President John Hennessy introduced the topic of online education by outlining Stanford's three goals in that arena: Use online technology to improve the learning experience for Stanford students; use online technology to extend the university's "reach" so that Stanford students can take courses they need as part of their requirements while studying overseas; use online technology as a tool to help others in the education community within the United States and globally.
"Higher education faces a challenge, and depending on where you are in the world, the challenge is one of affordability or accessibility," Hennessy said. "In the U.S. the challenge is rapidly becoming affordability; in many parts of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, for example, it's accessibility. We see this as an avenue where we can make a contribution to the greater good."
Mitchell L. Stevens, associate professor of education, said that with the arrival of online education, the world is on the verge of an "epochal and pivotal moment" in the history of higher education on a scale of importance as deep as the expansion of higher education after World War II with the GI Bill.
"This is a very different kind of change," said Stevens. "It feels frightening to many of us because an epoch is ending – an epoch that many of us profited from and had a great deal of ideological investment in. But like that other change, I think it's also a moment that's ripe with possibilities and reasons to be optimistic in ways that we're just beginning to imagine."
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