By J. Jeffrey Tillman

At a recent higher educationconference, I felt as though Iwas in a performance of the

Broadway show The Music Man.Infomercials, speeches, and adver-tisements were everywhere, prais-ing online education. It was asthough Professor Harold Hill wasmarching through the conventionhall, exalting online education tothe tune of “76 Trombones,” andeveryone crowded in to march withhim.

I am certainly not against theuse of technology in education, butI wonder if there are good educa-tional reasons for the popularity ofonline education. Perhaps the sameissues about education are at stakeas are found in The Music Man.

Professor Hill is not strictly aneducator. He is a salesman who cre-ates a demand for a service that heoffers. He gets what he wants, afast profit, and River City suppos-edly gets what it wants, a boy’sband and a feeling of pride. WhatProfessor Hill might say, however,

is that education is at its heart abusiness relationship.

Many people connected withhigher education would agree. A lotof money changes hands in thehalls of academia today. Most of theinstitutions may be officiallylabeled as nonprofit, but the finan-cial language of markets and prof-its still applies. Furthermore, with-out business to support highereducation through grants to insti-tutions and students and providethe overwhelming target for gradu-ate employment, higher educationwould be destitute and, some wouldsay, meaningless.

When this business model isapplied to higher education, howev-er, curious conclusions result. Stu-dents are the consumers and theirwants must be met by the institu-tion lest the student go somewhereelse for the educational good or ser-vice. The central reason studentsseek out the institution, accordingto this model, is to increase theirbuying power by getting the cre-

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Online Education:‘76 Trombones and a

Big Parade’

James Jeffrey Tillman is an associate professor of philosophy and religion at WaylandBaptist University in Wichita Falls, Texas. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in applied and theoretical ethics and experiments with online course delivery.He is author of The Fractured Mind of Partisan Church-Related Institutions of HigherEducation, published in 1999 in Religious Education.

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Much of the business model’s conceptualstructure comes from the realm of natur-al selection and Social Darwinism.

dentials to secure a more lucrativecareer. Because most vocationsrequire the acquisition of discrete,technical skills peculiar to oneindustry or profession, institutionsof higher education emphasizetraining in their curricula. Courseofferings become ever more techni-cal in nature, and many graduatesat best know the specifics of a des-ignated profession but perhaps little about the character of the present or past world as a whole.

Moreover, this businessmodel suggests that insti-tutions and professors

may acceptably approach their edu-cational activities with profit incen-tives. Institutions may focus theirefforts on degrees and programsthat generate the most enroll-ments, the best grants, and thelargest endowments, and theyshould procure professors whosepersonalities and class require-ments attract the most students.

Instructors may lower therequirements for their courses,given that they get the same payfor less effort and their studentsare more satisfied overall withfewer and easier assignments.Instructors may also depart fromthe traditional regimen of scantilycompensated but diligent academicstudy and publishing in order toapply their newly found free timein the quest for personal profit.

Given that this is the approachof Professor Hill, what was wrongwith it? Though he had somewhatignoble motives as measured in atraditional sense, he did deliver onhis promises.

The kids got the band instru-ments and the uniforms, and, inspite of the questionable characterof his “Think Method” of music edu-cation, somehow learned to approx-imate a melody. The citizens ofRiver City really did get what theypaid for, and Professor Harold Hillwas quite a likeable guy. Is that notenough?

The musical holds a tricky ten-sion at this point. Professor Hill isclearly an inveterate shyster and awomanizer, and has few enduringrelationships. He is the sort of fel-low most of us would avoid. Howev-er, he can carry a rollicking tune,dance impressively, and gain theregard of a merry librarian. Thesetraits tend to convince the audienceto overlook his dark side.

The same is true of the prevail-ing business model. Much of itsunderlying conceptual structurecomes from the realm of naturalselection and Social Darwinism.This model offers a harsh and indi-vidualistic ethic in which self-inter-est and individual profit-seekingare the standards for practice.

Those who cannot compete inthe marketplace are replaced bythose who can. Because many

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These rationalizations tend to hide theextent to which the business model cancorrupt higher education.

Americans have benefited one wayor another from the success of thebusiness model, much of Americansociety takes these stark virtuesand rationalizes and sentimental-izes them into descriptions ofinnate justice and benevolence.

These rationalizations tend tohide the extent to which the busi-ness model can corrupt higher edu-cation. Institutions of higher educa-tion are virtually unique in theirsocietal responsibility to overseeknowledge claims. They assist soci-ety in providing the resourcesenabling one to evaluate what istrue and what is not by providingtraining for experts in variousfields of inquiry and also by provid-ing a place where knowledgeexperts can advance the fields ofknowledge themselves.

Unfortunately, as the institu-tions become more depen-dent on business for support

and the business paradigm forevaluation and program structure,the bias of business creeps in atevery point, and it becomes evermore difficult to find a vantagepoint from which to criticize it.

If Professor Hill had an Inter-net connection, what would he do?He would quit riding the trainsfrom town to town and would set uphis own Web site, where studentswould be initiated into the fine artof the “Think Method” through dis-

cussion board interaction, E-mails,and streaming video clips.

Indeed, his approach to educa-tion seems tailor-made for currentInternet technology. He mightmourn the decline of his publicsinging and dancing, and his inabil-ity to woo personally young womenacross the states, but the expandedmarket and efficiency he enjoyed,along with the many onlineamorous relationships he couldkeep going at one time, would morethan make up the difference.

Recent conversations aboutonline education seem to presumethat whatever problems it hasmust be new. But the problems thatalarm me are not new ones. Theyare the problems associated withan impersonal and business-orient-ed paradigm of education, alreadyentrenched, that has now found anexplosive medium for proliferation.Indeed, The Music Man has goneonline.

I am alarmed that higher edu-cation has so quickly and noncha-lantly accepted the impersonalcomponent of online education. Oh,I know the counter arguments.Many studies indicate that studentsatisfaction with online courses isgenerally the same as in classcourses.

Apart from the conveniencethat appears to weigh heavily insuch assessments, this judgmentmay just indicate how impersonal

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Operating a class by discussion boardsand E-mail is like operating a class byvoice mail.

many traditional courses are.If a class delivered traditionally

is merely the delivery of old lec-tures that the students write downand later recite back on an exam,then that course is quite as“canned” as a course on videotape,delivered by mail, or streamed overthe Internet. The problem is notwith Internet technology but withthe existing tendency to be satis-fied with inferior education.

Staunch advocates of Internetcourses often claim that theircourses are highly interactive. Afew institutions do invest in satel-lite uplinks to allow real-timeinteraction in sight and sound, butthe great majority of online coursesdo not use that technology.

To justify their claims of highinteractivity, many advocates pointto discussion boards, E-mail corre-spondence, video clips, and chatrooms. Advocates claim that thesemechanisms create a virtual, yetactual, academic community. Butonly a novice or disoriented com-puter user believes these claimsentirely.

Operating a class by discussionboards and E-mail is like operatinga class by voice mail. The mainte-nance of these tools can be a lot ofwork for both the student and theinstructor, but they entail a kind ofbusy work that cannot achieve thehighly personal interaction that isat the heart of quality education.

The video clips can be morehelpful, but advocates fail to men-tion that the current technical limi-tations of computer speed, memory,and bandwidth make the stream-ing of more than a few clips, nonemore than about three minutes inlength, prohibitive.

Real-time chat room capabilityis quite promising, although in myexperience it still cannot achievethe same results as quality face-to-face interaction in the classroombecause student participation ishard to encourage and monitor.And though chat rooms are exten-sively available, they are rarelyused in online courses.

Apparently, convenience tothe instructor and the stu-dent is the byword, and the

issues of meeting together at a spe-cific time, even virtually, are amongthe things that many want to avoid.

An avalanche of online coursesin higher education seemsinevitable. The financial stakes areso high that virtually all institu-tions of repute are offering onlinecourses and seeking to expandtheir offerings. Unfortunately, stu-dent satisfaction and institutionalfinancial solvency appear to be theoperative measurements for quali-ty. The time is critical to considerwhat might be being lost.

Does anyone expect the JulliardSchool of Music to offer online

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courses any time soon? Probablynot. Is it because it has enoughfunding that it doesn't have to fol-low the strict business model?Probably so. Is it because itsinstructors are amply paid andhave little incentive to seek moremoney? Perhaps. Is it because mostof its students are not ordinary con-sumers seeking greater buyingpower but have an intrinsic com-mitment to the study of their disci-pline? Very likely.

Or, is it that almost everyone,apart from Harold Hill per-haps, recognizes that cur-

rent Internet courses, even at theirbest, present a barrier to the sort ofinteraction needed to achieve quali-

ty in performance art? I hope so.There are some important

things here for all of higher educa-tion to learn. Good business doesnot equal good education. Societyneeds higher education to operateby a different set of standards thanbusiness because values thatshould not be sacrificed to market-driven forces are at stake.

Merely reading a book, watch-ing a videotape, or thinking reallyhard about a subject is not enough.One must be socialized into thecommunity of knowledge to becometruly educated, whether in music oranything else, and that seems to besomething online education, moreoften than not, has a difficult timeproviding. ■

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