Fifty years ago this month, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, an event that transformed American higher education. Americans felt threatened by the "red moon" overhead and communist know-how, and Congress supported a flurry of federal spending that helped to greatly expand the number of American research…

The National Technological University, a consortium of engineering schools, offers programs based on satellite transmissions of live and videotaped graduate courses to industrial sites around the country. (MSE)