报刊选读Campus on a keyboard
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《英语报刊选读》Unit 5 Education
Campus on
a keyboard
Online learning has been a
boon to millions. But is it a convenience - or a
threat to all
that's best about college?
By Nicholas Slabbert and Mirlea Saks
For Sr. Airman Aaron Fisher, every day he and
his fellow soldiers spent in post-Hussein
Iraq
required vigilance. But avoiding bullets and bombs
wasn't the only thing on Mr.
Fisher's mind.
Some days he was also cramming for a math test.
Fisher was released last month from the United
States Air Force after a tour of duty
working
on USAF satellite communications - his third
Middle East assignment in three years.
While
overseas, he continued uninterrupted with his
bachelor's degree studies via the
Internet at
Grantham University, an online college in Slidell,
La. The US government is
paying for his
tuition.
Military duties made attending
college impossible for Fisher until he chose an
online
program, he says. ability to take my
classes while on deployment, and have my
questions answered anywhere in the world, was
a dream come true,
Like Fisher, many
Americans, both students and employers, see online
learning as an
acceptable - and perhaps far
more convenient - alternative to traditional
schools.
But in the eyes of some, it's a
controversial development that promises to shake
up
the practice, regulation, and funding of
college education in the US.
Distance learning
represents extreme commercialization of higher
education,
says humanities scholar Morris
Berman, author of
development that threatens
historian David Noble, author of Diploma
Mills: The Automation of Higher
Education.
The debate will become more than
merely academic for US lawmakers as early as this
spring.
Up for review is the Higher
Education Act, which includes a 1992 law that
withholds
low-interest, deferred-payment
federal tuition loans from students at colleges
whose
on-campus enrollment is below 50
percent. Several bills before Congress propose
easing
the 1992 rule. The law was originally
aimed at preventing federal aid from being used by
But critics say it hurts students who want
to complete accredited online courses that
enjoy military and civilian recognition. US
Sen. Michael Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, says
course of study.
Some 3 million
students were enrolled in online courses in the US
in 2002, estimates
Frank Mayadas of New York's
Sloan Foundation, which studies education issues.
Accredited online colleges and universities
are the cutting edge of a new era in
American
education, for the 83 million adults aged 25 to 54
who have no
college degree,
college
that once operated five residential campuses,
adopted distance learning decades
ago when the
military asked it to provide correspondence
courses to troops overseas.
The school
introduced Web-based courses in the 1990s. Last
October, US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
wrote to thank Grantham for supporting US armed
forces
members and recognized its
But Mark
Smith, director of government relations for the
American Association of
University Professors,
is unconvinced.
good higher education
doesn't require only the transmission of facts,
but the
development of critical thinking
skills.
Distance learning can be useful in more
limited applications, Mr. Smith agrees.
not
against distance learning and online education in
and of themselves,
of our members use these as
supplementary tools to add to the educational
experience.
But we're concerned about the
quality of education that results when electronic
media
become the only ones used.
For some
critics of online learning, the Internet is a tool
that can legitimately be used
for many types
of vocational training - but not to replace the
college experience.
Professor Noble adamantly
opposes the adoption of large-scale online
education by
traditional campuses concerned
with education of a
But he does not similarly
oppose dedicated online institutions that provide
practical
job-skills training. On the
contrary, he says, these
He also makes a
distinction between publicly funded universities,
which he adamantly
believes should not be
allowed to adopt
owned institutions run as
businesses. It is up to the consumer, he says, to
judge the
quality of the courses these
provide.
Promoters of online study say the
quality of degrees provided by accredited Internet
institutions is borne out by graduates'
earning power.
Mr. Macon - who is studying for
a bachelor's degree on his own online - became a
successful entrepreneur before discovering
Internet education, but says he lost a business
opportunity when it was learned he had only a
high school diploma.
shared by millions of
Americans for whom a traditional college program
isn't feasible,
says.
USAF Master Sgt.
Ronald McNabb, a fellow student of Fisher's, is
one of those
Americans. Currently stationed in
Montgomery, Ala., he spends lunch breaks and free
hours studying online for a degree from Touro
College in Cypress, Calif.
On his discharge in
2005, Master Sargeant McNabb expects to have a
second degree,
qualifying him to be a
potential contractor to the Defense Department at
almost double his
current salary. His degree,
like Fisher's, will be paid for by Uncle Sam.
McNabb qualified last year as a systems
analyst with a bachelor's degree. He says,
asked myself, 'What future do I have?' So
I went back to school. With my Air Force duties,
I had doubts I could do it. But studying
online worked.
Online learning seems a
boon for people whose circumstances make it hard
to attend
classes.
Judy Stuart, a single
mother in Crosby, Texas, was holding down the
latest in a series
of jobs that included
driving a long-haul truck when she decided to go
to school online.
Today, she works for a
chemical company and is slated for a promotion
when she receives
her bachelor's degree next
year.
Joshua Masters, an on-campus graduate
student at the University of Massachusetts,
was diagnosed with leukemia some two years
ago.
studies on hold for a year during
treatment,
my first degree with an online
college I was able to continue studying without
losing any
time.
Fisher says he would
actually have preferred the face-to-face contact
of a traditional
campus, but given the
realities of a military lifestyle, that wouldn't
have been an option.
continuation of
online study makes sense,he says. For Fisher, the
bottom line is the
flexibility of Internet
study, the fact that the school's accreditation is
as good as that of any
on-campus college, and
that the military has recognized it for financing
purposes.
Ms. Stuart says her experience with
online learning was wonderful but also served to
challenge one of the myths about Internet
study: the notion that it doesn't require as much
commitment and discipline as conventional
classroom courses. If anything, Stuart believes
she worked harder than most traditional on-
site students.
She says she can provide
firsthand evidence that
easy is a
misconception.
(From
The Christian Science
Monitor
, Feb. 03, 2004)