Distance Learning And The 21st Century University: The Views of Accounting Chairpersons And COB Deans

Abstract

The number of colleges and universities offering electronic courses (E courses) is growing rapidly and some academic institutions offer all of the courses necessary to complete a university bachelors or masters degree via the Internet.  Some writers have predicted that the university, as we now know it, will cease to exist.  Distance learning, utilizing E courses, may or may not represent the future for universities, but there can be little doubt that E courses will have an impact on the traditional university.  University administrators will have a major influence on how E courses affect their institutions and their attitudes may provide a glimpse of the future for distance learning in traditional universities.  In this study E mail questionnaires, containing 17 statements relating to E courses, sent to 341 university accounting department chairpersons and 334 College of Business (COB) deans in the U. S.  In the view of the nearly 65% of the chairs and almost half of the deans E courses are simply correspondence courses presented with new technology.  Respondents tend to separate into two groups, those who think that “except for the delivery medium E courses are essentially correspondence courses” and those who do not agree with the statement.  Roughly two and one half times as many chairs agreed with the statement as those who disagreed (64.9 % to 25.3%) while the deans were about evenly split.  Those who agree with this statement are more negative on offering E courses in university programs or offering degrees through the completion of only E courses.  They are also more restrictive with E courses, favoring the proctoring of exams and requiring students to come to campus as part of the E course.  Those who viewed E courses as correspondence courses also tended to agree that “the student?to?student and the student?to?instructor interaction that are missing in E courses makes them less valuable to the student.”  Opinions of accounting department chairpersons are about evenly split on the subject of offering E courses in accounting programs but are more tolerant of offering them in non-accounting programs.  In fact, a majority of the chairpersons believed they should be offered in non-business programs.  COB deans, on the other hand, weigh in heavily in favor of offering E courses in accounting, business and non-business programs.  Both chairs and deans strongly rejected the concept of offering degrees, in any academic discipline, entirely over the Internet.