ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996            TAG: 9611180001
SECTION: EDITORIAL                PAGE: A-7  EDITION: METRO 


GOING GLOBAL AT TECH

YOU MAY have forgotten the story by now, what with the public-relations nightmare that the legal problems of some Virginia Tech football players have so generously presented the university. But a couple of weeks ago, it was reported that Tech is the lead partner in a proposed cybernetic "Global University" to be headquartered in Alexandria.

Don't overestimate the project's progress to date. At the moment, it is in at best an embryonic stage - indeed, is perhaps little more than a gleam in the eye of Tetra Partnerships, a Northern Virginia real-estate development firm. Nor is Tech's role more than a tiny part of the proposed, $3 billion Washington Global Center.

But don't underestimate the project's potential. In the long run, should it pan out, the Global University could dwarf anything that football can do for, or to, Tech.

On 300-plus acres of land previously owned by the Virginia Retirement System, and once proposed by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder as the site of a new stadium for the Washington Redskins, the developers envision a huge complex of housing units, an international finance center, a multimedia international cultural center - and the Tech-led Global University.

Tech would lead in the design, organization and coordination of a consortium of universities involved in the development and worldwide distribution of college courses via telecommunications and other media. Tech was approached by the project's developers, university officials say, because of its prominence in research into, and application of, computer technologies for education.

How to find the right mix of distance learning and emerging technologies with traditional educational methods is just one of the questions for which answers must be sought. But where the only alternative is nothing - in much of the underdeveloped world, for example - distance learning clearly is preferable. Tech researchers are trying, rightly, to focus not on technology for its own sake, but on how learning can be deepened.

Maybe this particular venture, like the Redskins stadium, will never get off the ground. Maybe it will end up, for Tech, another foray into Northern Virginia that delivers less than anticipated.

But maybe this project, which sounds as good for the commonwealth as for Tech, will prove a success. If not in Northern Virginia, then perhaps elsewhere.

In any event, lessons will be learned. It's interesting that investors, among others, are recognizing the role higher education can play in economic development. And it's not difficult to imagine a future in which millions more people around the world know Virginia Tech through a "Global University" than have ever heard of its football team.


LENGTH: Medium:   53 lines











by CNB