Goal: two-year college degree via TV

'Going the Distance' project planning expanded PBS telecourse feeds

Originally published in Current, July 12, 1993
By Steve Behrens

Along with a Ready to Learn Service for preschoolers and a Mathline service for math teachers and students, PBS is planning a satellite service that will give colleges all the telecourses they need to complete a two-year degree by television.

Six task forces of educators and PTV representatives are preparing recommendations, and PBS has assigned Maryland educator Jacques H. Dubois to draft a business plan by the end of September, according to Will Philipp, director of the PBS Adult Learning Service. The plan will most likely call for service to begin in fall 1994, he says.

Like the existing PBS Adult Learning Service, the expanded service is expected to support itself with fees based on licensing of telecourses.

At PBS, the project is called "Going the Distance.'' The task forces are part of a Going the Distance Advisory Group. The objective was detailed last year in a CPB/PBS handbook called Going the Distance. And PBS has begun awarding "Going the Distance'' certificates to colleges that offer complete degrees by telecourse. (Philipp says the satellite service might have been called Going the Distance, too, but the title turned out to have been taken by an adult movie.)

Closing the gaps

PBS executives have been saying for a year or more that the inventory of telecourses was approaching the selection needed for a two-year degree.

That's normally about 20 three-credit courses, and there are already many more telecourses in the can--the Going the Distance handbook lists 150 titles, and PBS Adult Learning Service (ALS) itself distributes 62.

Some needed courses are missing, however, and those seem to be in speech communication and science labs--which traditionally require students' on-the-scene involvement--and in English composition, according to Philipp.

With so many telecourses available, dozens of colleges already offer almost all of the telecourses needed for an associate's degree. Of the 600 institutions using ALS telecourses, about 97 colleges offer 12 or 15 a semester and could start talking up telecourses as an option for completing a degree, according to Philipp.

That option makes sense, says Dubois, in a nation where adults will make up a majority of college students by the year 2000, and where workers need retraining to find a place in the changing economy.

Dubois, PBS's point man on the project, is director of telecommunications and weekend programs at Prince George's Community College, Largo, Md.--a suburban college that has been offering a complete degree by telecourse for three years. A former language professor who has served on the ALS advisory board, Dubois is also past president of the regional 27-institution College of the Air Tele-Consortium that distributes telecourses through Maryland PTV.

As PBS's ambassador for the project, Dubois last month took his first trip to hand out Going the Distance certificates to three community colleges in Michigan--Grand Rapids, Mott and Wayne County. (PBS wants colleges to nominate themselves for the citation.)

Dubois is also chairing PBS's 21-member Going the Distance Advisory Group, which met face-to-face for the first time June 4-5 after a series of audioconferences. The group includes prominent college and university distance-learning specialists along with pubcasters Carol Bosley (WVIZ, Cleveland), Jack McBride (Nebraska ETV), Judy Stone (Alabama PTV), Irene Williams (WNET, New York), and Lin Foa, deputy director of the Annenberg/CPB Project.

Jinny Goldstein, PBS's v.p. for education projects, says she was "astounded'' that the group readily "seemed to come together on the major issues.'' She said the members: gave top priority to the goal of two-year degrees whose credits can be transferred to a four-year college, agreed that the degree should be available to students at worksites, libraries, military bases and prisons, as well as in homes, urged that college presidents be briefed about the plan so they will support it locally, and indicated they probably won't push for creation of a national consortium to actually award degrees. She noted that some individual colleges already offer degrees outside of their geographic areas and that those can serve any students who live far from a campus that offers telecourses.

This summer, the advisory group's task forces are considering such questions as which curricular gaps need to be filled, how to get the telecourses produced, how students will get course information and how public TV and colleges can deliver the telecourses to students.

The major options for delivery are the ones used at Dubois' college in Maryland, as at many other colleges: PTV broadcasts, dedicated cable channels and videocassette lending.

PBS also would consider the idea of a national cable channel if it were branded with a public TV identity, Philipp said. Like other national cable nets, it could accept locally inserted material, he added. The idea of deliberately moving toward a complete telecourse degree program has only recently begun to catch on. For two decades, telecourses were conceived and produced one by one, without national coordination or strategy, according to Dubois: "Nobody said, 'Let's take a curricular approach'.''

When philanthropist Walter Annenberg injected millions into telecourse development through the Annenberg/CPB Project in the early '80s, he envisioned a complete degree program like the BBC's Open University in Britain.

But while the project increased the visibility, production standards and inventory of high-quality telecourses, Dubois says, Annenberg/CPB couldn't overcome colleges' fear that a "national curriculum'' would supercede their locally determined courses of study.

In the meantime, the variety and usage of telecourses increased, and students came to expect a full selection of courses available in video form. And with many colleges nearly "going the distance'' today, Dubois contends, there's no need to set up a national institution to award degrees.