Authority: §§ 23-114 through 23-131, Code of Virginia.

A.1. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is authorized to establish a self-supporting "instructional enterprise" fund to account for the revenues and expenditures of the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning (IDDL) classes offered to students at locations outside the Commonwealth of Virginia. Consistent with the self-supporting concept of an "enterprise fund," student tuition and fee revenues for IDDL students at locations outside Virginia shall exceed all direct and indirect costs of providing instruction to those students. The Board of Visitors shall set tuition and fee rates to meet this requirement and shall set other policies regarding the IDDL as may be appropriate. Revenue and expenditures of the fund shall be accounted for in such a manner as to be auditable by the Auditor of Public Accounts. Revenues in excess of expenditures shall be retained in the fund to support the entire IDDL program. Full-time equivalent students generated through these programs shall be accounted for separately. Additionally, revenues which remain unexpended on the last day of the previous biennium and the last day of the first year of the current biennium shall be reappropriated and allotted for expenditure in the respective succeeding fiscal year.

2. As part of this "instructional enterprise" fund, Virginia Tech is authorized to establish a three-year pilot program in which asynchronous Internet-based (on-line) courses, certificate programs, and entire degree programs, primarily at the graduate level, are offered to students in Virginia who are not enrolled for classes on the Blacksburg campus or one of the extended campus locations. Tuition generated by Virginia students taking these on-line courses, and tuition from IDDL students at locations outside Virginia, shall be retained in the fund to support the entire IDDL program and shall not be used by the state to offset other Educational and General Programs costs. Virginia Tech shall report to the Department of Planning and Budget by June 30, 2002, on the experience of the pilot program's first year, including programs offered and tuition revenue collected.

B. With regard to the capital project, Construct Biomedical Sciences Complex, (Item C-116), debt service thereon will be paid from revenue generated by indirect cost recoveries on sponsored projects resulting from the new bioinformatics initiative. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is authorized to retain 100 percent of the indirect cost recoveries from bioinformatics sponsored research and to use the 30 percent, otherwise required to support the Educational and General program, to apply to the debt service on this facility, notwithstanding § 4-2.03 c of this act.