Lessons Learned at Dot-Com U

According to a recent article in the New York Times, American universities have spent upwards of 100 million dollars producing Web-based distance education offerings. Fathom, a spinoff of Columbia University is now giving their offerings away free as short courses rather than the semester long for-fee courses that were part of its start-up model. NYUOnline has closed after a 20 million dollar investnemtn and few takers (500 student peak enrollment).

One successful entrant in online education has been University of Phoenix with more than 37,000 students enrolled for online courses. They claim their success comes from branding, marketing and infrastructure.