ABSTRACT
Controversies over the impact and role of distance education abound. On one hand, we hear that distance education will never survive. The estimates of and interest in the market for distance education have been overblown (NEA Higher Education, 2002). Just look at the struggles ofWesternGovernorsUniversity (Carnevale, 2000), the demise of the for-profit NYU Online (Carlson & Carnevale, 2001), Open University United States (Arnone, 2002), California Virtual University1, Cognitive Arts, and Fathom and the near demise of Unext.com’s Cardean University. And it is not just the for-profit companies. Arizona Learning Systems (Carnevale, 2001), funded by the state, closed its doors for lack of students. Every week, it seems The Chronicle of Higher Education has new articles on “distance education ventures” in trouble. And, as Stein (2001) notes, venture capital for distance education has dried up: “After pouring billions of dollars into e-learning startups over the past two years, venture capitalists are now pulling back. Many of the companies they funded face excessive competition, layoffs, and bankruptcy. Even the relatively successful startups in the sector have very little hope of going public, at least for the time being.”
