Is Online Learning the Real Deal?
Ten years ago, if you had mentioned the possibility of taking an online college course that was of equal caliber to an on-campus course, David Sachs, associate dean at Pace University (White Plains, NY), says you probably would have been greeted with a roll of the eyes and an incredulous, hearty laugh. Sachs is among a highly populated camp of educational leaders that emphasizes traditional academic values, and that was exceptionally cautious and wary during the advent of online learning. The reason? Not because they aren't forward thinkers or interested in technological advancements that could better education, but because they feared an interest in convenience would displace an interest in quality.

But now it's 2006, an age of high-speed modems, electronic banking and communication, and online courses, which are increasingly available to anyone, anytime, anywhere. But the question still remains - where do we draw the line as education gets farther and farther from campus?

The Motivation Behind the Market
As with anything else, when there is a growing demand for something, and enough people are expressing an honest need, taking the time to arrive at an accommodating solution is absolutely worth considering.

Such was the case for adult interest in distance learning. "On a regular basis, students tell me that if they couldn't go to school online, then they couldn't go at all," says the once-doubtful Sachs, who now runs the extremely successful online programs at Pace. "These people work rotating job shifts, or they live too far from campus."

Sure, you can't appease every single person's desires. But fundamentally, if you're adapting the way in which you educate people for the simple purpose of satisfying their very desire for education, you can't be wrong, right?

Such was the thinking behind Peirce College's (Philadelphia, PA) move to the online arena. "We made a strategic decision to bring the college to the student in 1993 by physically taking our degree programs and moving them into corporate and community locations," says James Mergiotti, Peirce's senior vice president and COO. "We then began attempting distance learning through a local television station, delivering full courses," he says. "The next natural move was the Internet."

The long and laborious transition Mergiotti just summarized continues to be a calculated process of trial and error, at the root of which is an interest in addressing a desire for education that cannot be met by traditional means. So now that we've established the good intentions of cyber learning, the question is whether it can yield an effective solution.

In the past, a formal education was only available when taught by human professors in physical classrooms, in real time. Then we found ways to conduct coursework via mail or television, and ultimately over the Internet, in part. Now we have full-blown degree programs available solely online. Are the ideals of Sachs, Mergiotti, and their peers getting lost somewhere in the mix?

"At this point, I still think there is an academic benefit to having the campus available, as opposed to having no campus whatsoever," says Mergiotti. "But I'm a believer that we will have less and less reliance on bricks and mortar five, eight, 25 years down the line. To today's generation of teenagers, the Internet and computers aren't even 'technology.' It's only a matter of time before everyone is at that comfort level."

Frank Mayadas, president of the Sloan Consortium, an organization dedicated to providing support and leadership for online institutions, agrees that the physical classroom is not the necessity it is sometimes perceived to be. "People have learned effectively away from campus for over 100 years," he says, citing the fact that Abraham Lincoln earned his law degree by studying on his own.

Turning Potential Into Practice
Nowadays we have the technology to actually realize the historical research that has proven there is no significant difference between distance and brick-and-mortar education. The point is not that a fully online education is necessarily equal to on-campus education, anymore so than an education from Harvard University is equal to any other school that offers degrees. Rather, it's that it can be done, given the right circumstances. "If at the end of the day, an institution's purpose is making money, then obviously the education is not going to be quality," says Sachs. "I look at what we're doing as providing options, and doing that to accommodate all sorts of faculty and students does everyone a whole lot of good."

You can get a poor education sitting in a classroom and a spectacular education sitting at a home computer, or vice versa. These experts attest that regardless of the medium, it's the quality of the faculty and materials coupled with the student's desire to learn that truly dictates the outcome.

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