Should universities be suspicious of software giants bearing gifts?

Duke University has announced that it's adopting Cisco's Quad enterprise collaboration platform for use by its executive MBA students. The software offers some cool features like automatic transcription, enhanced search, and annotation of video lectures and content sharing over blogs, chatrooms, and in webinar-like formats. All these tools are meant to close the distance in distance learning, allowing students to participate in classes in real time and collaborate from their home bases in the US, England, Dubai, India, Russia, and China.

The U.S. government defines distance education as "a formal education process in which the students and instructor are not in the same place." It may seem like just about any college course satisfies this definition, but this specifically is referring to online courses that you take either in pursuit of a degree or to improve your knowledge and skills in some area. Distance learning is a really big thing these days: At any given time, more than 2.5 million students are taking these classes. And with the increasing demand for higher education, given globalization and the competitive job market, this number is bound to grow exponentially in years to come.