A for-profit Web venture, Fathom, backed by several major universities, is changing its strategies for marketing and content, hoping to find a way to make a profit. The site will rely on member institutions to create and contribute shorter, noncredit online courses and seminars to accompany the free content, such as articles, already offered on…

Describes how universities are weighing changes to or termination of their modem pools, which allow off-campus faculty, staff, and students to have access to the campus network or the Internet. (EV)

As the concept of earning a higher education degree at home becomes more accepted, diploma mills operating on the Internet proliferate. Students confuse unscrupulous institutions with legitimate distance education. Many use the World Wide Web as their primary marketing tool, with sites similar to those of accredited colleges, and do not appear to…

A Johns Hopkins University (Maryland) engineering professor has developed eight computer programs that simulate laboratory experiments, creating a "virtual laboratory" for his introductory engineering class. Experiments are fully interactive, giving students the opportunity to try eight different problem-solving strategies. Students can…

Striving to streamline student services and improve electronic communication, colleges and universities are signing on with companies that offer sophisticated World Wide Web sites through which students can accomplish basic administrative functions and receive information. The sites are often free of charge but also feature advertising messages…

Demands from students with disabilities and regulations from the federal government are prompting colleges to seek new designs in software and hardware. Many colleges are buying computer workstations and designing Web sites that meet the needs of students with disabilities. The university's attitude and organization tends to be the main stumbling…

Increasingly, World Wide Web sites are offering college-bound students searchable catalogs and online admissions applications, and software company sites are selling high-tech recruiting tools to college admissions offices. College admissions offices are overwhelmed with the new options, and worried about how the trend may change the admissions…

College administrators are complaining that "Yahoo! Internet Life" magazine used a flawed surveying process and inaccurate data to select the institutions it named in a recent ranking of "American's 100 Most Wired Colleges." Even some institutions faring well in the ranking have concerns about the survey, citing problems with…

A recent study rated colleges and universities on computer connectedness, using such criteria as faculty use of the Internet for academic purposes (online homework, course home pages, online academic materials); required courses in Internet use; computers, wires, and network connections for students and faculty; non-academic Internet services…

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is aggressively pursuing a plan to change the presentation and dissemination of student research by requiring students to submit theses and dissertations in digital form and creating a database on the World Wide Web that provides free, instantaneous access to graduate students' research. Some…