UC online degree proposal rattles academics

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Taking online college courses is, to many, like eating at McDonald's: convenient, fast and filling. You may not get filet mignon, but afterward you're just as full.

Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become the nation's first top-tier research institution to offer a bachelor's degree over the Internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus program.

"We want to do a highly selective, fully online, credit-bearing program on a large scale - and that has not been done," said UC Berkeley law school Dean Christopher Edley, who is leading the effort.

But a number of skeptical faculty members and graduate student instructors fear that a cyber UC would deflate the university's five-star education into a fast-food equivalent, cheapening the brand. Similar complaints at the University of Illinois helped bring down that school's ambitious Global Campus program last fall after just two years.

UC officials say theirs will be different.

Some people have a vested interest in the status quo.