don’t offer their money’s worth—becausernpeople are going to have a choice.”rnWe’re not talking Tomorrowland, either.rnAsk Don Foshee. He’s the newlyrnelected president of the USDLA andrnalso the director of distance learning atrnV-Tel Corporation. (They make videoconferencingrnequipment for educators,rnand more of it than anyone else.) Fosheernsays, “It’s not a matter of whether it is goingrnto change—it is already happening.rnLook at Oregon, which logged over 8,000rnhours of live interactive courses last year,rnmost of these in higher ed and communityrncolleges. This is not exactly an experimentalrnlevel of activity.”rnFoshee, who is by no means an enemyrnof big business and big government,rnthinks technology is poised to alter thernlandscape of higher education. “I don’trnmean to imply that those turf and territoryrnissues don’t exist,” he says. “They’rernstill very strong. But I believe from arnpractical standpoint that most of theserntraditional thinkers are being forced intorna more free market.”rnWill degrees disappear? Dr. JamesrnWhitcarver, assistant director of thernComputerized Conferencing and CommunicationsrnCenter at the New JerseyrnInstitute of Technology, thinks so: “Withrnopportunities to be educated becomingrnmore ubiquitous, degrees will be lessrnmeaningful.” Others disagree. Theyrnsee universities slam-dunking new technologyrninto existing courses, and evenrnadding distance learning, without affectingrnaccreditation and degrees.rnCertainly, that is what universitiesrnwould prefer. But the new technology isrna large genie that is not easy to cramrninto a small bottle. It has an energy of itsrnown. Once it is physically possible torntake actual courses—complete withrnvideo-conferenced class discussions, interactivelyrngraded tests, and online accessrnto huge libraries (with more available asrnclose as your CD-ROM drive)—willrnJohn and Judy Student consent to takerntwo-thirds of their courses from the samerninstitution? Will they put up with thernmiserable fare of Women’s Studies,rnMarxist history, literary deconstruction,rnethnic diversity training, and all the restrnof the hodgepodge currently forced onrnthem at the point of a piece of parchment?rnWill not even those who attendrncampus-based institutions prefer to fill inrnwith the courses of their choice, at theirrnconvenience, rather than endure therncourses of the university’s choice, scheduledrnso ineptly that the average “fouryear”rndegree now takes six years? Won’trnbusinesses have a huge incentive to keeprntheir people at work while those samernpeople further their education—and willrnbusiness owners want to pay for “FeministrnRage 101”?rnAs Dr. George Connick, president ofrnthe University of Maine at Augusta,rnpoints out, “If you look at the 15 millionrncredit students in this country, the greatrnbulk of them do not fit the traditionalrnmodel. They are not young, they arernnot residential and they are not fulltime.”rnThis vast horde of hardworkingrneducational consumers will not be impressedrnwith the same intellectual pabulumrnthat wows the 18-year-oId set.rnWill adding high tech to higher educationrnmean the death of teaching?rnHardly. As Bill Carner, a distance learningrnexpert at the University of San Francisco,rnsays, “Learning (as in ‘distancernlearning’) and education are fundamentallyrnpersonal and social in nature, notrntechnical. People are far more importantrnthan bandwidth, gigabytes, and so on.”rnAdd a few of the right people, mix inrnsome gigabytes of audiovisual data andrnsome direct-dial access, and who knows?rnWe might be able to fire the hirelingsrnafter all.rnMary Pride is the author of Schoolproofrnand The Big Book of Home Learningrnseries, the coauthor of Prides’ Cuidernto Educational Software, and thernpubhsher of Practical Homeschoolingrnmagazine.rnThe Perils ofrnPolitically IncorrectrnResearchrnby John DombiowskirnIn March 1969, at 32 years of age, I wasrnby far the youngest of the ten chairmenrnof Foreign Area Studies at AmericanrnUniversity—and certainly the onernwith the least impressive credentials.rnAmong my colleagues were not onlyrnwell-known scholars, but former advisorsrnto Presidents, reputable writers, arnman who had launched a program thatrnresulted in the surrender of tens ofrnthousands of Chinese soldiers duringrnthe Korean War, and former membersrnof the militarv staffs of Eisenhower,rnMacArthur, and Patton. Integrity wasrnthe dominant trait among us. But withinrnabout a 20-month period (1968-1970)rnthere was a massive hemorrhage of talentrnfrom our 90-person organization, whichrnhad for years developed a reputation forrnproducing some of the most accuraternbooks in the English language aboutrnmany non-European countries.rnAs far as I could determine, the troublernbegan when the Saudi Arabianrngovernment found out that a Washington-rnfinanced Area Handbook had describedrnthe slave markets, which werernstill a regular occurrence in the smallrntowns of that kingdom. The Saudis had,rnI was told, threatened to break off diplomaticrnrelations, in spite of having beenrnshown the foreword to the handbook,rnwhich stated that the views expressedrnwere those of the authors and not of thernUnited States government. This incident,rnit was explained to me, triggeredrnthe “sensitivity review process” that wasrnresponsible for massive deletions inrnsubsequent handbooks.rnStill worse was the uproar in the StaternDepartment, in early 1968, when thernbureaucrats in Foggy Bottom got aroundrnto reading our Area Handbook for CommunistrnChina, of which I was one of sixrncoauthors. Our description of Mao’srnmethods and the condition of his peoplernwas contrary to the image our governmentrnwas then trying to convey, in orderrnto bring about the normalization inrndiplomatic relations that was our government’srnsecret goal. As a result. PresidentrnLyndon Johnson was prevailed uponrnto sign a directive stipulating thatrnfrom that time on all governmentfinancedrnforeign research would have tornbe forwarded to the relevant StaternDepartment desk officer in early draftrnform. This was not for the purposes ofrncensorship, we were assured. The directorrnof Foreign Area Studies was thrownrnout with only five days’ notice.rnEven more drastic was the fallout fromrnthe early 1960’s Cuba handbook. As arnresult of the October 1962 missile crisis,rnthere were insistent questions about howrnthe United States had come to the brinkrnof nuclear devastation. Unfortunatelyrnfor Clifford Barnett and his conscientiousrnteam of research writers, the Cubarnhandbook spelled out all too clearly thatrnas far back as 1947 Fidel Castro had beenrna participant in the Cayo Confites expeditionrnto overthrow the government ofrnthe Dominican Republic. This had beenrnunder the direction of Pepe Figueres’rn46/CHRONICLESrnrnrn