Army gets advice about online university effort

Waging war may seem like a walk in the park compared to what Army brass is about to undertake with an ambitious online university.

Top Army officials Wednesday met with more than 1,000 academics, e-learning gurus and consultants to discuss the pending launch of Army University Access Online, an Internet-based service that will allow soldiers to complete undergraduate and graduate studies from a variety of colleges and universities. The Army has committed $600 million over the next six years to the project.

A key goal of the effort is to help recruit and retain soldiers. Currently, it takes an average of 11 years for a soldier to complete a two-year associate degree and 14 years to complete a bachelors degree. Army Secretary Louis Caldera said that is far too long and often serves as a hindrance to keeping soldiers.

"Our biggest competition is higher education, not the hot economy," Caldera said, noting that 80 percent of high school graduates are college-bound.

While hailing the initiative, online education experts were quick to point out some of the potential land mines facing the Army.

"Getting 30, 40, 60 or whatever number of institutions who have not worked together is going to be tough," said Richard Skinner, president and CEO of Georgia Globe, an online learning initiative at the University of Georgia. Georgia Globe is part of Electronic Campus, an e-learning service of nearly 300 southern universities that offers more than 3,800 courses.

Skinner said it was difficult to get all of the universities participating in Electronic Campus to agree on such ideas as tuition reciprocity. Also, it was a challenge getting the universities to adopt a "free trading zone" for course credit. This concept allows, for example, an Auburn University student to take and get credit for an online class from Gulf Coast Community College.

That is exactly the kind of environment Caldera wants to create. And he wants to do it at "low cost or no cost" to soldiers.

"If there are cost savings because universities get access to potentially 1 million users, that should drive our costs down," he said.

Currently, the Army pays 75 percent of soldiers' tuition costs. Soldiers pays the remaining 25 percent, plus books and other expenses. Often non-tuition expenses prove to be a financial barrier for soldiers, Caldera said. He doesn't want the online university to add to those expenses. In fact, Caldera's plan is to offer every soldier who wants to participate a laptop and printer free of charge.

Another potential obstacle, according to Adrianne Scully of Hungry Minds, an online learning Web site, is creating a consolidated billing system. For a variety of reasons, universities often say they have to handle billing individually rather through a consolidator or intermediary, Scully said. Therefore, students accessing courses through Hungry Minds must deal directly with each university's finance office. She suggested, however, that with its muscle the Army may be able to convince universities to let its contractor handle billing for soldiers.

The Army plans to issue a draft request for proposals for its online education program later this month. The goal is to solicit input from e-learning experts on how to best develop the system. A final RFP seeking a contractor to coordinate the project is expected to go out in September. The Army hopes to pilot-test the project at a couple of bases early next year.