Wednesday, November 24, 1999

A Professor's Lectures for an On-Line Law School Become an Issue at Harvard By DAN CARNEVALE Harvard University's law school is giving an impromptu lesson on the ownership of course content as administrators and a prominent professor disagree over whether faculty members can supply course CYBERCULTURE "This is going to be an enormous case," one observer says. "This is the equivalent of the free-agency decision in baseball." materials to on-line education providers. The dispute arose because the professor, Arthur R. Miller, provided a series of videotaped lectures to Concord University School of Law, which allows students to earn law degrees on line and which is owned by the Kaplan Educational Centers, a subsidiary of The Washington Post. Mr. Miller was named last winter to the year-old school's board of faculty advisers. (See a story from The Chronicle, February 26.) The dispute was first reported in The Wall Street Journal. Harvard policy forbids a professor to teach at another university during the academic year without permission from his or her dean. But Mr. Miller said in an interview Tuesday that he wasn't teaching anything. He does not interact with Concord students in person or on line -- not even via a friendly e-mail message. They simply watch his videotaped lectures on line, and Concord arranges a course around that, he said. Providing the lectures to Concord, Mr. Miller said, was no different from giving a lecture on television or in public. "You name the medium, and I've conducted lectures through them," he said. But Robert C. Clark, dean of the law school at Harvard, said Tuesday that this situation was different because Mr. Miller was providing material to a competing law school. No matter what medium was used, Mr. Clark said, the problem was that Mr. Miller had provided course content to another academic institution without permission. Mr. Miller and the law school are discussing the situation, said Michael Chmura, a spokesman for the law school. "Discussions are ongoing," he said. "People are talking. That's about as much as I can say." Many universities are wrangling over whether professors can make their course material available elsewhere, and Mr. Clark said he expected that other institutions would be eager to see how Harvard and Mr. Miller resolved their differences. "Distance education blurs the line and medium between time and place," he said. "Harvard, as a university, is going to clarify these long-standing rules." Mr. Miller said he wouldn't provide any more lectures to Concord for the time being. But he didn't rule out doing so in the future. Concord officials could not be reached for comment. Others in the profession are watching the matter with great interest. "This is going to be an enormous case," said Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College of Columbia University. "This is the equivalent of the free-agency decision in baseball." In the same way that famous baseball players can play for the highest bidders, Mr. Levine foresees a day when popular professors can sell their courses as they see fit. Harvard University is going to have to rein Mr. Miller in if it wants to remain competitive, Mr. Levine said. David Brady, an associate dean of the Stanford University Business School, likened the situation to colleges' and universities' having missed the opportunity to control textbook production. They aren't going to let the same thing happen with on-line course material, he said. "In terms of distance education, universities are trying to capture some of the royalties," Mr. Brady said. Background stories from The Chronicle: Justice Ginsburg Raises Questions About Internet-Only Law School (9/13/99) A Company Pays Top Universities to Use Their Names and Their Professors (6/18/99) Harvard Law Professor Will Advise For-Profit, On-Line Law Program (2/19/99) Test-Preparation Company Opens First On-Line Law-Degree Program (9/16/98) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article