Back in the early days of distance education (DE)--in the mid-1990s--some of its more radical proponents declared that new technologies would end higher education as we know it. Students would study at home, any time of the day or night. Faculty members no longer would teach. Instead, a much smaller number of mostly part-time faculty would serve as "facilitators," helping students access course content at their own pace, following their interests, rather than those of self-interested faculty members.

With DE, the argument went, colleges and universities would cease to exist. As a 1997 report by Coopers and Lybrand explained, individuals or corporations could purchase education "from knowledge companies that operate very much like HMOs." These educational management organizations (EMOs) "would contract with content providers (in this case faculty members) and distribute the education they provide." The main function of EMOs, in other words, would be to cut costs by reducing the number of faculty and restricting their decision-making power.

As we survey the landscape of higher ed today, we see that such vast changes have not occurred. But American higher education has indeed been transformed, and it is important for faculty members to understand what the changes mean for their terms and conditions of employment. That is why the AFT asked me to survey the state of DE today, in particular the many new for-profit DE providers. The result of that study is the report, A Virtual Revolution: Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education, published this summer and available online at www.aft.org/higher_ed/reports or from the AFT higher education department.

In the past few years, we have witnessed the extraordinary growth of DE, particularly Internet-based courses. According to a report by International Data Corporation (IDC), in 2002 approximately 85 percent of two- and four-year colleges will offer DE courses, up from 62 percent in 1998. IDC projects that for the same time period student enrollments will increase from just over 500,000 to well over 2 million students.

Yet brick-and-mortar institutions have not disappeared. In the course of my research, I found that most DE courses originate at existing higher education institutions and that faculty members themselves have embraced DE and are driving the transformation of higher ed. Most of these courses are developed and approved in much the same process as traditional classroom courses.

This is not to say that faculty at these institutions don’t confront challenges when choosing DE. In fact, the challenges posed by DE are considerable. Here is a partial list: first, the loss of faculty control over decision-making, especially when administrators make decisions based on technology usage or notions of market appeal rather than on sound educational goals; second, the question of class size in DE courses; and, third, the potential loss of control over course content or intellectual property rights when courses are put online.

The new corporate-university joint ventures and for-profit institutions also have transformed higher education, some in ways that should concern faculty members. At virtual institutions like the University of Phoenix Online (the fastest growing proprietary DE institution) or Jones International University (the first fully accredited virtual institution), faculty employment is characterized by greater managerial control over teaching and an almost total reliance on untenured, part-time faculty.

Teaching at Phoenix and Jones has also been "de-skilled" or broken down into a series of discrete processes. Different individuals, in other words, are responsible for course development, teaching and grading. This trend is a dangerous one for higher education because it leads to the loss of faculty having control over their work and their profession. It contradicts the first tenet of AFT’s Guidelines for Good Practice in Distance Education, which the union released last year. The curriculum at Phoenix and Jones International also is standardized and modularized, limiting academic freedom and faculty creativity--both hallmarks of effective and high-quality teaching.

What does the future hold for DE and the ongoing transformation of American higher education? For the immediate future at least, the decline in tech stocks has dampened the opportunity for lucrative initial public offerings by for-profit spinoffs. Columbia University administrators recently scaled back Fathom, their high-profile, for-profit joint venture; and Temple administrators pulled the plug on Virtual Temple, a rare public university for-profit spinoff, which never got past the planning stages. For the short term, analysts predict that the DE sector will experience consolidation of ownership, although most continue to predict a bright--and very lucrative--future for e-learning over the longer term.

As the use of DE continues to spread, a central challenge for faculty members--particularly at unionized campuses--is to maintain their role as stewards of both teaching and the curriculum. As experts in their academic fields, faculty members must speak out forcefully, at their own institutions and in public forums, to ensure that quality drives the use of distance education.