Massachusetts could be the first state in the nation to have all of its public college students pack a laptop. Under an ambitious three-year information technology plan for public higher education, students and faculty would get computers, institutions would get wireless networks and electronic classrooms, and everyone would get a systemwide electronic library. Funding for the plan, which the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education approved unanimously in mid-October, has not been worked out but is estimated to cost $120 million. The plan has its good and bad points, one AFT local has found. "This has become part of our struggle with the president's office over distance learning," says Dan Georgianna, president of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth Federation of Teachers. "One of [the administration's] goals is to substitute campus-taught courses with online courses from other campuses."

"Many schools seem blissfully unaware of the risk associated with moving online. Online education could be the latest in a string of overhyped Internet concepts in which an excess of giddy supply overestimates the demand. The venture capitalists driving the Internet boom are generally thrilled if one in five investments hits big. What happens to the four in five schools that don't pay off receives considerably less attention. The dirty little secret about online education, said one dean, is that no one is making money.

..."'The Internet is all about disproportionate gain to leaders,' says Michael Moe, director of research at Merrill Lynch. 'Eventually it is going to turn the higher-education market on its head. The 100 or so leading universities will do great; the 3,400 others are going to have to figure out a way to make themselves relevant to the economy.'"--From Joshua Green, "The Online Education Bubble," The American Prospect vol. 11, no. 22, Oct. 23, 2000 (www.prospect.org/archives/V11-22/green-j.html).

From the creator of the award-winning game "Capitalism," a simulation of corporate America, comes "Virtual U," a software simulation of a university system. The game lets you make decisions in every area of campus life, under the communicative aegis of a board of trustees. The software is designed to model the behaviors of an academic community in five areas--budget, faculty, facilities, admissions standards (and university prestige and enrollment) and performance indicators.

The simulation engine is built by Trevor Chan of Enlight Software; the content comes from William Massy, a former professor, university administrator and higher education policy analyst. The work was underwritten by a partnership made up of Massy's firm, the Jackson Hole Higher Education Group and Enlight, as well as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Forum for the Future of Higher Education and the Institute for Research on Higher Education. It retails for $130, but you can download a playable demo at www.virtual-u.org.