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Universities are delving into online education as a way to cut costs and take in more students. But questions remain as to whether online teaching will bring the same kind of education to students.

Universities are delving into online education as a way to cut costs and take in more students. But questions remain as to whether online teaching will bring the same kind of education to students.

The University of Virginia may have settled its most urgent controversy by reinstating President Teresa Sullivan after initially forcing her out. But still unresolved is one issue underlying her ouster: whether the university was too slow to join the stampede of schools into the world of online education.

Many other schools share the concern and wonder if the technology will live up to its hype.

Rollins College in Florida was one of the early pioneers of online learning. It's one of 16 Southern schools using technology to share courses and professors. Rollins President Lewis Duncan says it's easy to understand how neighbors may be fretting about "not keeping up with the whizzes."

"There's the old saying that for any organization when the outside world is changing faster than the inside world, you're moving backwards," Duncan says.

Add in the financial pressure on universities and their need to find new ways of doing business, and it's not hard to see how anxiousness could turn into panic. Especially with each new venture launched, such as Coursera with Stanford, Princeton and others and edX, a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

"Certainly it got everyone's attention, and I think schools that don't try and find their place in that will be left behind," Duncan says.

While it used to be just a relative few who paid MIT tens of thousands in tuition to take Electronics 6002, today anyone in the world can take Electronics 6002X online free.

Link:
Online Classes Cut Costs, But Do They Dilute Brands?