National Technological University (NTU), Fort Collins, Colorado, was founded in 1984 as a non-profit organization offering graduate courses via satellite and leading to a Master of Science (M.S.) degree. It was a collaborative effort among many major engineering and management colleges in the United States to meet the graduate and continuing education needs of "engineers, technical professionals and managers using advanced educational and telecommunications technology." Graduate and non-credit courses were sourced from a number of distinguished universities and were delivered through NTU to working technical professionals and managers at corporate and government sites across the United States and at international locations as well. NTU was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, The Higher Learning Commission
"There is widespread recognition of the growing need for engineers and the organizations that employ them to create a new engineering culture that encourages lifelong learning. ... The National Technological University (NTU) is an important example. NTU delivers classes from major engineering schools by satellite to working professionals in industry. NTU and Motorola University ... have been cited as U.S. 'best practices' in this field."
In 2002, NTU was sold to Sylvan Learning Systems and then folded into Walden University in 2004.
History
The founder and president of National Technological University (NTU) was Dr. Lionel V. Baldwin. Dr. Baldwin had been the Dean of Engineering at Colorado State University for more than 20 years and was well-connected in both the academic world and the corporate world. "These connections provided an excellent springboard from which to launch the fledging institution."
Beginning in 1982, "major corporations and the United States Department of Defense funded a two-year planning process involving numerous consultants. Two of the major corporations were GE and IBM. These sponsors provided technical advice and met regularly to help shape the plan. By the fall of 1983, the decision to proceed was made. ... These efforts led to the incorporation of the National Technological University (NTU) in January 1984."
NTU’s vision statement was "simple and straightforward. ‘Enabling working professionals and managers to share premier educational resources globally via telecommunications.’"
NTU was governed by a Board of Trustees composed primarily of senior technical managers at major corporations and senior administrators at major colleges of engineering.
Students participated through the sponsorship of their employers, and these employers included "technology-based corporations and government agencies such as 'AT&T, IBM, 3M, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Boeing, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy' (National Technological University Corporation Business Plan, July 2, 1997)."
U.S. engineering educators were early adopters of telecommunications technologies for course delivery anytime and anywhere. Nell Eurich, in a 1985 study of education in the workplace, observed that engineering faculty were "light years" ahead of other academic disciplines in the use of technology to serve working adult learners.
Initially, NTU courses were delivered via videotape but within two years the content was broadcast by satellite on a single analog channel. "By 1985, NTU’s place as a technological leader was beginning to take shape. In that year it became the first university to offer educational services via a telecommunication satellite." An NTU innovation soon made it possible to broadcast two analog channels on the same transponder and a few years later (1991) NTU pioneered the transition on satellite networks from analog to digital video achieving a sixfold increase in channel capacity. "By 1992 ... NTU could state that it was the first university or broadcast network to convert its satellite network from analog video to compressed digital video, thus pushing the boundaries of what was possible in satellite transmission." "One of the pioneer virtual institutions, National Technological University (NTU), began in 1995 to use a digital channel on PanAmSat 2 to cover an area from New Zealand to Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, much of China, South Korea, Japan, and Siberia."