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When I took over the administration of the Henry George Institute's correspondence course program in 1996, nothing seemed more important than get ting the HGI's basic economics course up on the web. The course that still forms the heart of our program. The website at www.henrygeorge.org has been available on the web since that year - but it has undergone many upgrades and additions. The basic text for the course is the abridgment of Progress and Poverty done in 1953 by Arthur Madsen. Also, the online publication of this book marked the first time that the set of illustrations for Progress and Poverty, done by HGI founder Bob Clancy in the 1950s, were published together with the text as Clancy intended. The site is dedicated to Bob Clancy, who died in 1995. Its dedication pages notes that "Bob was often a tad cranky about the influence of computers on society - but I think he'd have gotten a kick out of this site."

When we began this project, online courses were new and exciting but nowadays they're old hat .... with one important difference: most online education today is heavily career-oriented such as college courses for busy professionals trying to advance themselves. There are few tuition-free courses offering "education for its own sake" as we do. The prospective student in Understanding Economics is curious, open minded, and frustrated at what passes for coherent interpretation of social problems. It isn't a large market, but it is a devoted one. Our motto is, "You CAN Understand Economics!"

The course operates in a standard correspondence-course format, except that the delay and inconvenience of snail-mail is removed by the Internet. Each enrolled student is assigned an individual instructor, with whom he or she corresponds throughout the course and, usually, through further courses in our program. Instructors are volunteers, and come from the ranks of graduates (of our three-course series hi Principles of Political Economy, of which Understanding Economics is the first) who show strong interest and understanding, and wish to help advance the cause. They undergo some additional training, and keep in touch via an email list, "Faculty Lounge", that is devoted to Georgist Pedagogy (and is open to all Georgist educators; email lindy@henrygeorge.org if you're interested in joining).

The Institute is not accredited; no academic credit is given for our courses. The advantages of very low cost and full control over our curriculum have always been thought to outweigh that of undergoing an expensive accreditation process. Students who complete our courses are eager to get their certificates, though, and from time to time some university will grant a student credit for work they have done with us. The HGI has been offering correspondence courses since 1971, and is proud of its record of dependable quality.

We learned early on that just offering an online course is not enough to grab the attention of fickle web- surfers - so the HGI site features frequently-updated and interactive content to keep people coming back. The "What's Up With That?" discussion board seeks to provide useful answers to questions on matters economic, and the long- running series of "Land Rant" commentaries drew a loyal reader ship. The articles are archived on a site named "CULTSEX" (Coalition for Universal Land Tenure and ,the Single tax). In the past year, though, we have teamed up with The Progress Report, the excellent online magazine presented by the Banneker Center (www.progress.org). I gave up my "Land Rants" to do a bi-monthly column for the Progress Report, which in turn supplies the HGI with a daily feed of new articles. That's synergy: my articles are seen by many more readers, and the HGI's site has something new every day - a model for movement cooperation, I'd say. Also, the story of Alodia - the fictional (alas...) African nation that adopted a Georgist program, which was featured in Georgist Journal #99 - was an interactive project via the HGI site.

The Henry George Institute is now pleased to offer not one, but three different online courses! With support from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation we established our course in Liberation Theology and Land Reform (www.landreform.org), which uses texts by Robert Andelson and James Dawsey, Archer Torrey, Leonardo Boff, and yours truly. And just this season, with support from the Henry George School, we have launched a new online version of Economic Science (www.henrygeorge.org/science) based on a brand new abridgment of George's The Science of Political Economy, and supplemental readings by Mason Gaffney and others.

The Henry George Institute's online education program has been motoring down the information highway for some time - but now it is ready to swing into the fast lane!