A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 7)

SM: Is online education a trend that is emerging across all states in the US?

HL: I would say that every state has tried or is trying to do this. One thing that makes our story interesting is that right now, every other state entity that has tried to do this has failed in one form or another. The University of Illinois is the prime example. They were a couple of years ahead of us in planning when they started, and they were very open with us as a public peer. That is one of the reasons we have been able to navigate our path.

SM: What did you learn from them? Where did they fail?

HL: I think there are a couple of reasons. When they first announced the concept, they tried to make it a for-profit concept. In doing that they raised the ire of the public education system. They switched to a non-profit model, but they already had their faculty senate and board against the wall. If you look at how governance works in a mature public research university, you will find that it moves about as fast as a state government does.

Our board decided what we were doing was so important, particularly because of budget problems, that they were willing to set it up as a separate entity. Our faculty senate on campus was not loving towards the idea, but they were willing to say “Let’s watch this” before making judgments.

I spend a lot of time establishing and maintaining our relationships with the main campus. I spend time with faculty and provosts, showing them how we manage quality, how our academic control system is managed, and how we operate. We have a balance in Colorado right now where our board is encouraging us to be a fully separate campus. By the end of March we were established as a separate university in Colorado legislation. We are operating under extended accreditation by our campuses. We must have campus standards in order to borrow their accreditation. We are applying for and are in the process for separate accreditation, which we believe we will have in the first half of 2011.

SM: At this point students get their degree from Colorado State University?

HL: They get a degree from the Colorado State University Board of Governors. That is how Colorado law does degrees.

SM: Is your campus non-profit or for-profit?

HL: Neither, actually. We are a state agency established in law.

SM: Revenues become state revenues?

HL: Yes. They become state revenues under the CSU system.

SM: If you scale this program, it is a very big commercial opportunity.

HL: Absolutely. If we are successful, we will produce excess revenue for the systems to reinvest. We will start to fund some of the money shortages CSU is experiencing now.

SM: Wonderful story. Is there anything else I should have asked and didn’t?

HL: The one thing I would like to make sure we emphasize is that I think this was a bold and inspired move by CSU’s board of governors. Nobody ever gives our board credit, but I think it is important to recognize that.

Another theme I am writing about now is that if America chooses to remain a leader in the global economy, that leadership will come from our knowledge base, not from our manufacturing skills. It is highly likely that the US needs to be graduating 40% of its high school students from college. That means we need to graduate twice as many people from college, across the country, as we do today.

Colorado is at the low end of that scale. We have a highly educated workforce because they move here, but only 22% of our high school students ever graduate from college. In college if we take that from 22% to 40%, where are we going to put those 400,000 students? The financial reality is we are not going to build traditional campuses to accommodate that many students. They are going to have to do it online.

SM: Very good. Thank you very much.

This segment is part 7 in the series : A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU
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