Some would say there is no future for the traditional residential university as we know it. Endangered are the days, they say, when the typical student is one who enters college after high school, lives in a dorm, attends classes in campus lecture halls, and graduates from that same institution. In fact, this type of student already makes up a dwindling percentage of enrollments in US institutions of higher education. Even if you do not share this vision of the future, it's hard to ignore the growing chorus foretelling a future much different from our past, especially when such venerable institutions as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) lend their voices. In a recent report , an NAS committee predicted a "revolution" in higher education in which technology would dramatically change the structure of higher education into, as the Chronicle of Higher Education characterized it, "an academe dominated by freelance instructors selling their services to many institutions, which in turn compete for students who buy courses a la carte from many different colleges."

Harry Matthews Faculty Director, UC Davis Mediaworks mediaworks.ucdavis.edu/

I would argue, however, that there will always be a subset of students who desire a residential experience like that currently offered by the University of California campuses. Also, UC might be well insulated from these dramatic changes - if they are to occur - because of the population pressure known at Tidal Wave II. However, when Tidal Wave II subsides, the rapid growth of the University of Phoenix and other distance education ventures that offer convenience and flexibility to students may pose a threat, especially if higher education costs continue to rise much faster than inflation. I believe UC will rise to this challenge and will continue to be an outstanding educational resource for California and beyond. The question then is: "What, if anything, should UC do differently to maintain excellence in education through the first half of the century?"

A fundamental consideration is to understand what it is that students and instructors value about a UC education and what will be valued in the future. This is not a trivial question. One of the clearest results of the UC Davis Mellon project, which evaluated hybrid courses [See feature article: The Hybrid Strategy: Blending Face-to-Face with Virtual Instruction to Improve Large Lecture Courses ], is that undergraduate students expect a "college experience." Those of us who currently teach undergraduates know they are familiar with, and expect, ready access to information, which they want in a variety of multimedia formats. That does not mean they want an education that is primarily computer-based. According to the focus groups we conducted for the Mellon project, students expect face-to-face interaction with faculty, even if only from the back of a 400-seat lecture hall. What are students really looking for? Maybe role models, inspiration or motivation, guidance or mentoring, or insight into a difficult topic or process.

A challenge facing UC campuses, and other institutions of higher education, is to provide meaningful faculty-student interactions in the lecture environment amid larger enrollments. The classic response is: "Keep the class size down." The classic result is rapidly increasing costs, which is especially problematic in these times of diminishing financial resources. The solution then is to develop an infrastructure that provides the kind of college experience students crave while mitigating the enrollment and financial demands. This is, in fact, where hybrid courses have some potential for success. Building a rich college experience based on hybrid instruction means giving students timely individual attention in well designed and delivered learning opportunities that combine the best uses of technology with the best uses of face-to-face time.

Courses redesigned as hybrids can lead to improved education as well as lower cost increases, according to Carol Twigg of the Pew Program in Course Redesign . And we have found at UC Davis that, as student enrollment grows, costs for hybrid courses grow more slowly than costs for traditional lecture courses (see figure ).

Realistically, some shifts in academic culture would need to occur for the hybrid model to meet its potential. Courses that are well suited to hybrid instruction should be redesigned to be flexible, so that a number of faculty and teaching assistants could teach them with consistent quality. And students would need to feel that the technology intervention that is substituting for a previously face-to-face interaction is beneficial.

Redesigning courses into the hybrid model means a focus on student learning and the "college experience," not on traditional measures of seat-time or contact hours. This new perspective, although it may cause some growing pains, is a prerequisite for UC to maintain quality in the increasingly competitive field of undergraduate education.

Figure. Costs for students in a particular course using a 430-seat lecture hall (traditional) or online content delivery (online). Costs include faculty time, teaching assistants, staff to prepare online materials, physical space, and server facilities. Data from the UC Davis Mellon Project http://moby.ucdavis.edu/Mellon ).