Virtual college, real questions

Intelligent Learning Corp. hopes to have its virtual Portland College online and teaching courses by next fall. The process by which the state approves the authority of any new college to grant degrees consists of multiple steps and offers ample opportunity to address the multiple questions.

Distance learning is not new — colleges, universities and technical schools throughout the country have long offered courses by video tape, interactive television and computer. Even the transition from distance learning as one component of a real, bricks-and mortar institution to distance learning by an institution with no physical campus is not new. Virtual universities are springing up throughout the nation and the world.

It is new to Maine, and there will be skepticism as to the value of totally online courses and degrees in general and the value of Portland College courses and degrees in particular. The first two steps in the application process — review by a team of college-level educators and then by the state Board of Education will explore these issues. These reviewers must, above all, ensure that a college degree granted in Maine, whether earned in a classroom or in a den, means something, and the same thing, elsewhere.

But they also must ensure that the ability of nontraditional students, particularly working adults living in non-college towns, to get the education needed for the changing economy is not thwarted by the inevitable objections to change. Portland College’s proposed degrees focus primarily upon business and technology. These have been proven elsewhere to be the most effective and valuable online degrees. The task of the review team and of the state board will be to ascertain whether Portland College meets standards of academic rigor and can guarantee that, once begun, courses of study can be completed. If so, market forces will decide what education product best suits the needs of the individual customer.

The last two steps in the review are done by the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee and by the full Legislature, and this is where it must be proved that the market forces meet on a level playing field.

The key to Portland College’s success, says Intelligent Learning President and CEO Richard Pushard, is the proprietary software his company has developed, a technological advance that tailors instruction to the learning styles of the students.

Here’s where this will get tricky and political: Intelligent Learning, though a free-standing corporation, sprang out of Maine Education Services, of which Mr. Pushard is listed as vice president of corporate communications. MES was at the center of a bitter political squabble just last spring as legislators began to wonder how it came to dominate the state’s student-loan market and to what extent the savings produced by the low-interest state bonds MES uses are passed onto students.

Rather than act hastily on this explosive issue, lawmakers wisely created a commission which will soon begin a thorough review of the student-loan market in Maine and the use of state bonds. Now, the commission must add to its inquiry the new questions of to what extent MES and Intelligent Learning are separate entities and to what extent they were separate during the development of the software.

The timetable for this four-step approval process is remarkably short, but those conducting the review must not feel rushed to keep it. The central question is not whether Portland College will be enrolling its first student body next fall, but whether Maine, as it establishes its first virtual college, gets it right the first time.