October 12, 2001

All in the Timing

By DAN CURRY

It seemed to have all the elements of a great course-catalog cover: drama, action, and popular appeal.

So in August, officials at Colorado Free University, a Denver-based for-profit institution, chose that photograph -- a martial-arts instructor wearing a mask and posed in the act of unsheathing his sword.

"For the first three weeks it was out, people said it was cool," says John W. Hand, the university's president, who credited its appeal to the popularity of Crouching Tiger,