Online U 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 It's no coincidence that Thomas Krens, the globe-spanning director of the Guggenheim, is one of Taylor's great friends, or that Taylor is intrigued by Rem Koolhaas, the postmodern architect who now designs Prada showrooms. Taylor loved Williams, where he had been on the faculty since 1973, and he loved teaching -- in 1995 he won the Carnegie Foundation's award as professor of the year. But he also believed that the world of higher education was locked in a posture of reaction to these emerging forces. Taylor recognized that the Internet posed a threat to some things that were sacred, but he was convinced that it also held out immense promise -- not only to break through ancient ideas about teaching and learning, but also to reduce the staggering cost of a college education and to help universities continue to engage in such market-indifferent acts as teaching Hegel to eight students. "Education is the oil of the 21st century," Taylor says in his prophetic mode. "We're sitting on the reserves. The question is, 'How can we capitalize on those reserves in a way that on the one hand remains loyal to the principles of academic integrity and on the other hand is profitable?' " And so Herb Allen placed his phone call at a moment when large forces were converging: the exhaustion of an antimarket ideology, the growing appeal of the marketplace itself, the rise of a transforming technology, the push of new demands on the university. His little coffee with Mark Taylor marked one of those unnoticed moments on which cultural history can pivot. Unlike unext, which was created for the straightforward purpose of making money, Global Education Network was brought into being essentially to vindicate Mark Taylor and Herb Allen's conception of the world and their shared critique of the academy. Perhaps for that reason, it has a rather high degree of difficulty as a business proposition. Neither Taylor nor Allen were ever interested in marketing high-grade skills, as UNext does. GEN offers full-length classes, with homework and papers and tests, and if offers them in the core undergraduate subjects.