ONLINE EDUCATION BOOM IN ASIA. In a picture taken on August 27, 2012, students prepare for an exam in front of their computers at Kuala Lumpur-based Asia e University (AeU). AFP PHOTO / SAEED KHAN

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Thousands of kilometres from Kuala Lumpur in Cameroon, doctoral student Michael Nkwenti Ndongfack attends his Open University Malaysia classes online and hopes to defend his final thesis by Skype.

A government worker, Ndongfack could not find the instructional design and technology course he wanted in his own country, so is paying a foreign institution about $10,000 for the degree instead.

Online university education is expanding quickly in Asia, where growth in technology and Internet use is matched by a deep reverence for education.

"I chose e-learning because it is so flexible," Ndongfack, 42, told AFP via Skype from his home in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde.

Web-based courses dramatically boost opportunities for students and are often cheaper than those offered by traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions.

But online learning has also caught the eye of some of the world's most prestigious universities, with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently teaming up to offer free courses over the Internet.

"With the improvement in technology, the number of institutions offering online education has increased, both in terms of numbers and the kind of classes offered," said Lee Hock Guan, senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

The Malaysian government said about 85,000 people took online courses in the country last year, both at web-based institutions and traditional universities offering Internet teaching.

In high-tech South Korea more than 112,000 students at 19 institutions are taking web-based classes, all of which have begun since 2002.

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Online universities blossom in Asia