The role of online delivery in higher education has sparked contentious debate among academics in recent years. Many public universities are flailing under state budget cuts — state funding accounted for a mere 9.5 percent of the University’s academic operating budget this past academic year, down from 10.5 percent the year before. And with students facing swollen tuition rates and record-high unemployment numbers for recent college graduates, proponents of online learning point to higher education as a system seemingly in danger of collapse. At an institution that reveres tradition, Dragas and Kington wanted change — and more than just “incremental” change, as Dragas said in her June 10 remarks to vice presidents and deans, hours after announcing that University President Teresa A. Sullivan would step down Aug. 15. “Higher education is on the brink of a transformation now that online delivery has been legitimized by some of the elite institutions,” Dragas said in her remarks that day. “We do not believe we can even maintain our current standard under a model of incremental, marginal change. The world is simply moving too fast.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/168538/sullivan-resignation-spotlights-debate-about-online-education
