The Rise of the Cyber-Campus

Christopher Edley, Dean of Boalt Hall and special advisor to President Yudof, has come up with a "fantasy." The fantasy comprises a cyber-campus delivering online instruction (and UC degrees)  "from Kentucky to Kuala Lampur." Dean Edley envisages thousand of students paying  fees on a par with those at residential campuses (as suggested, apparently, but the Governor himself), taking courses designed and "owned" by senate faculty, but delivered by "squadrons" of graduate students.

"Demand will be unlimited,"  the final goal — "global domination." The only bottleneck to the rise of the cyber-campus will be supply of graduate students (and of course, those pesky senate committees, "revel[ing]  in the comfort of denial and the conservatism of greatness").

Asked whether he was "trying to set up a separate online academic senate," Dean Edley replied: "I’m not going to go there."

[A reply by Berkeley's Faculty Association to Edley's presentation is here, and more discussion here.]