Wednesday, November 28, 2001

NYUonline Will Shut Down By DAN CARNEVALE NYUonline, the three-year-old distance-learning venture of New York University, is restructuring its operations and will eventually close, the university announced Tuesday. The university's School of Continuing and Professional Studies will continue to provide courses at a distance for the university and will acquire some of NYUonline's other functions. "Economic conditions have shifted, and the benefits of having a separate for-profit enterprise have diminished," Harvey J. Stedman, the university's provost, said in a news release issued by the university Tuesday night. "Now the university is reassessing NYUonline's technology and operations and is determining which activities will be managed by NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies." NYUonline is a for-profit company wholly owned by New York University. The company's purpose was to develop online courses for businesses and other clients out of the curriculum offered by the university. NYUonline started in October 1998 during an explosion of dot-com start-ups and distance-education programs. Since then, Columbia University, Temple University, and the University of Maryland University College have all started for-profit distance-education businesses. Virtual Temple, Temple University's company, closed its doors in July. Gordon Macomber, the chief executive officer of NYUonline, said in the news release that the company has offered valuable distance-education services, but that economic conditions had deteriorated too much to continue operations. "I believe that the value of our work -- some of which will continue to be carried on by the university, and some non-academic portions of which may be acquired by third parties -- will become even clearer with time," Mr. Macomber said in the release. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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