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Two Surprises About Harcourt Higher Education

After looking into the whole HHE enterprise, much to my surprise I discovered that my early suspicions, and much of the early criticism, were unfounded. The HHE's programs allowed for a good deal of interaction, and, while there still was an emphasis on transferable content, interviews with Babcock and Antonucci especially struck me:

Don [Babcock]:
The technology supports several different kinds of interaction between the student and the instructor, and also among the students themselves. And we intend to be sure that all of the courses exploit the capability of communication. Students are able to contact the instructors directly through email or through chat rooms, the instructors initiate contact with the student at frequent points, and during each week and each course. And we also expect that the students will learn collaborative skills as part of every course. So that as they leave a course, they'll be able to apply what they know through teamwork, as well as apply it through the content mastered. We use the great communicative capabilities of the Web to build the sort of interaction among students and faculty, and among students themselves, that will provide them with a very strong learning community.

Bob [Antonucci]:
I think as you look at the environment now, everybody wants to get into distance learning, whether you're a traditional university, traditional college, or a non-profit organization, or a for-profit company like Harcourt-there will be a sifting out of those who will succeed. It takes a lot in terms of resources, it takes a lot in terms of content, it takes a lot in terms of investment, and if you want to do it right, it is going to be costly. We feel that the resources that Harcourt has to offer, with all of our sister companies, we're in a unique position. We have the content, we have the assessment company, we have editors, we have publishers, and we have a distance learning component now-as a correspondence model. We're parlaying all of those resources into this. We want to be one known for quality. There are a lot of people in distance learning who don't believe in quality-they're in it for the wrong reason. We're in it for the right reason and the right reason is to provide students with a learning opportunity that for them will provide them with the resources necessary to achieve in life-to fulfill their dream, to fulfill their desire, and to really be the student that he or she wants to be.

http://www.harcourthighered.com/hhe/who/viewpoint.html (as accessed March 15, 2001)

But my enthusiasm and hopes for a truly interactive distance ed program which utilized the potential of the 'net as a many-to-many medium were dashed later in the summer. Much of this talk presented at C&W 2001 at Ball State had been rendered moot: Harcourt was purchased by a large publishing conglomerate, whose first business decision was, apparently, to shut down HHE. In a letter to the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education informing them of the development, Antonucci noted that the decision was in line with the new parent company's "strategic business plan." So what do we learn from this? What's the future to hold?