By Nanette Asimov

When the University of California dangled a $30,000 incentive in front of thousands of professors in 2010, inviting them to create UC-worthy online courses, just 70 responded, and only a few classes materialized.

Faculty members at California State University were similarly skeptical and warned of “Walmartization” last year as trustees charged each campus $50,000 to help fund “CSU Online.”

It turns out that California professors’ wariness of online education is shared by faculty across the country, according to a survey released Thursday by Inside Higher Ed, an online publication widely read by academics.

Of 4,564 faculty members surveyed across all types of colleges and universities, 66 percent expressed concern about the quality of online education, saying they believe what students learn is “inferior or somewhat inferior” to what they learn in a classroom. Just 6 percent thought online courses were better.

Another 58 percent felt “more fear than excitement” about cyber-learning.

Yet despite the professors’ negative assessments, 60 percent said they had recommended an online course to a student — a reality that lends the new study its name: “Conflicted.”

“The challenge is: ‘How do we meet the obvious demand for online education but do it in a way that addresses faculty concerns about quality?’ ” said Jeff Seaman, a researcher with Babson Survey Research Group that conducted the survey for Inside Higher Ed.

Online education is exploding in popularity. About two-thirds of schools nationwide now offer courses, including virtually all community colleges, said Seaman, whose earlier study found that 6.1 million students across the country had taken at least one online course in 2010, up from 1.6 million students in 2002.

Skeptical faculty members say they are not blind to the pervasiveness of online instruction or its inevitable rise. But they caution that courses taken by computer are best suited to certain subjects — lower-level math, say — that require the absorption of facts rather than intense interaction among people sharing ideas.

“I’m not against online learning. I’m against the idea that you can substitute what happens in a high-quality liberal arts classroom with an online program,” said Wendy Brown, a UC Berkeley political science professor.

Brown drew praise from colleagues last year for her strong condemnation of UC’s willingness to fund online courses at a time of steep budget cuts to the university.

UC had planned to raise $6 million in private funds to pay for its pilot program, but attracted only $748,000. Rather than abandon the effort, the UC regents gave it a $6.9 million interest-free line of credit.

In a memo to the Berkeley Faculty Association she co-chairs, Brown called the plan a “scandal of obscene proportions.”

UC’s plan was to repay the money by selling seats in online classes to about 5,000 non-UC students. Vice Provost Dan Greenstein even took a recruitment trip to China. But Greenstein recently resigned from UC, and little more has been heard of it.

CSU Online

CSU Online, meanwhile, is moving forward. Its new director, Ruth Black, is visiting all 23 campuses to talk up the program, spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp said, noting that some faculty members serve on the development committee. A pilot program is to begin next spring.

“We don’t want to be Blockbuster while Netflix is coming in,” he said.

The Inside Higher Ed survey was paid for by four publishing companies that sell online courses to colleges. The companies were allowed to look at the questions in advance and offer suggestions, but could not influence the study.

“Some suggestions were very good, and we ignored the others,” said Seaman, noting the data analysis was done independently.

— Reach Nanette Asimov at [email protected]

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