In all academic environments, including distance education, faculty should control the ownership of their intellectual property. Many faculty erroneously believe that because they are the creators of their intellectual work, they automatically
have ownership of it under the law.

This is a faulty assumption. An understanding has long existed that professors in public colleges and universities develop intellectual property in the interests of advancing public knowledge. The increasing commercialization of higher education has been threatening this principle for some time, especially in terms of distance education, and we stress that our community colleges should resist external pressures from the marketplace, such as canned curricula, and maintain their primary mission of public service as the driving force in all decisions relating to distance education.