Soldiers Wired for School

ack Tilley is going back to school. He's not sure what he'll major in, but the Army sergeant major says getting a college degree is one of his top personal goals.

"I've been in the Army for 32 years, and this is something I have not been able to do," Tilley said at an August news conference.

What's making it possible for Tilley and thousands like him to earn their college degrees while continuing to serve in the military is the Army's new online university program.

Unveiled in early July, the $600 million Army University Access Online, also known by its World Wide Web address, www.eArmyU.com, is aimed at helping the Army win one of its most difficult battles-recruiting and retaining soldiers. It takes the average soldier 11 years to complete a two-year associate's degree and 14 years to complete a bachelor's degree. The hot economy doesn't help. College graduates are in high demand, and the Army doesn't offer stock options. As a result, the Army is facing a situation where nearly 80 percent of today's high school graduates opt to go directly to college. Thus the Army fell 6,300 recruits short of its goal last year, although it appears on track to meet the goal of 80,000 this year.

With those facts in mind, Army Secretary Louis Caldera acknowledged that the Army's old proposal to recruits that they sign up now and defer their education is outdated. "We don't want to send that message anymore," Caldera told Sen. Robert Kerry, D-Neb., and his Web-Based Education Commission at a July hearing. " 'You can learn while you serve,' is what we want to say." Caldera's goal is relatively simple: Provide every soldier who wants one with a laptop computer and printer, wire their barracks for Internet access and let them head off for a virtual education. The portal will offer bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. The Army is considering whether to offer skill certification programs to soldiers as well.

Getting the program off the ground, however, is a different story. The Army will face several challenges, not the least of which is luring a large number of universities to join the program, offer lower tuition rates and share credits. "Getting 30, 40, 60 or what ever number of institutions who have not worked together is going to be tough," says Richard Skinner, president and chief executive officer of Georgia Globe, an online learning initiative at the University of Georgia.

Skinner should know, his college is part of Electronic Campus, an e-learning service run by the Southern Regional Education Board. Nearly 300 southern universities participate, offering more than 3,800 courses. One of the board's biggest challenges was getting all the universities to adopt a "free trading zone" for course credit. Through the zone, the universities agreed to accept course credits from each other. This allows an Auburn student to take and get credit for an online class from Gulf Coast Community College, for example.

That is exactly the kind of environment Caldera wants to create. And he wants to do it at "low cost or no cost" to soldiers. "If there are cost savings because universities get access to potentially 1 million users, that should drive our costs down," he said at an August gathering of academics, e-learning experts and consultants wanting to learn more about the program. Army officials hope to name a contractor by December and pilot the project on a couple of bases by early next year. The goal is to make it accessible to every soldier by 2006.