Friday, May 12, 2000

LOGGING IN WITH . . . Stanley A. Chodorow Veteran of California Virtual U. Blames a Flawed Business Plan for Its Demise By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Stanley A. Chodorow says it was a lack of grassroots campus support and a flawed business plan that led to the demise of California Virtual University, which closed its doors about a year ago. The failure of the institution -- which was in business for only about eight months -- was a sobering reminder of how hard it is to run a successful "portal" for online education. The well-publicized institution served as a clearing-house for distance-education programs at about 100 public colleges and universities in California. The C.V.U.'s World Wide Web site is now a static page of links to home pages of statewide higher-education systems in California. The site is maintained by the University of California system. Mr. Chodorow, who had been a provost at the University of Pennsylvania before joining C.V.U., is now special associate for instructional technology in the University of California system's office of the president. He is also a professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego, teaching classes there in world history. Q. Could you briefly describe why you decided to pull the plug on C.V.U.? A. It's actually quite straightforward. The original plan for the C.V.U. did not include an adequate financial structure. A group of people that I put together worked on a new business plan for the organization. We presented that to the sponsors, which were essentially the four segments of higher education in California. ... Basically, the money wasn't forthcoming to do a start-up. And without the money we had to go out of business. Q. What was the problem with the original plan? A. I'll give you an example of the problems that I found when I came on board. There was a plan to raise funds from corporate sponsors, and the governor [Pete Wilson] had helped to do that, but he had only gotten about 5 or so out of the 10 that were required for the original financial plan. And once the governor was out of office, these corporations were not very interested in continuing their support, so we found that we just couldn't get them to join forces with us. The second problem was that C.V.U. was to raise funds by selling books to distance-education students. It was going to make a deal, which we did do, with Barnes & Noble. That was a plan that was sort of under way, but it was a plan that had never been cleared with the member institutions. And, of course, the member institutions all have bookstores, so they objected to C.V.U. getting into that. So it was clear that we needed a different plan, and we came up with one, and the board was supportive of it. But when it went back to the institutions, which were the sponsors, a couple of them were not. Q. What did they object to? A. The never really said. The only conclusion you can draw is that they just decided they didn't want to do it. It was not the way they wanted to go. They wanted to go independently. They didn't want to put money into a collaboration. Q. Do you think there was some misunderstanding by faculty members about what C.V.U. was going to do, and did that factor into the demise of the institution? A. It certainly was a factor among the faculty, no question -- a fear of this new thing and what it meant and what it meant for their role. ... And David Noble [who argued that distance education would strip professors of their rights] had an effect on California faculty. He was here in California during that period. I think these fears are basically unfounded. I really don't believe that the university ought to -- or would -- use the courses of faculty without their express permission or participation. I think that's a red herring, frankly. Q. We're seeing more and more statewide virtual universities crop up -- such as new ones in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Dakota, and others. Can these institutions succeed? A. Oh, yes. And I think that if they get a sufficient amount of start-up support from the state, they will definitely succeed. And I still think that regardless of the fact that the Internet is universal, and there's no reason why you can't take a course across state lines or across national lines, people on the whole trust their local institutions, particularly if they're interested in degrees or certificates. So I think it's very, very valuable to have these state-based programs. And I think California will eventually get back into it. I think eventually they'll come to the conclusion that they're losing out, and that it was a bad idea to shut us down when they did. We were ahead of everyone else. Everybody else wanted to know how we were doing it. Q. What advice do you have for those starting virtual universities? A. The most important is to build them not so much from the top down. You need pressure from the governor or the government to bring these institutions into a room to talk to one another. But in the end, the institution that you create is going to be run by the academic institutions, not by the government. California operated much more of a top-down kind of program in the way they developed it. The second thing I would say is that you've got to be sure that you've got the money to do the job. It's not going to do you any good to declare that you're going to do this and not put up the start-up funds. One of the things that you face if you want these programs to raise their own money and eventually live on their own activities, is that you have to carve out things that they can do, and that academics are comfortable with, that will in fact produce some revenue. Background articles from The Chronicle: California Virtual University Will End Most of Its Operations (4/2/1999) California Virtual U. Offers Sample Courses via the Web (1/30/1998) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Senate Appropriations Committee approves increases for N.I.H., Pell Grants Minnesota Vikings owner pledges $50-million to U. of Texas business school 6 new chief executives announced Spring commencement speakers are announced by 16 colleges An unusual venture at U. of Chicago focuses on open-source software Veteran of California Virtual U. blames a flawed business plan for its demise