B. Joseph White, the president of the University of Illinois, had big plans for Global Campus — a proposed online institution that was to function as its own corporation, taking on for-profit juggernauts like the University of Phoenix and Capella University.
But professors and trustees never shared Mr. White's vision. They worried that a for-profit university would be more interested in marketshare than in academic quality control, and that a less-than-rigorous online wing might damage the reputation of the bricks-and-mortar institution.
Now the skeptics have scored a major victory: Mr. White has scaled back his plans for Global Campus, pitching it as an academic unit within the university, not as a separate corporate entity. The president has also scotched plans to seek independent accreditation for the online institution — a move that would have allowed Global Campus to adopt a fairly freewheeling curricular model by quickly adding and eliminating programs based on student demand.
The university has already spent more than $1-million on Global Campus, and it plans to move forward with the project. Mr. White says he expects to start enrolling students by next January, according to the Chicago Tribune. –Brock Read
