The information provided in this well-written, succinct, call-to-action report can be applied to every state of the Union. It’s based on more than three years of intense research conducted by the Policy Laboratory that ultimately resulted in seven in-depth publications on emerging issues that included a series of recommendations concerning a host of distance education policy issues.

The 12-page report underscores "an agenda we are putting in front of governors, legislators and others," says Chaloux, who is also director of SREB’s Electronic Campus, which is a clearinghouse/marketplace of distance education courses and programs that in five years has grown from 104 courses at 45 colleges and universities and no degree programs, to more than 8,000 courses and 250 degree programs at 300 colleges and universities in all 16 SREB-member states.

The agenda Chaloux refers to centers on three themes - extending access, improving quality and lowering costs to taxpayers and students - and it calls upon higher education and state government to work toward results in four key areas:

1. Extend citizen and student access to infrastructure, programs, services and training.

2. Take advantage of regional resources that can be shared.

3. Use state and institutional financing policies to more effectively support distance learning.

4. Provide more and better information for quality improvement and accountability.

"When all is said and done, this effort is about getting states and institutions to think differently and act differently to change policy," Chaloux says. "In many respects the work is really just beginning."

In the area of extending access, the report addresses such topics as expanding high speed Internet access; supporting increased faculty training; revising financial aid and tuition reimbursement policies; focusing distance education programs in areas of critical need, such as teaching, health care and adult literacy programs; expanding access to virtual libraries; and promoting distance education as a cost-effective way to facilitate lifelong learning.

In particular, financial aid was covered in a Policy Laboratory publication titled "Creating Financial Aid Programs that Work for Distance Learners," published in September 2002.

Chaloux explains that higher education and state and federal government need to amend financial aid policies to better support adult learners. He points to much of the well-known research that shows how non-traditional students (those 25 years of age or older) are not so non-traditional after all, with such adult learners constituting approximately 50 percent or more of higher education enrollments. Nonetheless, "the policy construct is still pretty much focused on traditional-aged students (recent high school graduates), learning in traditional ways on traditional campuses," he says. "I think we can all appreciate and respect that, and want to see more of that, but the reality is there is a different marketplace that we are trying to service." This marketplace is comprised of busy adults striving to find a balance between career advancement and family, personal and work responsibilities. These adult learners find distance education to be the "only" means for completing or furthering their education. "We need to get the policies in line with that," Chaloux claims. "The efforts dealing with the 12-hour rule and the 50-percent rule, for example, where there has been some push recently - we think there needs to be more push."

(Editor’s note: For more information about how changes in the 12-hour rule and the 50-percent rule can affect distance education, see Carnevale, D. (2002, September 6) A Hard-Fought Win for Distance Education May Lead to Few Real Changes. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, A43.)

Adding fuel to the fire of financial woes is the growing gap between tuition increases and available financial aid. "We are now seeing 20 to 25 percent increases in tuition at public institutions, and financial aid is not keeping up," Chaloux explains. "So I’m concerned about our ability to find the necessary resources to ensure that anyone who wants to get access to learning can, in fact, get access."

In the area of sharing resources, the report addresses such topics as adopting in-state tuition rates for all distance education programs, regardless of where a student resides; developing credit-transfer and articulation agreements that make it easy for students to attend multiple institutions at a distance; amending state policies for licensing and program approval; and developing joint distance education programs.

The Policy Laboratory’s publication titled "Distance Education and the Transfer of Academic Credit," published in June 2002, covered issues related to the notion of sharing resources between institutions.

Chaloux supports the creation of what the Policy Laboratory refers to as "degree-completer institutions, where students’ credentials from various education providers will be certified. Such a step can motivate students to complete degrees and can reduce time to degree."

Also geared for the adult learner enrolled in distance education courses and programs, the degree-completer-institution scenario "gets at issues relating to transfer and articulation and the recognition of credit that learners have accumulated from different institutions in all kinds of different formats," Chaloux says. "I don’t think we have done as good a job as we should have for such individuals. This notion of a degree-completer institution where each state could have a virtual university or traditional university that would be adult friendly is really something we think is important. It would be a huge plus not only for the citizens of each state, but for the institutions as well."

In the area of state and institutional financing policies, the report addresses such topics as creating state-funded, start-up loans for distance education programs; changing budget and financing approaches at the state and institutional levels to build technology infrastructure, including more desktop equipment, software and personal training; providing centralized funding and enacting cost-saving programs to enable economies of scale that increase technology among multiple institutions; and focusing technology investments to affect statewide goals.

Chaloux explains that the finance issue - addressed in a Policy Laboratory publication titled "Using Finance Policy to Reduce Barriers to Distance Learning," published in August 2002 - is "maybe the most challenging of all areas we have dealt with. The concern is how do we adjust finance policy at the state level to adjust to how distance learning is evolving."

Moreover, when one considers all the state budget crises occurring across the nation, the finance issue becomes exacerbated. Chaloux says that reports from the National Association of State Budget Officers don’t see state budgets coming out of the doldrums in the short term. "The woes are significant," he adds. "Cutbacks have hit higher education, and a number of institutions are not going to be able to offer the courses or sections of courses that some students need to graduate."

This issue of not providing an adequate number of course offerings to potential graduates goes back to the suggestion of sharing resources through degree-completer institutions where multiple players can share their distance education offerings by piecing together credit transferability agreements. "Part of what we are saying is that elearning can help keep the doors open to higher education for many more students even during these times of crises," Chaloux says.

In the area of providing more and better information for quality improvement and accountability, the report recommends that higher education establish course rating and evaluations that students can easily access; develop common definitions about distance education and collect more data on distance education enrollments, degree completions and access; and develop costing methodology models that can assess distance education’s "value added" in comparison to traditional education.

Inside the Policy Laboratory report it is stated that an "SREB-State Data Exchange and the SREB Electronic Campus are working on an effort to establish a data-collection framework." Additionally, when evaluating effectiveness, "states and institutions should include measures such as dropout rates for courses and graduation rates for programs."

When taken as a whole, the Policy Laboratory’s recommendations look great on paper. All of the Policy Laboratory’s publications are sprinkled with many solid examples of institutions and organizations that are actually doing what the Policy Laboratory has recommended, albeit on a small scale. Chaloux and many others in the field ultimately ask if these recommendations can, in fact, become scalable realties? "This is the challenge in distance learning," Chaloux says. "But it is being done; the examples we give are real live activities. While all this is really great conceptually, it can happen."

Distance Learning Policy Laboratory: