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Christian colleges may lose students and face a fight for survival if they do not embrace the technological challenges of the twenty-first century, leaders from Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) institutions predict.

"If Christian students can pick up a quarter of their courses from the Internet, then Christian colleges are going to lose students," says Mike Zastrocky, a member of the Council on Technology committee of the CCCU, an association of 91 schools.

At an October conference at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, on the future of Christian higher education, CCCU vice president Karen Longman stressed the importance of Christian schools "tapping the best of technology for the kingdom" by using distance learning. "If we don't get moving, then someone else will." Currently, 40 percent of CCCU schools have plans to produce distance-learning courses for students in the current academic year.

READY-MADE MARKET: The demand for distance-education courses on the Internet can be huge. Zastrocky notes that a consortium of community colleges in Phoenix offered 25 courses over the Internet for the first time this fall, and beginning enrollment totaled 2,500.

The number of distance-education courses at the undergraduate level is increasing rapidly. A survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics found that by next fall, 90 percent of all educational institutions with enrollments of 10,000 or more students expect to be offering distance-education courses. More than 750,000 students were enrolled in distance-education courses in 1994-95. The majority of these students—55 percent—attended public community colleges. There are currently almost 10,000 college-level courses offered on the Internet.

LEFT BEHIND?: CCCU member colleges are not ready to meet the demand for distance education, as only 22 percent of these schools have a distance-education program according to a survey by consultant Galen Hiestand for CCCU.

"Web-based courses are going to be mainstream in the future," Zastrocky says. "Many Christian colleges do not understand that their ability to survive in the twenty-first century depends on the new technologies."

Christian colleges often lack the technological support and skills necessary to put Internet-based courses together. Zastrocky believes there is such a demand for experts in the field of Internet education that Christian colleges may not be able to afford to hire them.

Bob Hodge, chair of the CCCU technology council, told ct that many colleges use commercial companies that charge $400-$600 an hour to provide technological support, compared to $40-$60 an hour when technological support is provided by college staff. "People need to be trained to go far beyond spreadsheets," Hodge says.

Faculty also need to be made aware of what new technologies can offer. "Discussions with college presidents, technologists, and librarians identified the greatest need Christian colleges have is faculty development strategies to familiarize faculty with what the new technologies offer for research and scholarship," Hodge says.

EXPENSIVE START-UP COSTS: Most distance education requires heavy capital investment in the initial phases.

Experts at a September CCCU distance-learning consultation in Chicago reported that three media are often involved in a distance-learning course. The use of interactive television via satellite transmission allows a traditional classroom setting to be maintained. The methods of electronic mail and the World Wide Web for instruction and interaction provide for low-cost exchange of text. Sometimes all three media are used in conjunction with a single course.

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November 17 1997, Vol. 41, No. 13