Monday, January 28, 2002

Colleges Tailor Online Degrees for Individual Companies By DAN CARNEVALE Colleges and large corporations are starting to collaborate on the creation of online graduate-degree programs that meet specific needs of the companies. The programs are created from existing graduate degrees, except the course content is altered so that the students learn by working on real projects for their company. For example, Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass., started a master's-degree program in business administration for Intel workers in May. Oregon Health & Science University is developing an online master-of-science degree in technology management for Microsoft employees. And the University of Texas at Austin is about to release an online master-of-science degree in science, technology, and commercialization for students who work at IBM. Students who complete a company-specific degree program come away with the same certification they would get for finishing a regular degree program. However, the students solve problems and complete projects that relate directly to their companies, which helps the students learn material that can be immediately beneficial -- to them and to their employers. But the approach may raise concerns that universities are working too closely with the corporate world. Such arrangements are not limited to online instruction. For example, the University of Georgia has developed a custom master's-degree program in business administration for PricewaterhouseCoopers that's taught in a traditional classroom, and the University of Arizona has been working with John Deere on several face-to-face training programs. An e-learning company called Cenquest has been playing matchmaker for companies and universities, and it's helping institutions put their company-specific degrees online. LaVonne Reimer, president and chief executive officer of Cenquest, says the new degrees will help companies feel more comfortable about reimbursing employees who seek graduate degrees, because the workers will come back with skills that more directly benefit the businesses. The company-specific degree at the University of Texas at Austin is being developed by the business school's IC2 Institute. Professors there are customizing the master-of-science degree in science, technology, and commercialization to meet the needs of its new partner, IBM. Brad Zehner, director of the degree program at IC2, says the company-specific degree will be just as rigorous as other degrees there, only the students will be working on IBM projects. IBM officials didn't try to change the degree program to make it a company-training workshop, he says. "They always respected the academic integrity of this program," Mr. Zehner says. "I would not have agreed to this program if this in any way, shape, or form impeded the academic integrity of this program." Despite the potential for concern that colleges are getting too involved with corporations, Mr. Zehner says that no opposition has been voiced. "Our faculty are very supportive of this," he says. As the number of company-specific degrees increases, Ms. Reimer, of Cenquest, says she expects more professors to become convinced that they will work well. "You just have to work with the people who are interested," she says. Mr. Zehner says having only students from IBM in the online classroom won't make it less diverse. The company is large, he says, with employees coming from different backgrounds and from all over the world. "The faculty will bring in a number of experiences and cases from outside IBM," he says. The University of Texas at Austin doesn't have a large online-education program, even though the UT System has developed an extensive one. Mr. Zehner says the new online degree will help the Austin campus move forward with its Web-based program. The degree is the first that the University of Texas at Austin has authorized for online delivery, he says. Marianne Koch, a visiting associate professor of management at Oregon Health & Science University, is helping that institution customize its technology-management degree for Microsoft employees. She says professors are excited about developing a program that has immediate real-world applications. "There's a predisposition by the professors to using real settings in the classroom," Ms. Koch says. "We have the satisfaction of seeing what we teach in the classroom actually applied in real life." The courses haven't changed much since Microsoft got involved, she says. The one class the Microsoft students have taken so far was a writing course. To make it company-specific, the course incorporated templates and systems that Microsoft uses. Ms. Reimer says future projects won't be limited to large companies like IBM and Microsoft. Cenquest is now working with groups of smaller companies to see if an online degree program can be customized to meet their needs. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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