Universitas 21, a cooperative of 16 international research universities incorporated last summer, is expanding to include multinational corporations in its network. From an organization formed to foster international student and faculty exchanges, it has moved rapidly to capture opportunities for commercial growth, both in adult education and in product development. Based at the University of Melbourne in Australia, U21 (as it is now dubbed) has members from Britain, Canada, China, New Zealand and Singapore. Its lone U.S. member is the University of Michigan. In December, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that five corporations are negotiating to join. Australian Rupert Murdoch, who owns News International, is one of those negotiating. Watch for U21, which is named after the century that has just begun, to move into Internet delivery of instruction.

Who owns Harvard professor's lectures?

In a tug of war that many star professors are watching with great interest, Harvard University is trying to rein in a noted law professor, Arthur R. Miller, who has provided his videotaped lectures to an online law school, Concord University School of Law. Concord is owned by Kaplan Educational Centers, a for-profit education company, and Miller happens to serve on its board of faculty advisors. While Harvard prohibits its faculty from teaching at other universities during the academic year, Miller has taken the position that he is not teaching because he has no interaction with the students who view his videotapes. The area of intellectual property rights is a growing concern for faculty who are being pressed to commit more of their knowledge to Web sites and other media.

Rehumanizing large lectures

Is your department looking at ways to put a charge in those large-enrollment introductory courses? A project out of the Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is studying ways to lower costs and improve learning with the infusion of technology in these courses. To see its report, "Improving Learning & Reducing Costs: Redesigning Large-Enrollment Courses," go to www.center.rpi.edu.