U. of Maryland's online enrollments in
Pacific growing, but not at stateside pace
By Fred Knapp, Stars and
Stripes
Jason Carter / Stars and Stripes
Petty Officer First Class Johnie Mannis works on a essay in a University of Maryland
English 101 class at Yokosuka. |
Online enrollment continues to grow at at the University of
Maryland’s Asian Division, but the numbers pale in comparison to the school’s
online enrollment in the United States.
Distance education via the Internet is expected to rise from 13
percent to about 20 percent of the total enrollment in the Pacific, said Joseph Arden,
director of the Asian Division.
“I do see online enrollments continuing to grow as a percentage
of our total enrollments,” Arden said, but “I don’t think they will ever
approach the 50-60 percent that they will in the States for UMUC.”
In the United States, the University of Maryland’s University
College, one of 11 universities within the University of Maryland system, is seeing a huge
increase in online enrollment.
“Within five years, Maryland’s largest university will be
an institution largely dedicated to teaching adults studying part time, many of them
online students who never step foot on campus,” according to a recent Washington Post
article.
The college has grown about 30 percent in the past decade, according
to the article, and is expected to grow a whopping 175 percent in the next 10 years.
By contrast, Arden said, “Our enrollments have been very stable
for the last six or seven years.”
In the 1995-96 school year, the Asian Division had 21,394 individuals
taking at least one course. Last year, that figure was 19,503, although Arden said it
would be about 500 higher if local online students who enrolled directly through the
Maryland office rather than through the Asian Division were counted.
Fred Knapp / S&S
Joseph Arden, director of the University of Maryland's Asian Division, outside his office
at Yokota Air Base. |
“I think we’ll continue to be steady, and the reason why is
our enrollments very much mirror what’s happening in the U.S. military
currently,” he said.
While that has meant declining enrollment in the school’s
European Division, paralleling the post-Cold War drawdown of U.S. troops, “Here in
Asia, the size of the U.S. military has been very stable,” Arden said.
To be sure, the University of Maryland no longer enjoys the monopoly
it once did. Other institutions, including Central Texas College, Troy State University in
Alabama and the University of Oklahoma, offer face-to-face courses to military members in
Asia.
But the University of Maryland still offers “the bulk of
traditional liberal arts courses,” said Robert Sazama, education services officer at
the Army Education Center on Camp Zama, Japan.
And the shift of students from those traditional courses to online
courses highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of both.
“Without the distance education classes, I wouldn’t have
been able to finish my bachelor’s degree while we were in Japan,” said Master
Sgt. Kelly Tyler, formerly with the public affairs office at Zama and now at Fort
Campbell, Ky.
Tyler, who just got her degree in psychology, cited the wider course
offerings and flexible scheduling as advantages of online courses.
As for disadvantages, she said, “At first I missed the casual
classroom banter, but you get a little bit of that in the online discussion rooms.”
However, she added, you sometimes “misread” what people say
and mean online.
“It’s hard to ‘hear’ sarcasm in an e-mail
message,” Tyler said.
Arden agrees that online courses offer a wider world of educational
opportunities, especially in places with not enough American military personnel to support
many course offerings.
But he says for social and psychological reasons, for Americans
overseas, “there’s something that encourages people to want to come together in
the evening.”
Traditional or online, University of Maryland, or some institution
with no physical presence on a base, makes no difference for tuition reimbursement, Sazama
said. The services will pay for 75 percent of the cost, up to $187.50 a semester hour, he
said.
Congress has authorized tuition reimbursement up to 100 percent,
added Ron Scronce, director of the Navy College Office at Atsugi Naval Air Facility. But
while the Army and Air Force have approved, the Navy and Marines still must decide if they
can afford the increase within their budgets before any DOD-wide increase takes effect, he
said.
Scronce also said Atsugi enrollment in online courses actually
started to drop in April, after growing almost every term for the last two years.
“We think the reason is that people are realizing that distance
learning classes are not for everybody,” he said. “They’re probably good
for the advanced student … but if it’s someone who’s just started taking
college courses, the dropout rate is fairly significant,” he said.
“The Fat Lady hasn’t sung” with a final verdict on
online courses, agreed Sazama. “Some things lend themselves very well to the distance
approach, and maybe some things don’t.”
Sazama predicts that traditional, upper-level classes, which have
smaller enrollments, will increasingly be displaced by online classes, particularly at
smaller installations.
While agreeing that online classes make sense in some situations,
Arden also says revenue generated by large, traditional classes can continue to
“carry” a broad range of offerings — including smaller, advanced classes
— in a traditional setting.
Those larger classes — including basic English, introductory
Japanese, writing courses and basic math — are supposed to be limited to 25 students,
but in some circumstances that number is exceeded, Arden said.
“I deeply believe in what we do,” said Arden,
“bringing into overseas U.S. military communities a slice of the best of the American
university world.”
“We bring that into the military community,” Arden said.
“It improves their life in the most fundamental of ways. It gives them more
opportunities.”
“In the broadest sense, that is what a university should
do,” Arden said.
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