How we're still training our students factory style. Meanwhile, husbands are writing Ann Landers because their wives of twenty years are leaving for richer community on-line. Connectivy is community. You will never find one without the other. When the first two computers hooked up on Arpanet in the sixties, a community immediately formed, beyond the Department of Defense's mandate.
Virtual communities offer community by choice rather than by chance.
While brick universities may have features to offer that virtual universities do not, this is not one of them. Or, it will force employers to hire based on what potential employees know, rather than what they were taught. The first major university to offer a full course load across the infobahn stands to become the Oxford or Harvard of the information highway. As Internet access spreads beyond people who are already attending a university, the market for classes by e-mail grows. The major portion of the class will almost certainly be something vaguely like electronic mail, although it will also almost certainly resemble today's electronic mail in the same way that a modern Cessna resembles a barnstorming biplane.