From the issue dated February 8, 2002
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Army's Huge Distance-Education Effort Wins Many Supporters in Its First YearSoldiers camp out to enroll, but military and academic cultures don't always meshBy MICHAEL ARNONE After 20 years in the United States Army, Sgt. Jeffery M. Freeland had been looking forward
More than 12,000 other soldiers have asked the same question. They are the initial participants in Army University Access Online, the first online-education program the Army has offered to enlisted soldiers. The program is better known by the name of its Internet portal, eArmyU, and it has just completed its first year of operation. The project, on which the Army expects to spend $453-million in the first five years, aims to keep enlisted soldiers in the Army by giving them an education online, essentially free. For colleges that participate or hope to participate, eArmyU could provide thousands of students in the years ahead. As students, soldiers have characteristics that bring joy to admissions deans: They are disciplined, mature, and racially diverse, and someone else is paying their tuition. In just over 12 months, eArmyU has gone from plans on paper to offering more than 90 degree programs from 23 colleges and universities to soldiers on three Army bases: Fort Benning, in Georgia; Fort Campbell, in Kentucky; and Fort Hood. The Army hired the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to act as the "integrator," or middle man, in its dealings with the colleges. The firm is working with 12 technology and distance-education companies to run the portal, which is expected to more than double the number of soldiers it handles in 2002 and serve 80,000 worldwide by 2005. The Army, colleges, and PricewaterhouseCoopers agree that eArmyU has met the goals they set for it, and they say they are thrilled that the program has come so far in only a year. "From the soldiers' perspective, it's been a real winner," says Louis Caldera, who was secretary of the Army when he announced the project, in August 2000. The program gives more soldiers more options to get the education they want, he says. According to the Army, more than 50 percent of soldiers in eArmyU are new to the Army education system and to postsecondary education. "None of us expected the initial, overwhelming response," says Suzzette S. Chapman, director of distance education and educational technology at Central Texas College, which has the most enrollments of any eArmyU partner institution. "We're trying to modify an Edsel to a Corvette going 90 miles per hour." But not all colleges providing degrees and courses to eArmyU are in the fast lane. So far, 85 percent of enrollments have occurred at only six institutions: Central Texas College, Troy State University, Thomas Edison State College, Saint Leo University, Rio Salado College, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in order of popularity. Most of the institutions either are close to the three bases or have long-standing links to the Army's education program, meaning that the Army education officers who advise soldiers are familiar with the institutions' track records and offerings. The program is experiencing other growing pains as well. The Army's call for the colleges to offer standardized tuition rates and difficulties over academic schedules remain thorny issues, as the colleges strive to balance their traditions with the Army's requests for convenience and conformity. Some colleges say those issues might determine their future participation in the program. A Fast Pace Mr. Caldera announced in 2000 that the Army would provide online education as an incentive to improve enlistment and retention. PricewaterhouseCoopers and its partners won the five-year contract for eArmyU in December 2000 and worked frenetically to get the Internet portal ready and to have colleges offering courses through it by January 2001. The eArmyU portal (http://www.earmyu.com) allows soldiers to apply, register, select courses, and take classes online. They can earn associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees, as well as professional certificates, from the 23 member colleges. Soldiers must have at least three years left of service to participate. If they don't have the time left on their current enlistment, like Sergeant Freeland, they can either re-enlist or extend their current enlistments. Once they do so, they can apply to eArmyU. Soldiers pick home institutions from which they get their degrees, but they can take up to 75 percent of their courses at other eArmyU colleges. Because the courses are online and aren't scheduled for specific times of day, soldiers can take classes anytime, anywhere. The courses are the same as those taken by other students, but the Army students get extra advice -- on the bases from Army education counselors, while online it's from civilian program mentors, who frequently have military backgrounds. The Army students can find and use texts through the GALILEO online library, at the University System of Georgia, and can get online tutoring through Smarthinking, a company hired by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Army pays for all tuition, course fees, and books. It also supplies a technology package that includes a laptop computer, a printer, Internet access, and an e-mail account. A soldier must complete 12 credit hours -- two to four courses -- in two years. Once that is done, the soldier can keep the computer and the printer. If the soldier fails a course or doesn't finish the requisite number of credits, he or she must partially reimburse the Army for program expenses. Tuition levels can influence soldiers' decisions about which colleges to go to, Sergeant Freeland says. Outside of eArmyU, the Army pays 75 percent of tuition up to $187.50 a credit hour as part of the regular educational benefits provided to enlisted personnel; eArmyU, by contrast, pays 100 percent of tuition. But the cost per credit hour still affects how many courses a soldier can ultimately take, because the Army limits soldiers to $3,500 in education costs annually. By later this year, though, the Defense Department intends to start paying for 100 percent of all tuition and raise the yearly cap to $4,500. Differences in prices might determine in the future which colleges get more enrollments, because the cost of a course is an important factor in whether PricewaterhouseCoopers will accept it as an eArmyU offering. State institutions can get more students because the state subsidies make it cheaper for soldiers to attend. Soldiers can not only take courses at their convenience, but also keep the credits they earn. The program's requirement that all partner colleges join Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges, a network of colleges that accept transfer credit from each other for military students, guarantees that soldiers can transfer course credits within the program, no matter which colleges they take courses from. Barbara J. Lombardo, eArmyU program manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers, says that eArmyU met its enrollment goals for 2001. An Army statement declares that 16 percent of participating soldiers either extended their enlistments or re-enlisted specifically so they could take part in eArmyU. But officials at some colleges say one year isn't enough time to see if the program is successful. "It's too early for them to know how many are re-enlisting and how many would have re-enlisted anyway," says Douglas Astolfi, vice president for academic affairs at Saint Leo. Camping Out to Enroll On the three bases where it has been offered, eArmyU has been very popular. In fact, when enrollment first opened, in January 2001, soldiers camped outside their bases' education offices before dawn to sign up. "This is the most student-centered tool in military distance education in 28 years," says Ms. Chapman, of Central Texas. PricewaterhouseCoopers has received almost uniformly rave reviews from the partner colleges for how it has handled the gargantuan operation. Many college officials were amazed that the company had the portal up and was offering courses only weeks after winning the contract. They also respect the consulting firm for meeting the Army's many demands and, at the same time, working with 23 colleges. PricewaterhouseCoopers's original proposal to the Army included 29 colleges, but only 16 had their certification from Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges by the time classes started, in January 2001. The remaining seven that did participate in the first year started offering courses as they got their certification or completed other requirements. "It couldn't have been done without an integrator," says Louis F. Martini, director of military education at Thomas Edison State College, in Trenton, N.J. "But because of the compressed time frame, there were a lot of questions left unanswered." Some of those questions came from a culture clash among the academic, military, and business participants. PricewaterhouseCoopers demanded quick turnaround and tight deadlines from the colleges, which typically work on a slower timetable and can't make large-scale changes immediately, says Bill Akins, coordinator of the online campus of Cochise College, in Sierra Vista, Ariz. PricewaterhouseCoopers and the colleges monitor soldiers' performance to make sure they stay on top of their studies, says Ronald J. Chenail, assistant to the president for academic affairs at Nova Southeastern University. The attention that soldiers receive from colleges might make the difference in future enrollments. Mr. Astolfi of Saint Leo credits his college's conscientious attitude toward students as one reason it is one of the six with the most enrollments even though it isn't near any of the participating bases. Sergeant Freeland, who made Saint Leo his home institution, agrees. Early on, the colleges weren't included as much as they wanted to be in the process of determining how the program operated, says William M. Getter, dean of the College of Career Education at Embry-Riddle's Extended Campus. In the past six months, though, PricewaterhouseCoopers has taken a number of steps to include academic members and respect academic norms. About five months ago, it started weekly conference calls with college officials, and the colleges have created their own e-mail list. Some of the differences between the Army and the colleges are more stubborn, though. The Army insists that institutions offer courses on a quarterly calendar. Most colleges in eArmyU, though, run three terms a year: spring, summer, and fall. The colleges, which offer courses from 8 to 16 weeks in length, have not had to switch to a quarterly system but have had to juggle their schedules and in some cases to work far in advance to make deadlines. PricewaterhouseCoopers is also working to improve colleges' access to information through the program's administrative portal. So far, college administrators cannot see all the information that soldiers see when they log on to take care of administrative chores. "They didn't realize it was such a critical piece," says Linda M. Steele, executive vice president for institutional initiatives at Franklin University. The eArmyU partners also had to overcome the colleges' many individual idiosyncrasies. For instance, they had to agree on a common terminology, such as defining what "registering" means, says Mr. Chenail, of Nova Southeastern. "It's frustrating for everyone to have to learn everyone else's language," he says. Bang for the Buck A cornerstone of eArmyU has been getting the most value for the money, says Michael Rogich, director of the Center for Online Learning at Saint Leo University. "It's an interesting balancing act on everyone's part," he says, noting that PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Army have decided that academic quality, not low cost, is the goal. "But on the other hand, they remind us that cost is an issue," he says. In December, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a new request for proposals aimed both at encouraging new institutions to join eArmyU and at inviting current partners to offer new courses. Submissions were due January 31, and the new member institutions and courses will join eArmyU offerings in the spring. New and current members will start operating this spring under new rules and guidelines that in part reflect lessons learned through trial and error during the operation's first year. In its request for proposals, PricewaterhouseCoopers strongly suggested that each college establish "active-duty military prices" -- for public institutions, preferably, the in-state tuition rate -- for undergraduate and graduate courses. The average tuition rate per semester hour -- weighted by enrollment among the colleges -- is $153 for undergraduate courses and $300 for graduate courses. Several private institutions la-ment that their higher tuition might dissuade some soldiers from applying to them. Nova Southeastern, among the most expensive, charges up to $503 a credit hour. And Susan C. Nesbitt, dean of graduate and professional studies at St. Joseph's College, in Standish, Me., says her college might get cut from the program because its tuition -- at $195 per undergraduate credit hour and $230 per graduate credit hour -- "is on the higher side." Spreading Sites Interest in eArmyU is spreading to other bases as soldiers at the pilot sites move on to new assignments. Soldiers in eArmyU have transferred -- without interrupting their studies -- to bases in the United States and 15 other countries, says Ms. Lombardo, of PricewaterhouseCoopers. But the program itself needs to grow if it is to achieve the goal of educating 80,000 people in three years, says Janet K. Poley, president and chief executive officer of the American Distance Education Consortium. She is also chairwoman of the pricing committee of the Council for Academic Management, an advisory body for eArmyU. "This needs to be a much broader array of institutions than we've seen to date," she says. Bringing in new colleges and bases will give more choices to soldiers and improve the quality of the degrees they earn, she says. To permit more colleges to participate, PricewaterhouseCoopers has changed its requirement that institutions offer complete degrees online. In its new request for proposals, the company asked colleges to provide at least 50 percent, not 100 percent, of courses for a degree program; other eArmyU members will supply the remaining courses. Called a "partial-degree program," the new standards will give institutions more flexibility in offering courses, and give soldiers more flexibility in taking them. The Army announced on January 25 that it would add two new bases -- Fort Carson, Colo., and Fort Lewis, Wash. -- to eArmyU starting February 1. The Army has said it intends to add a total of eight bases this year, including bases in South Korea and Germany. The program is scheduled to go Armywide in 2003. PricewaterhouseCoopers has moved its management of the bases completely online in preparation, Ms. Lombardo says. Some eArmyU participants with tiny enrollments, such as Excelsior College, anticipate attracting more soldiers when bases near them start offering eArmyU. Central Texas has enrolled 5,147 eArmyU students, which Ms. Chapman and other officials credit largely to its location across the street from Fort Hood. Excelsior, in Albany, N.Y., has signed up only 14. But it could see more enrollments if Fort Drum, in upstate New York, joins as planned this year. "At times, we sit back and ask, Is this worth it?" says Meredyth A. Leahy, dean of Excelsior's school of liberal arts. "It is," she continues, noting that eventually eArmyU could greatly increase the demand for her college's graduate courses. Sergeant Freeland also thinks eArmyU is worth it. He's not yet finished with his bachelor's degree in business administration, but he's already thinking about whether to seek a master's after that. 
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education