By now, the University of Illinois Global Campus–an exclusively online branch of the Illinois system designed to offer
high-demand degree programs to non-residential students–was supposed
to be well on its to way to enrolling 9,000 students by 2012, and
70,000 by 2018. It was going to be a giant step into the 21st Century;
proof that a traditional public university can use Web-only courses to
educate non-traditional students on a large scale. It was also going to
be a cash cow.
Instead, it’s kaput. The university system's board
voted in May to phase out the embattled project by New Year’s, rolling
its remaining 500-odd students into existing programs in the system
that offer online courses.
Global Campus was conceived as a separately accredited entity that
would eventually enroll as many students as the other University of
Illinois campuses combined. It was meant to be a win-win: the
university dramatically expands access to its vast resources and
well-regarded degrees, while generating tons of revenue à la University
of Phoenix Online.
The initial vision
for Global Campus was akin to that of the most successful of private
for-profit institutions: The project would appropriate syllabuses and
course materials from its professors, reorganize them into its course
management system, then hire outside instructors totally off the tenure
track to teach. But that plan was rejected by the faculty senate at
each of the three campuses. The professors insisted on a not-for-profit
model that would not seek independent accreditation and would offer
courses through existing programs on the university campuses; they also
insisted on supervising their courses.
With few courses being developed by faculty, Global Campus was unable
to grow its enrollment at the ambitious pace it had set for itself. At
the time the trustees nixed it, the project had half the programs it
had hoped to have after two years.
… [O]ne of Illinois’s biggest missteps was to spend large sums right away
building an independent administrative structure from scratch, before
the academic programs were in place. That huge upfront investment
increased the pressure to show speedy returns, he said, thereby
creating a need for speedy program development, which was contingent
upon the for-profit model of buying syllabuses and hiring cheap
instructors. When the faculty used its clout to burden Global Campus
with the anchor of curricular oversight, speedy returns went out the
window.
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