- Online universities are not likely to cancel out nonprofit and state supported higher education institutions. According to Dr. Kurt R. Linberg, Dean of the School of Technology at Capella University, a for-profit online university, for-profits will not have a future large market share. Capella does expect to more than double its enrollment next
year, going from 3,000 to 8,000, but due to high marketing costs, will still not be profitable. (Teaching OntheNet, 15 Jan 02)

- Teaching OntheNet recently conducted a national survey asking for the average number of students in online classes. More than 400 professors were surveyed with the following results:
1-10 students 15.44%
11-19 students 30.64%
20-30 students 36.34%
31-49 students 9.98%
50+ students 7.6%
Two surprises in the results were:
1) nearly 18% of classes are over 30 students,
2) about 46% of classes are small, under 20 students.
(Teaching OntheNet, 15 Jan 02)

- In approximately five years, the Chinese language is expected to surpass English as the most-used language on the Internet, according to a United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) conference in Geneva. At present, English speakers are in the majority of the world's 460 million Web users. By 2002, non-English speakers are expected to hold the majority. Domain names are now availablein Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic scripts, with accents of Europe's romance languages now also available. (Financial Times, 7 Dec 01)

- The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council has announced that it will support a feasibility study for an International Virtual Medical School. The project would use e-Learning to provide training software for medical students, access to seminars and sharing of expertise from around the world. To date, eight British, eight North American and four Australian medical schools have been involved in the venture; China has indicated that it would also like to participate. Cooperation will be supported among the schools and "a repository or bank of reusable learning objects" will be developed.
(Guardian of London, 4 Dec 01)