Minority Serving Institutions vary in size and scope but generally serve a high percentage of minority students, many of whom are financially disadvantaged. In the 2000-01 school year, 465 schools, or about 7 percent of postsecondary institutions in the United States, served about 35 percent of all Black, American Indian, and Hispanic students. Table 1 briefly compares the three main types of Minority Serving Institutions in terms of their number, type, and size. The Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, provides specific federal support for Minority Serving Institutions through Titles III and V. These provisions authorize grants for augmenting the limited resources that many Minority Serving Institutions have for funding their academic programs. In 2002, grants funded under these two titles provided over $300 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges to improve their academic quality, institutional management, and fiscal stability. Technology is one of the many purposes to which these grants can be applied, both inside the classroom and, in the form of distance education, outside the classroom. Technology is changing how institutions educate their students, and Minority Serving Institutions, like other schools, are grappling with how best to adapt. Through such methods as E-mail, chat rooms, and direct instructional delivery via the Internet, technology can enhance students’ ability to learn any time, any place, rather than be bound by time or place in the classroom or in the library. For Minority Serving Institutions, the importance of technology takes on an additional dimension in that available research indicates their students may arrive with less prior access to technology, such as computers and the Internet, than their counterparts in other schools. These students may need considerable exposure to technology to be fully equipped with job-related skills. The growth of distance education has added a new dimension to evaluating the quality of postsecondary education programs. Federal statutes recognize accrediting agencies as the gatekeepers of postsecondary education quality. To be eligible for the federal student aid program, a school must be periodically reviewed and accredited by such an agency. Education, in turn, is responsible for recognizing an accrediting agency as a reliable authority on quality. While the accreditation process applies to both distance education and campus-based instruction, many accreditation practices focus on the traditional means of providing campus-based education, such as the adequacy of classroom facilities or recruiting and admission practices. These measures can be more difficult to apply to distance education when students are not on campus or may not interact with faculty in person. In this new environment, postsecondary education officials are increasingly recommending that outcomes—such as course completion rates or success in written communication—be incorporated as appropriate into assessments of distance education. The emphasis on student outcomes has occurred against a backdrop of the federal government, state governments, and the business community asking for additional information on what students are learning for the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars that support postsecondary institutions each year. While there is general recognition that the United States has one of the best postsecondary systems in the world, this call for greater accountability has occurred because of low completion rates among low- income students (only 6 percent earn a bachelors degree or higher), perceptions that the overall 6-year institutional graduation rate (about 52 percent) at 4-year schools and the completion rate at 2-year schools (about 33 percent) are low, and a skills gap in problem solving, communications, and analytical thinking between what students are taught and what employers need in the 21st Century workplace. For the most part, students taking distance education courses can qualify for financial aid in the same way as students taking traditional courses. As the largest provider of student financial aid to postsecondary students, the federal government has a substantial interest in distance education. Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, the federal government provides grants, loans, and work-study wages for millions of students each year. There are limits, however, on the use of federal student aid at schools with large distance education offerings. Concerns about the quality of some correspondence courses more than a decade ago led the Congress, as a way of controlling fraud and abuse in federal student aid programs, to impose restrictions on the extent to which schools could offer distance education and still qualify to participate in federal student aid programs. The rapid growth of distance education and emerging delivery modes, such as Internet-based classes, have led to questions about whether these restrictions are still needed and how the restrictions might affect students’ access to federal aid programs. Distance education’s effect on helping students complete their courses of study is still largely unknown. Although there is some anecdotal evidence that distance education can help students complete their programs or graduate from college, school officials that we spoke to did not identify any studies that evaluated the extent to which distance education has improved completion or graduation rates. There are some variations in the use of distance education at Minority Serving Institutions and other schools. While it is difficult to generalize across the Minority Serving Institutions, the available data indicate that Minority Serving Institutions tend to offer at least one distance education course at the same rate as other schools, but they differ in how many courses are offered and which students take the courses. Overall, the percentage of schools offering at least one distance education course in the 2002-03 school year was 56 percent for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 63 percent for Hispanic Serving Institutions, and 63 percent for Tribal Colleges, based on data from our surveys of Minority Serving Institutions. Similarly, 56 percent of 2- and 4-year schools across the country offered at least one distance education course in the 2000-01 school year, according to a separate survey conducted by Education.Minority Serving Institutions also tended to mirror other schools in that larger schools were more likely to offer distance education than smaller schools, and public schools were more likely to offer distance education than private schools. Tribal Colleges were an exception; all of them were small, but the percentage of schools offering distance education courses was relatively high compared to other smaller schools. The greater use of distance education among Tribal Colleges may reflect their need to serve students who often live in remote areas. In two respects, however, the use of distance education at Minority Serving Institutions differed from other schools. First, of those institutions offering at least one distance education course, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges generally offered fewer distance education courses—a characteristic that may reflect the smaller size of these two types of institutions compared to other schools. Second, to the extent that data are available, minority students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions participate in distance education to a somewhat lower degree than other students. For example, in the 1999-2000 school year, fewer undergraduates at Historically Black Colleges and Universities took distance education courses than students at non-Minority Serving Institutions—6 percent v. 8.4 percent of undergraduates—a condition that may reflect the fact that these schools offer fewer distance education courses. Also, at Hispanic Serving Institutions, Hispanic students had lower rates of participation in distance education than non-Hispanic students attending these schools. These differences were statistically significant. We found that Minority Serving Institutions offered distance education courses for two main reasons: (1) they improve access to courses for some students who live away from campus and (2) they provide convenience to older, working, or married students. The following examples illustrate these conditions. Northwest Indian College, a Tribal College in Bellingham, Washington, has over 10 percent of its 600 students involved in distance education. It offers distance education by videoconference equipment or correspondence. The College offers over 20 distance education courses, such as mathematics and English to students at seven remote locations in Washington and Idaho. According to College officials, distance education technology is essential because it provides access to educational opportunities for students who live away from campus. For example, some students taking distance education courses live hundreds of miles from the College in locations such as the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho and the Makah Reservation in Neah Bay, Washington. According to school officials, students involved in distance education tend to be older with dependents, and therefore, find it difficult to take courses outside of their community. Also, one official noted that staying within the tribal community is valued and distance education allows members of tribes to stay close to their community and still obtain skills or a degree. The University of the Incarnate Word is a private nonprofit Hispanic Serving Institution with an enrollment of about 6,900 students. The school, located in San Antonio, Texas, offers on-line degree and certificate programs, including degrees in business, nursing, and information technology. About 2,400 students are enrolled in the school’s distance education program. The school’s on-line programs are directed at nontraditional students (students who are 24 years old or older), many of whom are Hispanic. In general, the ideal candidates for the on-line program are older students, working adults, or adult learners who have been out of high school for 5 or more years, according to the Provost and the Director of Instructional Technology. Not all schools wanted to offer distance education, however, and we found that almost half of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions did not offer any distance education because they preferred to teach their students in the classroom rather than through distance education. Here are examples from 2 schools that prefer teaching their students in the classroom rather than by the use of distance education. Howard University, an Historically Black University in Washington, D.C., with about 10,000 students, has substantial information technology; however, it prefers to use the technology in teaching undergraduates on campus rather than through developing and offering distance education.