- The Department of Education's 14-member panel found itself unable to come to a
decision that would change the 12-hour seat time rule. The rule requires schools not
operating on semesters, trimesters or quarters to offer at least 12 hours of in-class instruction
per week for students to receive federal financial aid. Department officials now say that they
will move to change the rule to require "one day" of course work per week. Those who
support the change believe that seat time is a poor measure of educational program quality
and that the rule disadvantages non-traditional, including online, instruction -
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002042901u.htm (Chronicle of Higher Education,
29 Apr 02)

- The International cyberuniversity, a collaborative effort of 19 colleges from 15 countries,
could be up and operating by next year. Seoul's Ewha-Womans University (EWU) will be
responsible for the technical aspects of the university. EWU also hosted the initial planning
session. Many challenges, such as the appropriate language for courses, technology
infrastructure, hardware compatibility and bandwidth still need to be resolved. All degrees
offered by the cyberuniversity will be jointly awarded -
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002042401u.htm (Chronicle of Higher Education, 23
Apr 02)

- A bill currently making its way through the Peruvian legislature would require government
computers to run free, or open-source, software. Similar moves have taken place in
Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Open-source applications, like Linux, allow developers to
modify code for their own needs. The homegrown industry that open-source requirements
could foster, liberates them, gives them an income source and allows them to tap into the
world economy like nothing else -
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51902,00.html (Wired News, 22 Apr 02)
(See BIZ/GOV/ED in this issue for a related Linux article.)

- A new institute to study ways that technology can improve scholarly communication has
been funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant. The institute, developed by the
Council on Library and Information Resources and the Dartmouth College Library, will
host a small group of experts in the field to discuss innovation and improvements that
technology allows in the ways scholarly information is generated, distributed and
archived. The institute will meet three times annually at Dartmouth campus -
http://www.clir.org/pubs/press/2002_mellsci.html (CLIR 11 Apr 02)

- In-Stat/MDR has tracked the size of the commuting and remote (CAM) workforce
currently estimated to be more than 78 million workers (60% of employment), for several
years. According to the estimates, this segment of US employment has grown steadily for
over a decade. As a result, firms they worked with/for suffered with a myriad of remote
connectivity issues last year and will definitely seek solutions in 2002. To meet this
demand, a variety of business-class solutions designed specifically for this purpose are
developing. Given this, In-Stat's Business Segmentation team says 2002 is the year of the
"Big Come Back," for remote connectivity solutions - http://www.instat.com