2011 Top Online Unis...Sort of

[ham]

Libraries with vast holdings? Less critical than 24/7 digital accessibility. Big-name professors with endowed chairs don’t matter; e-mailing students quickly does. Faculty quality counts, but online is more about guiding than lecturing. Ph.D.’s and brilliant campus lecturers do not guarantee strong online instruction. “It really takes a different set of skills,”says Ron Legon, executive director of the Quality Matters Program, which works to improve online learning. “The online classroom turns them into coaches.”

Until people stop thinking out of the box of "prestige", "celebrity faculty", "football rankings", "fraternities", " I want the CSI/Ironside life" etc, no progress will be made. It's like buying a car...if you want the car that shines in the brightest color and makes the most noise in order to attract attention and to put a price tag on your head with the car as a proxy, it's a different thing from anyone who needs a car to commute to work in a cost-effective way.

You may end up in debt until you retire to pay for boutique education that won't help you because that dork whose old man owns the company or the bastard with the right church or party card got the job...and he spent his university days snorting stuff.

I think the articles makes it seem much more difficult than it really is.
Online studies are good only under the perspective of convenience and savings. You may meet incompetent morons, self-absorbed bullies and other misfits teaching online as you might in real life.

Last, it is useless to always bring up Harvard...95% people are out of that game anyways...95% brick&mortar universities are places like THE ALABAMA OUTBACK COMMUNITY COLLEGE, CHICANO ACADEMY or HARLEM STATE.