Dive Summary:
- In a 16-14 vote, the governing arm of Duke University's undergraduate faculty, the Arts & Sciences Council, shot down a proposal that would have seen Duke join other top colleges in offering for-credit online courses through 2U.
- Duke signed a contract late last year to offer courses through 2U--which offers real-time, small-format online learning--and the first would have been offered in September if the deal hadn't been shot down.
- Many of the skeptical faculty members were upset that the administration entered a preliminary agreement without consulting them, and 75 professors came out against the partnership in a letter published in the student newspaper the day before the vote.
From the article:
... 2U's defeat at Duke marked the second time in a month that undergraduate faculty members at a top liberal-arts college had struck down a proposed deal with an online-teaching consortium. On April 16, professors at Amherst College rejected an invitation to join edX, a nonprofit provider of massive open online courses. ...