Greater access to courses through technology has tremendous appeal to both students and universities. Advocates of online education point out that students are no longer limited by geography in order to further their education. Colleges and universities can add courses to meet demand without the expense of brick and mortar. But not everyone agrees on who benefits the most from virtual universities, nor is everyone happy with the changes that are occurring. For instance, most established schools, such as Oxford and Harvard, have shied away from offering undergraduate degrees online, citing the campus experience, with its rich social milieu, as the best way to educate students fresh out of high school.
Virtual universities agree with only half of that assessment.
Yet, the university and others like it are offering or plan to offer undergraduate degrees. More troubling, according to critics, is the lack of accreditation standards for virtual universities and unclear guidelines pertaining to the intellectual property rights for courses developed by professors and then mass marketed to students on the Internet. Without more rigorous standards and rules, some professors fear our colleges and universities will become an automated education system that churns out digital diplomas at the expense of real education, while scholarly teaching becomes a software commodity that can be commercialized for profit. States, with their massive investments in public colleges, have been some of the most ardent supporters of virtual universities as a way of broadening access to higher education without the traditional costs. But setbacks, both political and programmatic, have taken some of the luster off of virtual learning.