College Notes In Cyberspace

If you have children in college and you are worried about them cutting class, your worries are about to get bigger.

This week, a new Web site called studentU.com started up. Its purpose -- to help kids in college. One prominent feature is lecture notes for classes students may have missed. The site has hired students from 62 major colleges and universities and pays them $300 per semester to put their notes on the web.

The online service is free and was founded by a grad student at the University of Texas at Austin. Oran Wolf said he started the service to help students enhance their notes and to provide notes for students who were ill and could not attend class.

Wolf told CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Thalia Assuras that he doesn't believe he's giving students an easy way out.

"I'm a believer in students going to class. When I attended college, I was attending my classes religiously. I think these notes don't deter students from going to class," he said.

He said students take their own notes and can use the online material as supplements.

With an investment from Net Strategy -- a company known for boosting fledgling Internet companies -- and advertising from Capital One Visa Platinum, Wolf went about recruiting note takers from fraternities at schools around the country.

Critics argue Wolf's idea will detract from the traditional college atmosphere and some university officials are even threatening legal action when university notes appear on the Web site.

Professor Peter Wood of Boston University is among the detractors.

"It's good advice for using a bad product. The problem with the Internet [is] professors don't have any control or influence over what goes into those notes. They may contain mistakes or may have omissions. They don't contain the expertise of the professor. The students taking the notes don't know the subject. If they did, they'd be teaching the class, not taking it," he said.

Wood says he's even considering a lawsuit.

"It's just taking a reduced form of the lecture or of the seminar and presenting it to the general public without the permission of the person who originated the material," he claim