Report on UNext and Cardean University

Full title

Report on UNext and Cardean University

36 pages.

This forms Chapter 11 of The e-University Compendium.

Authors

Harvey Blustain, Phil Goldstein

Abstract

From the original Introduction, written in 2004:

Cardean University represents one vision of the role of the Internet in education. That vision is for-profit instruction exclusively via the Web, using high-quality content from prestigious universities, and delivered in an innovative manner. Since 1997, UNext and its subsidiary Cardean have presented the market with a dis-tinctive approach. Created de novo from a reported $180 million dollars (£120.4 mil-lion) of investor capital, UNext is completely Internet-based, with no brick-and-mortar classrooms and no tenured faculty. It is seeking to develop a high-profile brand as a high-quality provider of content from elite institutions. It differentiates itself through the superiority of its pedagogy, which relies on tasks and problem solving to convey key concepts. To support the pedagogy, UNext dropped initial plans to use existing Lotus technology, and instead made a reported $20 million (£13.4 million) investment to develop its own proprietary technology platform.

With its distinctive market position, UNext is included in the eclectic group of for-profit education providers, a category that has seen rapid growth over the past decade. A study by the Education Commission of the States released in July 2001 showed that the number of four-year, for-profit, degree-granting colleges climbed 266%, to 194, between 1989 and 1999. During the same period, the number of public-sector colleges grew 3% to 613 institutions, and the number of private-sector, not-for-profit colleges grew 4%, to 1,536 institutions.

The most prominent institutions in this category include Apollo’s University of Phoe-nix and DeVry University, both of which have outpaced the stock market through 2001. Cardean differs from these companies in that it has sprung full-blown into the online market, rather than evolving from a brick-and-mortar base. In this sense, Cardean also provides an interesting contrast to a companion exemplar in online edu-cation, the longstanding University of Maryland University College. But the for-profit category also includes Harcourt University, which recently had its doors closed by acquirer Thomson; Hungry Minds, which was acquired in mid-August by John Wiley & Sons not for its distance-learning business, but for its For Dummies series of self-help books; and Pensare, which declared bankruptcy in the spring of 2001 after highly touted deals with Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. This category therefore also contains a string of failed visions.

It is still too early to know how much staying power UNext and Cardean really have. To be sure, they have had some notable successes, such as gaining degree-granting authority from the State of Illinois, and making a few big deals with the likes of General Motors and Thomson Learning. UNext’s going-in assumption was that it would derive staying power from its branding through partnerships, pedagogical approach, technology and focus on the corporate training market. Only time will tell. Yet as in-dicated at the end of the case, very recent developments suggest that major changes are in the offing. But whatever its ultimate fate, UNext provides an interesting platform for understanding issues around for-profits, the North American market, and what it takes to build a credible, Internet-based university. To the extent that HEFCE’s investment possibilities include for-profit institutions, UNext and Cardean offer useful lessons.

Source

http://www.matic-media.co.uk/ukeu/EUNI-chap11-Cardean-2004.doc

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