Now, with the rapid expansion and evolution of the Internet, online education has become a reality. Distance education of one sort or another has been around for a long time. Correspondence courses helped people learn trades on their own free time, while radio or taped television courses educated students in remote areas. What began as a convenient means of offering internal training to employees via corporate intranets has now spread to the general public over the worldwide web.
It’s now possible to earn a degree from an accredited college without ever setting foot on campus, and more people enroll every year.Online-only colleges and career schools have flourished, and traditional ground-based universities are moving courses and degree programs onto the Internet.
And a majority of the population is now online: in 1997, less than 20% of US households had Internet access. By 2007, that percentage had grown to 61.7%. Internet access took only 7 years to reach 25% of US households, compared with 35 years for the television and 46 for household electricity.The sagging economy has also been good for online education. The Sloan Consortium’s findings revealed that many institutions expect more working adults to turn to continuing education to build new skills or enhance existing ones to better their chances in the job marketplace, and also to avoid paying higher fuel costs as commuter students. As with music, television, and newspapers, higher education needs to move to where the people are if it wants to expand its user base.
This is probably a safe bet: nearly 90 million adults participate in some form of continuing education every year even during good times, according to Census data. The convenience of being able to complete a degree without giving up employment makes online education attractive to working adults. As those adults strive to continue earning, they’ll want to continue learning.