If any e-learning development could be more startling than the rapid fire escalation of (mostly) free virtual platform Coursera from well funded academic niche to revolutionary service that could potentially alter the way Americans view higher education altogether, it’d have to be the overwhelmingly positive reception from all corners of the scholastic continuum throughout its first year of operations.

Knowledgeable observers have explained away the free pass given Coursera as inevitable repercussion of the societal prestige universally awarded the digital resource’s founder and president Andrew Ng (and his well chosen compatriots), but, after the site completely avoided the merest semblance of pot shots from local and national defenders of campus traditions, the waves of unrelenting support may indicate a more disturbing element to the cut rate tutorials than has generally been discussed.

To that end, a swelling cadre of professional instructors and administrative officials employed within the conventional e-learning metier — if such a definition could even apply to technologies barely a decade old — have openly pondered the true motivations shielding Coursera from casual disdain, and, perhaps, it’s less the underlying rightness of the business model than the essential weakness that prevents candidates from getting a degree online through their programs.

As things stand, Coursera participants could spend a decade studying under recognized authorities in their fields and poring over every single variance taught within, say, Business Administration or Marketing programs and never come close to qualifying for just an online Associate’s degree.  Many pundits had insisted the (so to speak) headlining acts serving as academic celebrities in residence for the Ivy League campuses and similarly star studded scholastic institutions would never in a million years consent to allow an external site to tape and host a sampling of their lectures absent the surrounding lesson plans or slow building momentum and context crucial to any complicated coursework.

As happens, though, the teachers seems even more passionate about broadening the opportunities for disadvantaged students than school officials.  Wearily fighting a losing battle against public opinion and firmly tarred by accusations of irresponsible profligacy seemingly whenever name checked by mass media vipers, administrators charged with protecting the sacrosanct centers of learning would love to see supportive press cover getting a degree online for the first time in what must seem like ages.

Still, for tireless boosterism over Coursera’s approach to getting a degree online, nothing could beat the thirst for engaged participants nurtured by tenured faculty members who’d given their lives over to furthering intellectual development and forging vital rhetorical linkages only to realize rather too late that the students best equipped to wow the registrar’ and speed through admissions are also the least likely diploma candidates to spend a moment more than necessary internalizing a particularly poignant truth.

In the end, though, the success of an educational venture shan’t depend upon admiring headlines or teachers’ workplace morale or even student satisfaction during the process.  Higher learning must sooner or later incorporate the multifaceted curriculum and instructional support of a school that will be forced to charge for services rendered — even if it’s tax payers footing the bill, as remains the European custom — and, the soon to be million student question, does the Coursera technique pave the way for loftier endeavors or simply lower standards and expectations across the board?

A recent poll of American high schoolers initiated by the Junior Achievement organization uncovered a disturbing strain of pessimism among modern day teenagers regarding their future employment and the scholastic opportunities that will be available.  More than a third of the teens JA researchers spoke with have been forced to alter their intentions for pursuing higher education as a direct result of the diminished fiscal opportunities presented by the current economic quagmire, and as many as half of what would soon be the incoming freshmen have failed to adequately prepare for the monetary sacrifices American academia requires.  However, in the midst of a string of gloomy results that found the polled students all too concerned about the costs of higher learning (and, more depressingly, convinced their ideal career choice lies outside realistic pursuit), one of the few encouraging pieces of advice outlined by the pollsters revealed the formerly niche e-learning alternative has been relatively embraced by the new generation of collegiate consumers.

A volunteer based group intended to further the educational development of American youths through mentoring their amateur entrepreneurial ventures, Junior Achievement currently operates more than a hundred separate chapters in the United States that counsel millions of teens.  Considering the organization’s decidedly pro business mission statement, then, the leadership of Junior Achievement was particularly upset to discover that more than a quarter of the teens polled had no plans whatsoever to even attend any form of advanced education.  Unlike past decades — in which young people demonstrated a certain naivete regarding their idealized workplace (as well as the labors necessary to achieve the academic qualifications the more admired positions demand prior to hiring) — the youth of today appear to know precisely what would be expected of their so called dream jobs, and they simply do not seem to believe that college or university lay within the realm of possibility.

“Taken overall, the poll results couldn’t be more saddening,” said Amy Fletcher, an educational historian studying the effects of getting a degree online.  “Young people in the United States no longer seem to believe they have any chances at obtaining their most desired work, and, what’s truly heartbreaking, these turn out to be jobs that they really should be able to land with decent schooling.  We’re not talking about kids dreaming about being rock stars or television producers or NFL quarterbacks.  Kids today are far more practical than they are ever given credit for, and all they want is a shot at obtaining the right diploma to qualify for employment in engineering or medicine or information technology.”

It’s eminently true that the survey findings indicated American teens were leaning toward careers in health care or the hard sciences in significantly greater proportions than researchers had predicted, and, given the probable suitability of internet education for such ventures, there does seem cause for hesitant optimism. “In many cases,” continued Fletcher, “an online Associate’s degree or online Bachelor’s degree could serve as all credentials they’ll need.  Thankfully, an appreciation of the rewards promised by getting a degree online seems to be filtering down through the younger generations.  At the same time that the traditional academic leadership has been spinning false promises and raising the expense of college beyond reason, the kids have seen the rewards of cyber learning, and, slowly but surely, they’re  going to carve out their own futures.”

In what may be the most significant test of the cyber educational variant of higher learning, the heads of Arizona State University have embarked upon an advertising campaign directed at attracting students far afield from its Phoenix metropolitan area campuses.  While the century old institution — a member of the Pacific 12 sporting conference that houses celebrated schools of Journalism, Nursing, Business, Public Policy, and Engineering — regularly attracts global entrants, the brunt of their marketing traditionally ignores the residents of nearby Southern California for fear of wasted expenses attempting to compete with the revered academic pearls of the Golden State. However, as a response to the sudden enrollment freeze for several of the largest CA schools (including California State University at Long Beach which accepted less than a third of the fifty thousand some 2012 applicants), the freeways of La La Land have lately been festooned with freeways hawking the advantages of getting a degree online through ASU.

The forty some outdoor display ads purchased by Arizona State are only a small component (though, without question, the most attention catching aspect) of a full bore invasion of the California market through radio and television commercials, print advertising in regional newspapers and magazines, and a wide array of “pop-ups” and other internet based gambits that should hold an obvious significance when boosting the rewards of getting a degree online.  The tone of the PR campaign differs severely depending upon the demographic requested — the drive time radio spots, for example, were clearly designed to appeal to the working men and women who may want to obtain an online Bachelor’s degree or online Master’s degree to increase their chances of promotion at their current place of employment — but all encourage Californians to at least look into the feasibility of virtual matriculation from a scholastic system less burdened.

“It makes some sense to exploit the weaknesses in the California market,” said business journalist Taylor Lillstrom, “and it’s not like those need any further publicity to get the point across.  Every day, the headlines in the paper are covering another service cut or threat of a faculty strike.  Californians know the problems of their public colleges and universities all too well, trust me, but, whether or not that leads students to the computer, we don’t know.  If the choice is between getting a degree online and just going to school part time for a year or two until the state figures out how to right the ship, I’m not so sure the people are going to automatically jump onto the web for their diplomas.”

Echoing such sentiments, the state’s Department of Education has recently embarked upon a belated campaign to publicize their own versions of digitized remote learning, which independent national organizations have ranked as more or less approximate quality to Arizona’s larger cyber schools.  Given the typical desire of Californians to remain emotionally connected to their local institutions, the billboards may indeed push observers to first ponder getting a degree online but still retain old loyalties.  “Just because Arizona State’s done a pretty good job of positioning the opportunity of getting a degree online as the next logical alternative once classrooms have been stretched to the limit,” agrees Lillstrom, “it remains to be seen if the new online Bachelor’s degree applicants are going to remember what drew them to the web.”

According to some government estimates, there are as many as ten million people residing in the United States without legal documentation, and, though the Southeastern quadrant has been spared the waves of unlicensed immigration that have stretched the public services budget of a state like California to the breaking point, it’s nonetheless become a substantial problem continually raising political debate.  To hinder the increasingly widespread concerns that the halls of academia have themselves become overrun by illegal immigrants, the Georgia House of Representatives recently introduced a piece of legislation that would prohibit enrollment within state colleges and universities.  The proposed ban would apply to students attending traditional campus-centric academic centers as well as those getting a degree online, and it has aroused no small amount of controversy.

Elected officials supporting the bill argue with some justification that, by taking advantage of the public subsidies awarded to institutions of higher education, the immigrants have been effectively defrauding the taxpayers of Georgia.  Programs that issue an online Associate’s degree or online Bachelor’s degree are particularly prone to being misled since their admissions policies are relatively far more open and tend to approve the matriculation of any high school graduate without accompanying criteria.  Critics of the legislation, while acknowledging the unfortunate drain on social services, counter that scholastic development will be the surest way for the immigrants to better their standard of living and eventually qualify for citizenship (as well as elevating their eventual tax brackets).  Commentators further note that a troubling racial component has aroused deeply divisive partisan bickering surrounding the topic, and, given the state’s history of impeding the educational progress of ethnic groups, allegations of prejudice should be avoided at all cost.

“The legislature doesn’t seem to recognize just how many people come to this country hoping to improve their family’s circumstances,” said Sandra Wong, an online Bachelor’s degree student at a state institution who proudly admits that some of her friends would be affected by the new ban, “and not all of them understand at the time just why they can’t take part in the American dream.  If some undocumented immigrants are signing up for classes at the community college or getting a degree online, that shouldn’t mean they’re automatically taking an opportunity away from someone else.  There’s enough higher education to go around, isn’t there?  They only want to stay and work in the United States and add something to our economy!”

Although it’s extremely unlikely that an undocumented student would receive a need based scholarship, thanks the checks built into the system of funding higher education, many nevertheless do manage to qualify for the considerably lower tuition charges awarded state residents.  To an extent, then, the political upheaval of this issue has been as much fueled by the expense of academia as any resistance to the conceptual unfairness of publicly sponsoring the advanced learning of undocumented immigrants, and that’s a separate question entirely.  Rising tuition prices during uncertain financial times have forced alterations to the educational plans of so many families in Georgia and the rest of the United States over the past decade, and, perhaps, a concerted method of bringing down the expenses of scholastic achievement — including the very same online Associate’s degree and online Bachelor’s degree that have cause such outrage when undertaken by illegal residents — could quell this dispute once and for all.

One of the signal benefits that has helped lure so many Americans to consider the attractions of getting a degree online has been the innovative way in which remote learning revolutionized the archaic practice of course textbooks.  For years, colleges and universities had indulged a mutually beneficial gambit hand in hand with the academic publishing industry that forced students to either purchase new volumes at outsized prices often exceeding four figures per semester or else track down used copies from their school’s bookstore at costs that promised considerable returns for the institutions themselves.  At a time in which educationally oriented loan balances sent to collections had become a national nightmare, these semi-annual bouts of predatory gouging represented everything wrong with the old fashioned campus-centric educational experience, and, when online Bachelor’s degree programs actively sought to help their clientele find affordable e-text options, the resultant price breaks aided everyone involved.

Furthermore, thanks to the visionary advancements made by certain digital publishers who took advantage of the format’s peculiar liberties — instead of merely running scared from the constant complaints over the supposed detriments posed by reading over a monitor rather than flipping a page — proponents of the new paradigm worked with the faculty guiding online Associate’s degree and online Bachelor’s degree programs to offer reading lists expressly tailored to the course curriculum.  By catering to the potential rewards of getting a degree online rather than merely assuming the scholastic medium would always be a poor second to the brick-and-mortar traditions, e-textbooks highlighted the spiraling possibilities opened up by ever progressing technologies through incorporating various chapters of a multitude of sources for a fraction of the expense.

More than just capitalizing on the substantial savings guaranteed through internet matriculation, the digitized syllabus acted as a personalized companionship set to the most precise instructional demands.  Alas, early excitement over the initial attempts by some high profile cyber professors has been significantly quelled by a recent court injunction claiming such use of the original texts amounts to patent infringement.  Sources familiar with the case have voiced decidedly mixed opinions over the validity of the lawsuit, but one sentiment has struck a resounding note.  The soon to be idealized moment of virtual publishers banding together in shared pursuit of a breathtaking cyberspace future has closed, and the next chapter for e-textbooks (and the online Bachelor’s degree candidates dependent upon them) remains yet to be written.

“The glory days are over,” said Jerome Stoudemire, an award winning blogger on academic issues, “and I think you’re going to see things get a lot worse before they get any better.  The laws affecting patent disputes just weren’t meant to handle the intricacies of digital manipulation.  There’s such a huge market represented by the online Bachelor’s degree — and, more and more, we’re seeing the online Master’s degree offer the same — that the impasse isn’t going to last for long.  Sooner or later, either a company’s going to come about that emerges as the clear number one or some existing publisher part of a giant conglomerate will decide to throw its weight around.  Until then, sad to say for the folks getting a degree online, they’ll just have to make do with a downloadable version of the twentieth century bookstore.”

Students usually prioritize the advantages of getting a degree online as lowered costs of tuition and extended malleability of course study (a defining criteria betraying similar economic directives, since the most prevalent reason for restructured scheduling has been the necessity of maintaining a full work schedule). The advantages should be obvious for students no longer forced to shackle themselves with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan burdens for no better reason than to help defray the costs of maintaining the increasingly archaic campus based traditions, but much less attention has been paid to the benefits that getting a degree online may hold for the schools providing the educational resource. Ever since the University of Southern New Hampshire began offering a substantial share of their courses over the internet, the troubled institution has inspired new hopes for a second life within a sustainable format.

Due to a variety of factors — not least location, as the surrounding state has been graduating fewer and fewer high schoolers, at the marked reverse of national trends — the numbers of prospective students applying to the University had been dwindling over the past decade to the point at which the administrators had little recourse but to think about shuttering the doors altogether. Although registered with the United States government as not for profit, the school nevertheless depends upon the tuition revenue of the incoming student body to properly meet their (annually more pressing) budgetary shortfalls, and, never esteemed by college ranking guidebooks, attracting those new entrants had become perilously difficult before the online Bachelor’s degree and online Master’s degree programs opened up another, highly profitable realm.

“More than anything,” said Valeria Ronson, a New Hampshire area reporter on higher education issues, “the new access to students across the country — throughout the world, really — made all the difference. For the people getting a degree online, local reputation didn’t matter at all. If the on campus classroom life was slowly dying, all the better. That just meant that the administration had all the more reason to commit their efforts toward developing an internet based infrastructure and start fresh alongside the students. In only a couple of years, Southern New Hampshire has absolutely transformed its reputation, and it’s currently thriving amidst an incredibly competitive New England academic environment. I wouldn’t be surprised to see every mid range institution follow suit.”

As expected, much of the sudden interest in studying remotely at the University has come from non traditional students, and members of the newly digitized faculty have been forced to redraw their curriculum to not only fit the varying demands of instruction over the web but also somewhat cater to the differently prepared scholastic capabilities buttressing pupils of a certain age, many of whom haven’t been near any sort of educational setting for decades. Surprisingly, though, an appreciable chunk of the Southern New Hampshire virtual student body lay only a year or two away from their own high school graduations, and this development has created the greatest cause for excitement. “You have to assume that there’s only going to be a limited amount of older Americans interested in getting a degree online,” said Ronson, “and, while it’s grand that SNH was among the first to grab them, it’s still an essentially limited market. If the school’s able to attract a segment of the kids who’d otherwise be entering the dorms, there’s no telling how far the online Bachelor’s degree program could go.”

Following the incredible strides made by Japan and South Korea to educate vast sections of their population through a computerized process of distant learning, men and women of every nationality within East Asia have turned to getting a degree online in numbers soon to dwarf their western competitors. Even during the financial rise of the larger countries through the past few decades, the formal educational resources of the region have long been outstripped by popular demand, and the explosion of private firms dedicated to remote instruction  should soon reap dramatic results, though international observers quietly remind that all of a society’s woes cannot be overcome by their cultural embrace of getting a degree online.

Despite the growing complexity of the region’s technological infrastructure and the transformative effects of rapid economic development, the majority of households within Southeast Asia must make do without regular access to high speed internet connections and most likely will for quite some time.  Of course, there’s an equally daunting list of reasons to explain why residents of Asia would be ideal online Bachelor’s degree candidates. and newly constructed web platforms designed for an emerging Eastern market reflect a broadened mindset more naturally amenable to the virtual innovation.  Unlike their American counterparts, who’ve typically viewed getting a degree online as a method of last resort for students returning to the academic grind after significant time spent away from class (or those men and women unwilling to commit to a full course load), the Asian companies’ target audience does not reflexively rank institutions of higher learning in terms of an aspirational hierarchy.

Although competitive enrollment policies certainly play a part in driving upward application figures for the most prestigious college campuses, the brick and mortar schools in operation around that part of the globe simply do not exist in the same bustling per capita numbers of the west.  Moreover, while a thin upper echelon of justly renowned national institutions cast a looming shadow, the Asian countries haven’t anything resembling the categories distinguishing, say, our regional liberal arts schools from technically oriented state universities (nor the historical associations conflating athletic prowess with academic pedigree) that initially presented such conceptual roadblocks to the acceptance of online Bachelor’s degree and online Associate’s degree programs within the United States.

Considering the multitudes of educational resources crowding even rural outposts of North America, the only diploma candidates to be principally concerned with their school’s location would be expected to have health concerns or familial responsibilities that effectively prevent them from leaving their homes for extended periods — another recurrent lure of the online Bachelor’s degree — but vast under developed swaths of East Asia pose significantly greater challenges for scholars hundreds of miles from the nearest academic opportunity.  Even if they’ve the funds to afford the (often backbreaking, even for first world families) expenses of room and board, these institutions hold such a central economic importance for their regions that they concentrate wholly upon practical majors of immediate vocational use, to the exclusions of such seemingly integral staples of higher learning as History and Psychology.  Under such educational constraints, any prospective liberal arts scholars residing amidst the far flung communities of the world’s largest continent shouldn’t think of getting a degree online as the best option.  It might well be the only one.

Although more popular than ever before, all of the momentum now driving forward internet based centers of higher learning could be significantly imperiled by a proposed policy change that would have immense ramifications on the financial practices of online Bachelor’s degree providers.  High ranking officials within the federal government — notably, members of President Obama’s administration — have argued for some time that any scholastic institution operating as a for profit enterprise would necessarily denigrate the quality of instruction to be offered, and, under a certain (highly skewed) perspective, there are reasons to doubt any academic model that blatantly competes for the consumer dollar.  All the same, many commentators experienced with the pressured of inculcating substantive updates to advanced education contend that the dangers posed by getting a degree online would be negligible.

Just under ninety percent of the students currently attending an institution of higher learning in pursuit of an advanced diploma are enrolled within a college or university designated as not for profit, and, typically, those remaining brick and mortar schools tend to be the most scholastically suspect centers of higher learning to obtain accreditation.  The peculiar challenges faced by the companies who only recently built online Associate’s degree and online Bachelor’s degree programs from the ground up, though, required a different sort of business structure, and observers familiar with the government’s opposition to the growth of digitized academia hasten to remind educational consumers that it would be a mistake to ascribe mercenary impulses to these schools solely due to their taxable status.

In the midst of this ongoing debate, influential figures within the political leadership have over the past few months established a series of statutes that were clearly designed to hinder the predatory tendencies of commercially oriented colleges and universities, but this latest proposal decidedly raises the stakes.  Claiming that students that  get a degree online from an institution listed as for profit by the tax bureau are fundamentally more likely to abandon their financial obligations without fully compensating the creditors — chiefly, still, lending arms of the national government — these officials have begun the process of interrupting arguably the chief source of monetary support for all academic institutions.  Whether off-net or online, Bachelor degree candidates have become accustomed to depending upon assistance from state or federal authorities, and any sudden stipulation attached to the student aid process could have grave repercussions upon the scholastic community.

Merely empowering the Department of Education’s (relatively toothless, all things considered) bureaucrats to intervene may not be in and of itself a poor decision, and, indeed, many budgetary analysts concerned over the heightened rate of default for educational loans have called for broadened governmental oversight to counter obvious instances of abuse of federal funding.  At the same time, however, there are mounting risks associated by placing such heightened and perhaps misguided emphasis upon the supposed culpability of for profit schools.  With greater and greater numbers of Americans choose the increased comforts and reduced expenditures represented by getting a degree online, the academic marketplace has already begun to slowly respond as the existing public and private institutions develop their own online Bachelor’s degree and online Master’s degree curriculum.  Though the latecomers possess enviable faculties and globally renowned reputations, it’s still to be seen whether their web platforms could approach the sophistication that existing sites currently boast, whatever the status of their designated profitability.

Officials within the Department of Education have identified more than a hundred separate instances of  organized larceny aimed at defrauding the United States government by means of falsified requisitions for financial aid through scholastic institutions housed on the World Wide Web, and authorities believe that hundreds of thousands of dollars may have been mistakenly handed over to students only theoretically getting a degree online.  According to Department findings, the newly blossoming academic alternative was uniquely vulnerable because of the challenges raised in verifying the identities of online Associate’s degree or online Bachelor’s degree applicants.  By first selecting participants eager to exchange their personal data (name, birthday, current and prior addresses, social security number, and so on) for an eventual split of the take, the perpetrators have proven difficult to catch during the act, and the D of E’s Inspector General has asked for the assistance of targeted schools to defray this growing threat.

Although this specific ruse remains almost entirely the province of online Bachelor’s degree and online Associate’s degree providers, authorities familiar with the many concerns surrounding educational funding — including the critical issue of defaulted student loan accounts, which now often swell to six figures from tuition fees charged by campus based colleges and universities — believe that the government must examine all aspects of its current plan in order to effectively counter the problem.  While our elected officials have thus far appeared content to focus all energies upon castigating the newer scholastic ventures (thereby avoiding the partisan infighting and interference from special interests sure to accompany any formal revision of longstanding educational policy), the ease with which con artists manipulated the lending guidelines should serve as a wake up call to the academic establishment.

“Maybe the web schools are to blame for perpetuating this scam,” said Barbara Prospero, a veteran journalist with years of experience covering higher education, “or, at least, fostering the attitude of blithe ignorance that allowed it to continue well after administrators and financial aid counselors must have realized something was up.  At the same time, though, student advocacy organizations and budgetary watchdog groups have been complaining for years about the absence of regulatory statutes to oversee lending approval.  There’s a limit to what the Department of Education will be able to do.  Putting the schools on notice — all the schools, not just the ones that have already run into difficulties — that they’ll be held accountable for blatant cases of student aid fraud is important, but the government cannot expect commercial ventures to wholly police themselves.”

In the opinion of Prospero and other commentators familiar with the uneasy relationship between higher education and the political establishment, members of Congress must address the key issue of federal aid subsidizing expenses unrelated to tuition or other fees assessed by the schools.  Under the current arrangement, funds earmarked for educational endeavors are given over directly to deserving students — whether getting a degree online or going the traditional route on campus makes no difference — to be utilized however they see fit for the period of matriculation, so long as the recipients maintain an appropriate grade point average (usually specified within the original agreement).  However unpopular further bureaucratic interference may initially seem to significant figures within the academic community, the rapidly changing educational environment typified by the growth of online Bachelor’s degree programs necessitates a thorough overhaul of the entire student aid process.

After remaining essentially unchanged for centuries, the shape and structure of United States academia has been thoroughly upended over the past decade by a variety of different developments that cover the spectrum of recent national news from the financially daunting (our ongoing national struggles with student loan balances) to the faintly miraculous.  The forward march of technology — cellular phones, cyber classrooms, e-texts, and all other implements of a modern scholastic landscape — has infiltrated the most far flung crevices of modern schools, and authorities believe these latest steps represent only the tip of the iceberg.  Distant learning, whether this refers to streamed lectures for perennially overbooked courses or self sufficient programs that facilitate students getting a degree online absent any classroom participation whatsoever, appears set to become the scholastic vehicle of choice for a host of online Bachelors degree and online Masters degree candidates in the twenty first century and beyond.

Digital transmission of printed material appeals to more Americans than merely those getting a degree online, of course, but students have readily embraced the new medium.  Although the advancement of electronic publishing had been simmering for quite a while, the past year’s seen the technological foundation develop to the point at which the administrators of even budget starved public colleges and universities recognize the need for cost effective alternatives to the budget busting high prices of traditional school bookstore stock.  Some of the traditional centers of higher learning have entered into partnerships with Amazon and other web oriented marketplaces specializing in used tomes to supply sufficient numbers of the academic texts required by professorial reading lists, but the most exciting new programs license digitized passages of a variety of texts for unique packages assembled in conjunction with the faculty constructing online Bachelor’s degree courses.

“The new possibilities that online Bachelor’s degree programs have opened up are incredible,” said Marc Breaston, a Professor of Marketing at a web based university.  “It’s just an exciting time for higher education — in a lot of ways, even more so for faculty than the students getting a degree online.  I don’t think anyone really foresaw the impact that information technology was going to have on higher education.  Now that the heavy lifting (so to speak) has been done on the engineering end to render computerized devices so much more powerful and easily affordable, the tech companies have been busily creating all of these different applications for the smallest niche audiences, and that includes faculty members.  It’s weird enough to be conducting a seminar from my home office, but downloading presentation modules over my cell phone?  It’s like something out of science fiction.”

As the internet oriented schools broaden the range of disciplines to be studied within online Associate’s degree and online Bachelor’s degree programs — the online Master’s degree also increasingly common — and traditional colleges and universities integrate their own web curriculum upon increasingly sophisticated platforms, the technical design enables faculty to introduce multimedia components within a digitized approach to teaching.  “Every web instructor I’ve spoken with seems to have their own distinct plans and ideas about what to do next,” said Breaston.  “Maybe the older professors were a little worried at first about making the transition, but, once they actually sat down at the computer and realized the new tools at their disposal, they seemed energized at the prospect of revamping their syllabus and reworking their lectures.  Web learning doesn’t just mean more students have the chance at a diploma by getting a degree online.  I truly believe the quality of education has expanded just as much.”