alliance might eventually become a for-profit venture, at least in part. The corporation is Yale's equivalent of a board of trustees. But Mr. Ostriker declined to elaborate on the organization of the venture. "I think that is so far down the pike that it is not worth commenting on," he said. "We know where we want to begin, but the whole field is changing so rapidly that it would be presumptuous to say more." Mr. Ostriker said members of the alliance would consider first how to serve current students, their families, and alumni. The universities already plan to develop a pool of online courses that could be offered to alumni at all four institutions, and to add Web components to existing courses. Mr. Junkerman said a big question at Stanford is whether people will want to take liberal-arts courses in an online format. "Will people in large enough numbers want to engage with Homer's Odyssey online? That is a question that no one has an answer to yet." Mr. Ostriker said the consortium may eventually expand to add additional university partners. "I think it is important to have a core and move forward, but we will be open to other appropriate partners," he said. "I really don't know whether there are serious plans to invite other members now," added Mr. Junkerman. "My sense is that everyone wants to make this a rich collaboration, but not allow it to get so big that it lacks shape and definition." Last winter, Harvard University opted out of talks about the alliance. Joe Wrinn, a spokesman for the university, said at the time that Harvard had "a history of not being first in these types of things." "We like to kind of hang around and see how it goes for a bit, and then come in on the second wave," he said. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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