Revolutionary ideas rarely come unopposed. That’s why it was no surprise that almost immediately after Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley suggested establishing an online degree program for the University of California the suggestion came under fire. Professors and graduate student unions claimed that the courses would lack the quality of other UC courses and thus cheapen the UC degree. Activists see it as another step towards the ‘privatization’ of the UC system.

First, it is important to recognize exactly what is being proposed. First of all, the online UC will essentially function as a separate, virtual campus. Any degrees earned will not be from a specific campus. For example, I could not move back to Sacramento and earn my UC Berkeley political science degree from my couch. Furthermore, contrary to what some seem to think, the classes will still be taught by full rank professors and supplemented with GSI contact, exactly as they are now.

So let’s look of the claim by the faculty and graduate student unions, that the quality of a UC degree will be cheapened by the online campus. Upon examination, this argument is ludicrous and those who are promoting it probably shouldn’t be teaching at any UC, online or otherwise, if they actually believe it. The University of California currently has ten campuses and each issues its own degrees. A degree from UC Berkeley is different from a degree from UC Riverside and any employer or graduate school knows it. The online campus presumably would also have its own degrees. The quality of a UC Berkeley or UCLA degree won’t be hampered by the opening of an online university any more than it was diminished by the opening of UC Merced.

The real reason that faculty and graduate students oppose the online university is that they fear it would make them less needed. This may be true – it would seem likely that an online university would need less instructors since a lecture could be viewed by an infinite number of students (though Edley disagrees with this, nothing that instructors would still be needed for grading and answering student questions). While instructors losing jobs certainly is not a good thing, it is important to note that the argument is based on self interest, not concern for students or the institution as a whole.

The other group that has been screaming and howling about the “cyber UC” has been the left wing activist contingent. They claim that it is a furthering of the “privatization” of the UC, the label attached to just about anything they disagree with. The logic behind this claim is a mystery. I suppose the argument might be that they believe the university should demand more money from the legislature instead of looking for other creative sources of revenue. This of course is absurd – even if the legislature was prepared to give more money to the UC system (earth to protesters, they aren’t – that’s supposedly why you are in the streets, remember?) that would be no excuse for the university to not look at other sources of revenue and for ways to cut back.

I am guessing the real motivation behind the activist wing is that they are concerned about the jobs that might be lostand are sticking up for their union buddies. Ultimately however, the university is not a jobs program. Like any other institution, it cannot give people jobs just for the sake of them having jobs. That’s the quickest path to bankruptcy (or actual instead of imagined privatization).

While there are still a lot of details left to be revealed, plans for an online UC should not be derailed by the concerns brought forward so far. Almost exclusively, they seem to show more of a concern for union jobs then the overall health of the institution.

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