Friday, June 14, 2002

Tailor-Made Distance Programs Benefit Companies and Employees, Colleges Say By DAN CARNEVALE Some colleges and universities are reaching niche markets by creating tailor-made distance-education programs for employees in specific industries. Telecommunications companies and electric utilities, for instance, have asked colleges to create certificate and degree programs that teach job skills to current and future workers. The colleges have put the programs online so the employees can work while pursuing their education. Industry-specific programs for the telecommunications industry have been around for at least three years. The idea of serving a specific industry with distance education has grown more popular lately, however, with the electricity and health-care industries getting involved within the past year. A group called the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning has helped some of the companies form industry coalitions to decide what skills should be taught in the online programs. The council also works with the companies individually to manage their tuition-assistance programs, helping them set up company policies on who gets money and who doesn't, for example. Pamela Tate, president of the council, says that the companies benefit by getting a trained work force, but that the students get even more out of the program. "Workers say to me, If it hadn't been for this, I wouldn't have been able to pursue a college degree," she says. "The online-learning part of it opens up the opportunities for working adults." The council received about $1.2-million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation this year to run the programs, and Ms. Tate is seeking a similar amount for next year. About 600 students are enrolled in the telecommunications program, which is run out of Pace University in New York. Eight students graduated last year, and 32 finished this year. The number of graduates is expected to double next year. Pace University offers 16 online courses for the certificate and associate-degree programs. David Sachs, associate dean of the School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace, says the first questions was, "Is this training or is this education?" "The union and the companies were very clear that they wanted this to be more than just training," he says. So the courses cover basic math and theory as well as hands-on work. In one of the introductory courses, students assemble a telephone from scratch, with local proctors evaluating their work. The industry coalitions vary in size and structure. The new group for the energy industry, called the Energy Providers Coalition for Education, is expected to have 20 companies by September. The telecommunications group, called the National Coalition for Telecommunications Education and Learning, has four large companies: Frontier Communications, Qwest, SBC Communications, and Verizon. Institutions that have started online programs for industries include Bismarck State College, in North Dakota, serving the electric-power industry, and the New England College of Finance, in Boston, serving the banking industry. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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