Online universities are a great study - BusinessWeek

In an ideal world, with unlimited funds, all students would have access to the best educational systems we could design. But our world is not perfect. And our traditional model for undergraduate education costs too much and delivers too little. Over the past 25 years, higher education costs, at our more modest institutions as well as at elite schools, have been skyrocketing. And many question whether the majority of today’s graduates are well prepared for the world of the future.

The challenge is to create new educational models that provide a high-quality education affordable for as many students as possible. Hybrid or blended learning, combining sophisticated online learning with face-to-face student/faculty interaction, is one promising method. Built on the latest research on how people learn, such "high-tech, high-touch" programs work. A 2009 Education Dept. meta-analysis showed that students learned more in hybrid programs than they did either in those delivered online or in the traditional classroom. And hybrid instruction can be delivered at considerably less cost...