Thanks to Daniel Mitchell, Professor-Emeritus at the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management, who brought to my attention this article by Steve Kolowich entitled: A Historic Union?  (January 15, 2010, Inside Higher Ed).

Here’s a taste:

A month after completing its first foray into online higher education by acquiring the distance education provider Penn Foster, the Princeton Review has set its next goal: to help create the largest online college ever. And it thinks it can do it in five years.

The company announced yesterday that it is entering into a joint venture with the National Labor College — an accredited institution that offers blended-learning programs to 200 students, most of whom are adults — to establish what would be called the College for Working Families. The college would offer courses tailored to the needs of union members and their families, beginning this fall.

The curriculum would be broadened from the National Labor College’s current offerings, which are largely made up of courses in labor studies . . . . The new institution would start off awarding associate degrees, with aspirations to running bachelor’s and master’s programs down the line. Tuition would be similar to that at most community colleges.

Now independent, the National Labor College was originally established as a training center for the AFL-CIO, with which it still retains a close relationship. That’s where the growth potential comes from; the AFL-CIO has 11.5 million members.

I think the article is right that from the union perspective, they could have never hoped to build such a potentially massive re-training operation on their own. I also think that with the need to retrain workers for the new realities of our economy, the timing could not be better.