ROCKLAND, Maine — For Mainers who live far from the campuses of the University of Maine System or whose days are filled with work and family obligations, distance education, including an increasing number of online courses, is the only shot they get at a college education.
For islanders that may mean putting in hours in front of a computer screen at home, sitting in a room on the island with others taking an interactive TV course, taking the ferry to the mainland to take in person that one course you need for your degree, or a combination of all three.
Online and distance education is on the rise. In the past 10 years student enrollments have doubled and course offerings have more than tripled. In fiscal year 2010, UMS has 25,967 students enrolled in its 351 courses for distance education, including online courses.
Seth Macy, 33, of North Haven island is one of the 25,967. By day, Macy paints and does electrical work on ships at an island boatyard. By night, if his wife, 2-year-old and 7-year-old don’t need him, he goes online to do his computer information systems homework.
“It’s hard to get motivated after a day of work. I usually blast it all out on the weekends,” he said in a phone interview Saturday.
The islander is working through the University of Maine at Augusta for his degree.
When Macy and his wife moved back to the island after working in the Air Force in Arizona, Macy’s wife began working on her liberal studies degree online.
“She graduated last August. Now I’m catching up,” he said. “I saw that it was possible. I’d tried some online courses in Arizona and I couldn’t get into them, but the technology has advanced so much in the last five years. It’s so much easier now.”
Macy is enrolled in three courses. Each one has a lecture component — including three hours of statistics lectures each week, which he insists is not as painful as his mother told him it would be — and some have hefty reading requirements that Macy then writes about and posts online.
Learning about computer systems by completing online courses makes a lot of sense to Macy, who is now in his second semester of school. He will be able to complete his bachelor’s degree entirely through online courses — not once stepping into a lecture hall.
“I don’t commute over. It would not work well,” he said. “Logistically it would be impossible. The last boat leaves at 3:45 p.m., then it turns around in Rockland and comes back for the night. I’d have to stay in Rockland or miss work.”
In the end, he hopes his degree will lead to a job in computer programming.
“I’m 33. I should have a degree by now,” he said. “I’m really good with computers and I get a lot of enjoyment. I’m the island computer fix-it guy, which is nice, but I’d rather get into the meat and potatoes: programming.”
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One island over from Macy is Colleen O’Neill Conlan, 47. Unlike Macy, the Vinalhaven woman commutes to school. Now in her sixth year of chasing her English degree from the University of Maine at Augusta, online courses and interactive TV-based courses no longer suit her needs.
This is Conlan’s last semester before she gets her degree. It’s the first semester she has had to sit in a classroom. Conlan has brushed off snow from her satellite — her tie to the Internet on the outreaches of the island. She has sat in her car outside the library to poach wireless Internet when her dish has failed her. She has sat in a room on the island where live classes being video recorded elsewhere are made available in real time. Now, in her last semester, she needed to take an in-person class.
Every Monday, Conlan drives to the ferry terminal, takes the ferry to Rockland, drives to Augusta, sits in the lecture hall and then drives back to Rockland. The problem is that by the time she gets back, the last ferry has shut down for the night. So Conlan sleeps at a bed-and-breakfast. The travel has been costly in time and money.
“[The ferry] is $9.75, then the bed-and-breakfast is $45, so it’s costing me $55 a week in addition to my tuition,” Conlan said. “Luckily, I haven’t had to do this through all of my classes. I’m glad to take one class up there to have the experience of doing it.”
Conlan works as a bookkeeper for her husband and her business and does gardening for other island residents. It wasn’t until Conlan brought her daughter to college that she realized what she wanted.
“It triggered something, you know? That thing you always wanted to do someday. I couldn’t go off to college like an 18-year-old, but I could have college come to me through my computer,” she said.
She prefers it this way. Conlan described herself as quiet by nature. She might not be the type of person to raise her hand in a large lecture hall. In online classes, participation is often mandatory.
“In an online classroom it can sometimes be a more inclusive discussion. You hear from everyone in the class rather than the few more outspoken ones. I prefer to write rather than talk. I’m not a good speaker and I get self-conscious, so I like online classes,” she said. “I feel like people, especially people who haven’t taken them, look down on them as a lesser experience — it’s just a different experience, really.”
Conlan’s daughter since has graduated. Her son will graduate in May on the same day as Conlan. She will attend his ceremony, not her own.
Because Conlan was in debt for her two children’s educations, she took it slowly and paid out of pocket for her courses each semester.
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Karen Jackson, 53, of Rockland lived an island away from Conlan for years. There on Greens Island, a tiny clod off Vinalhaven’s coast, Jackson began working for her nursing degree in 2005. In May 2009, she received it.
Unlike her peers, online education wasn’t an option for Jackson.
“We didn’t have running water or electricity on Greens [Island], and I didn’t feel like I could get to a computer.”
So Jackson started by heading to Vinalhaven for interactive TV courses to work on her basic courses, such as math and psychology. When she had to begin her science courses, she headed to a satellite campus on the mainland. By the time Jackson reached the advanced nursing courses, she drove to Augusta. The round trip between Greens Island and Augusta could take five hours a day, but because the ferry would shut down before Jackson reached Rockland after class, she had to stay with friends on the mainland. Jackson then had to do two years of clinical work in hospitals, which is when she decided to move to the mainland.
Her children already had left the island to attend college themselves.
“My kids were grown. The ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ part of our lives wasn’t fun without kids.”
Now Jackson lives in Rockland, where she works taking care of elderly people in their homes. She said her clients trust her more now that she has “R.N.” after her name.
Jackson always has been the type of person who believed she had to prove herself, she said.
“I felt education is the biggest way to prove yourself to yourself. Some of those 20-page papers, I thought I was going to die,” she said. “It’s the best thing I ever did for myself.”
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According to Curt Madison, the director of distance education for the University of Maine System, people anywhere in Maine can get their associate, bachelor’s or master’s for the same price as on-campus tuition.
“Quality of the education is as least as good as on-campus courses with a lot of research going into exciting new pedagogical methods that go beyond what is possible in a classroom,” Madison recently wrote in an e-mail. “Online enrollments are increasing at 10 times the rate of on-campus enrollments.”
This, Madison said, is because it’s convenient. The public school system has little competition. What competition it does have comes from more expensive private college courses, Madison said.
The numbers are high not only because many off-campus people are engaging in distance education, but also because many students in Orono take online courses too. About 30 percent of on-campus students do.
By April the university system will launch a website to show people the online degree programs. It will include at least 50 online-only degrees.