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CNN- Online Schools Clicking with Students
August 13, 2004
Flexibility, technology key to e-learning
By Greg Botelho
(CNN) -- With your pajamas snug, your feet clad in bunny slippers, and a tub of ice cream on the desk, your computer glows in front of you. The clock reads 2 a.m.
In other words, time for class.
This isn't a dream, but a reality for hundreds of thousands of students. Although brick-and-mortar institutions still dominate the educational landscape, a new form of schooling -- called online or e-learning -- has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years.
The Peak Group, an education technology research and consulting firm, expects that more than 1 million students will take advantage of "virtual schools" this school year. Another research firm, Eduventures, predicted the online distance learning market will grow more than 38 percent in 2004, taking in $5.1 billion in revenue.
"In the last five years, the acceleration has been amazing," said Billie Wahlstrom, a vice provost on technology issues at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. "If you look at these things longitudinally, the curve is moving to the vertical."
The movement has taken hold particularly in higher education, where 90 percent of four-year public schools and more than half of four-year private schools offer some form of online education, according to the United States Distance Learning Association.
"The question that you have to ask is not who is offering distance learning, but who isn't," said USDLA Executive Director John G. Flores.
Learning anytime, anywhere
For Janet Farmer, class runs from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., or whenever else she finds time away from working her full-time job at Hewlett-Packard and raising her three children.
"There's absolutely no way that I'd sacrifice my children's emotional and mental well-being to participate in a traditional educational setting," said Farmer, who is eight courses shy of earning a bachelor's degree in business/management at the University of Phoenix, which bills itself as the nation's largest private university.
"It's not for everyone. You have to be determined to do it; you have to do it because it's important to you."
Farmer studies with international and elderly students, troops, even fishermen logging on from offshore. A statistical analysis of the school's approximately 110,000 online students -- just more than half its total student body -- shows a profile much like her: working, married women in their 30s or 40s, who are reimbursed by employers and looking to boost their career prospects.
"If it doesn't lead to a particular position or help them do a current job, it's not necessarily worthy of the time," said University of Phoenix President Laura Palmer Noone. "The major issue is not money, it's time. The biggest difficulties are when life gets in the way."
Prospective students have endless opportunities to learn online, whether it is for career or personal reasons. The Web abounds with credentialed degree programs featuring courses on a wide variety of subjects, such as criminal justice, psychology, nursing and education.
Many such programs have both brick-and-mortar and virtual campuses. The University of Phoenix, with 151 learning centers in 31 states, heads a list of "for-profit" schools focused on e-learning.
"The for-profits that are increasing their market share are market-driven and not caught up in the bureaucracy you see at many nonprofit universities," Flores said. "They have the means and wherewithal to be a very formidable alternative ... As a result, they raise the bar."
"Historically, higher education has taken a one-size-fits-all mentality: That if you want to get a degree, you must leave town, stop working, live in a dorm," Noone said. "But we are way past that. We have to be engaged in lifelong learning, especially if our society is to compete globally."
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