Tuesday, October 16, 2001

Cornell's Distance-Education Arm Readies a New Program, and Hopes for Profits By MICHAEL ARNONE eCornell, Cornell University's for-profit distance-education company, is ramping up for a November 1 grand opening of its online courses from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The courses mark the introduction of eCornell's first full-length online professional-certification program. eCornell will offer six courses in a program leading to a certificate in human-resources management, says Francis P. Pandolfi, chief executive officer of eCornell. Students may mix and match online and classroom courses to get the certification, Mr. Pandolfi says. Because students can take multiple online courses at one time, they have the option of completing their certification more quickly than they could otherwise. Mr. Pandolfi says he foresees success for eCornell because "in our case, we've picked a niche that is very profitable." eCornell repackages content used in certification courses that currently earn $20-million annually for the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. That expectation of profit, though, still concerns some Cornell faculty members, who say they still aren't sure that a university should run a for-profit education company. The company caused a stir last year when some faculty members said they feared the venture might jeopardize Cornell's credibility and their academic freedom. The university has since assuaged many of the professors' fears, though, by altering the online program to minimize their concerns. J. Robert Cooke, dean of the faculty at Cornell, says one fear was that the faculty didn't want another distance-education provider buying the university's brand name. Mr. Cooke also served on a faculty advisory committee that the Cornell administration formed to handle faculty concerns about eCornell. Cornell is hoping that plenty of potential students want to pay for eCornell certification programs. eCornell already has about 100 students, with more than 20 in the human-resources program, says Roy Swanson, eCornell's vice president for business development and corporate sales. He says he expects that by June 2002, eCornell will have between 4,000 and 5,000 students participating in 18 programs. The human-resources program is the first entire sequence of noncredit professional-certification courses that eCornell has offered. Last June, eCornell started offering two of what will eventually be a total of six courses from the Hospital for Special Surgery at Cornell's Weill Medical College, Mr. Swanson says. A full six-course program from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration is due to come online in spring 2002. eCornell's optimism contrasts with the drubbing some other universities' for-profit distance-learning projects have taken in the shrinking Internet economy. Columbia University subsidizes almost all of its project, Fathom. It had joined with partners -- including the University of Chicago, the New York Public Library, and other institutions -- and originally intended to earn money on marketing fees and from selling books and courses. Temple University pulled the plug on Virtual Temple last July when it determined the venture wouldn't earn enough. "We're different because we're focusing on professional and executive development. This isn't classes to the masses," says Mr. Swanson. Cornell's board of trustees has allotted $36-million over three years for the project, Mr. Pandolfi said. He wouldn't reveal how much eCornell has spent of its nest egg, but he did say it was spending its money more slowly than it had originally anticipated. He said he expects the company to be profitable in the next two to three years. Mr. Pandolfi says eCornell will focus on noncredit courses for the next few years and then decide whether to supply for-credit courses. That might lead to another controversy. Mr. Cooke says that one of the changes demanded by concerned faculty members was limiting eCornell to noncredit professional-certification courses. Cornell also soothed professors' fears by including faculty members in the design process and by slowing the pace of development. Perhaps most important, Cornell agreed to prohibit outside investment in eCornell and used money from its endowment instead, he says. Risa L. Lieberwitz, an associate professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations who teaches labor law, opposed eCornell last year out of principle and still does. She says for-profit education is inconsistent with the goals of public education. "Academic freedom and legitimacy at a university is based on the division of teaching and research from funders," Ms. Lieberwitz says. Mr. Pandolfi says eCornell was established as a for-profit company so that it could respond more quickly to the business environment. It wasn't intended to go public, unlike many other university-bred distance-education companies. He says he doubts eCornell ever will go public, because the university would most likely want to retain complete control of the academic content of courses the company offers. That reassurance aside, people like Ms. Lieberwitz and Mr. Cooke, the dean of the faculty, are still disappointed. "I would have been happier if it were nonprofit instead of for-profit, but at least it was done with Cornell so we can make the standards," Mr. Cooke says. Background articles from The Chronicle: For-Profit Web Venture Shifts Gears, Hoping to Find a Way to Make a Profit (2/9/2001) Temple U. Shuts Down For-Profit Distance-Education Company (7/20/2001) Faculty Members Are Wary of Distance-Education Ventures (6/9/2000) Cornell Creates a For-Profit Subsidiary to Market Distance-Education Programs (3/24/2000) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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