Going for Profit and Scholarship on the Web

A woman who made the NFL hot online turns her attention to higher education

By SCOTT CARLSON

New York

Ann G. Kirschner seems to have a knack for clairvoyance. She had the good sense to join the sprouting cable-television industry after leaving academe in 1980, when job prospects for scholars of Victorian literature were dismal. Six years later, she and three colleagues...