If you're an administrator in distance education, the odds are against your moving up in the traditional campus hierarchy -- at least for now, according to experts in the field.
Although distance education has become a major player in higher education, an administrative job in the field is more a sticking point than a steppingstone at traditional colleges and universities. Observers of the career track say there's virtually no way for those who have worked only in distance education to ascend the ladder of academic administration. You may work your way up to be director of distance education or vice president of continuing education. But you're not likely to be called when openings arise for deans, provosts, and presidents.
"The provost will always be someone with genuine academic credentials," says A. Frank Mayadas, director of a grant program in online learning at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Since 1993, the foundation has awarded grants to nearly 60 institutions to establish programs in online education. "If you become director of distance education and you're not a tenured faculty member in a department, the chances are not very likely in a major reputable institution that you'd become provost. The faculty would not accept that."
But because the delivery of instruction at a distance is still so new, some say it's too soon to tell what career paths might follow from leadership positions in distance education.
People in charge of distance education often are viewed as "visionaries," so you would think that they would be tapped for the highest leadership positions, says Philip M. Turner, associate vice president for academic affairs for distance education at the University of North Texas. But the reality is they'll "probably be regarded as a little too radical and threatening to the status quo," even though most of them come from academic backgrounds, says Mr. Turner, who is also dean of the university's School of Library and Information Sciences.
Academics in distance education today were often the first faculty members to do something with their courses online or to teach videoconferencing five years ago. They don't see themselves as following a certain career path, Mr. Turner says. "They do it because it's exciting and new," he says, "or they're asked to do it because the president or the provost said, We need to run in this direction."
That's how Mr. Turner got into the field 10 years ago at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, when he was dean of the School of Library and Information Sciences there. The associate vice chancellor for the Alabama system "twisted my arm," Mr. Turner says, to become associate vice chancellor for telecommunications, in addition to his deanship.
Ultimately, he would like to be working exclusively as a faculty member, not an administrator, when he retires. But he says he hasn't abandoned the idea of holding a senior administrative position. He thinks his work in distance education has not hurt his chances, because he has remained a faculty member and a dean.
Many people believe that obtaining a top administrative position without having worked as a faculty member is a tough row to hoe.
"A person with only distance-education experience is not likely to be a strong candidate for either provost or president," says James C. Votruba, president of Northern Kentucky University. Mr. Votruba was an administrator of distance education before becoming president, but he's had a varied career: a professor of higher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, dean of the school of education at the State University of New York at Binghamton and its vice president of academic affairs, and vice provost at Michigan State University.
He came to Northern Kentucky in 1997 but says he wouldn't have gotten the job had he focused exclusively on distance education in his career. It would be easier, he says, for a person with such qualifications to become president of a university than provost since the two positions have a "different set of gatekeepers." While the faculty play a major role in determining who will become provost at many campuses, the governing board takes the lead in naming a president. And so do lawmakers and other constituencies to whom "people with continuing-education or distance-education experience can be quite attractive," Mr. Votruba says.
S. Georgia Nugent, an associate provost at Princeton University who plans and oversees some of its technology programs, says she gets calls from headhunters who want her as a candidate for positions as president, provost, and academic dean. She thinks that is because of her wide-ranging experience as a professor and an academic administrator. If distance education were her only experience, however, she wouldn't get those calls, she says.
"It probably is hard to move from duties dedicated solely to distance learning to something with a more central purview," she says. "For most institutions, distance learning, for good or ill, is still considered somewhat marginal."
That's because "in the pecking order of higher education, research has the most prestige, then teaching, then service, and then outreach," says a senior academic administrator at a leading distance-education institution who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Continuing education is primarily about service and outreach." She says that administrators in distance education who want to become provosts or presidents should look for openings at institutions where the main focus is on nontraditional students.
It's a point she drives home with the deans she hires at her institution: "They need to be clear about this career move. If they're coming from a traditional school and think they may want to go back there, they have to consider it carefully. I don't think the path is straight or easy."
