ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Th e past ten years have seen a massive shift towards online learning-not just in institutions involved in distance education, but also in institutions involved in mainstream education. While the shift has been aff orded by advances in information and communications technology (ICT), what seems more than anything to have been responsible for the shift has been a belief on the part of senior managers that moving to online learning off ered a way of reducing costs. It is now realised that this belief was misplaced and that the relationship between costs and quality is far more complicated than was originally believed.
