The same can be said of on-line community colleges. For a student who is outside the US, but who is hoping to pursue an American education, unable to actually travel to the US, beginning at an American community college on-line is an ideal way to determine their comfort level with the style of American education. At the same time, it's quite affordable. On-line education makes borders and geography meaningless. For example, Colorado Community College On-Line charges the same tuition rate regardless of where a student lives.
Someone living a mile from the host site or in rural Scotland pays the same tuition.
This kind of seamless educational web will continue to expand in the coming years, making on-line education increasingly more popular, and in many cases the accepted choice among those individuals with multiple responsibilities of work and family. In fact, a large segment of students already enrolled in on-line courses are working adults with families. The opportunity to study and learn at the computer in their own time and place is a windfall for these students. Again, it is a matter of the student being in control of the educational process, and the institution recognizing that the student is the most important person in that process. Naturally, studying on-line is not the same as studying abroad.