Venture capitalists attend education conferences.
Venerable scholars leave the ivy-covered halls of academia to attend power lunches in trendy restaurants. Dressed in Armani suits and accessorized with cell phones, these highly sought educators are being enticed to offer their intellectual capital and institutional affiliations to commercial distance-learning entities. International Data Corporation projected that the number of remote learners is growing by 33 percent annually, and estimated that by 2002, the U.S. market will reach 2.2 million online learners. That leaves about 90 percent of the market untapped. The sheer enrollment numbers are staggering, as are the amounts of money expended in education technology.