The prospect of furthering your academic goals at your own pace from the comfort of your own home sounds too good of an opportunity to miss, but is it all it's cracked up to be?

"Working adults have a difficult time scheduling around college schedules," Forrest L. Barbee, director at CBI Computer Training, Northampton Community College, USA, said. "The flexible scheduling [of online education] allows a much more convenient and comfortable setting to think and study. Even many of the "live' seminars online can be called up at anytime after they have been packaged for queued delivery."

But online education is not for everybody, points out Amy Feest at the Connecticut State University, which also offers online degrees.

"Students who succeed online need to be independent and disciplined ?able to meet deadlines and be self-paced," she said.

While studying online gives students the freedom to pace the course classes to their requirements, there is still a high dropout rate of about 30 per cent.

This is because some students cannot get used to the learning medium, while others find that self-study is indeed the hardest form of motivation there is and get buried under the workload.

But the biggest downside to online education, said Dr Barbee, is the lack of personal interaction with faculty and other students. Online chat rooms and forums bridge some of the gap, as does 'NetMeetings,' but live face-to-face interaction retains a dynamism that cyber-discussions lack.

"Teamwork and interpersonal skills are so critical in the workplace; the online and cyber communities have not yet reached a point to replace the classroom for this," he said.

As of yet, very little research has been made into the pros and cons of online study. Dean of Rice University's Business School Gil Whitaker, who sits on the Mellon Foundation Committee which studies the use of technology in education, said almost all claims made about online delivery modes are not based on careful research but more on conjecture.

"Much of the argument in favour of on-line education is the ease of access claim. And that claim has a great deal of face validity," he said.

"One of the most difficult elements of purely online instruction to evaluate is the motivation to learn, which is often a key ingredient of the classroom setting whether the instructor and students can interact quickly and informally to add new knowledge to the on-going discussion. Some of this can be captured in a technological setting, but not all."

Still, the mere subjective opportunities are so attractive that many companies, schools, and even the SAR Government are investing heavily in this new industry.

But academics warn that simply buying computers and throwing them at students and teachers will work about as well as throwing textbooks. There is more to online education than merely going online, they say.

Exporting degrees

Asia has long been a hunting ground for universities in Britain, Australia and the U.S. looking to beef up their campus populations. But a new challenge for schools now isn't how to recruit more students, but rather to export university degrees via their PCs.

There seems to be no clear leader in the race to educate the world. Many universities in the U.S. offer online courses, as do universities in Australia. Britain also realises the opportunities. But even if you study for an MBA say at the U.K.'s Oxford Brookes University from Hong Kong, how well will your qualifications be received in the job market?

"From an academic perspective I would argue that the degree is equal [to an on-campus degree]," Mr Barbee said. "Having said that, I also believe that for students ages 17-22 there is a great deal of learning that must take place outside the classroom: campus activities, committees and group memberships remain vital to the overall development of students attaining a bachelors or associates degree."

However, for purely academic, including many technical areas, and beyond the traditional bachelors degree, this issue is less relevant. Moreover, multimedia and online simulations are becoming much more sophisticated and should continue to close gaps in this regard over the next decade, he added.

But the real issue of on-campus degrees versus online degrees is the source of accreditation, he said.

"As long as the accrediting bodies recognise credits as equal so that they are transferable to another institution, then we have what we need. Today many people are spending good money on courses and credits that will not transfer anywhere and are not recognised by anyone," he said.

Ms Feest agrees and stresses: "Buyer beware."

"There are many non-accredited programmes out there offering an easy road to a degree online, but students and employers need to research the programme they are looking into. They should make sure that the programme is bona fide and accredited."

Choosing a school

Director of OnLine Education Nicola Davies, a U.K. based firm serving as a distribution channel in Hong Kong for accredited online courses, said when choosing a school, students should choose a credible institution.

"They should choose a programme that is from a real university, not one that just exists on the Web," she said. "Also, look for the quality of tutor support. Students should also look at the quality of materials and how they are delivered."

Ms Davies said it is up to individual student preferences when it comes to selecting a school, as not every school is going to suit every individual.

NextEd.com, an Australian firm based in Hong Kong, also provides online accredited degree programmes from three Australian universities.

April Hu, vice president of Student Marketing & Services for NextEd.com, said the dot-com is basically an applications service provider which works with education institutes to offer accredited programmes online.

Costs

The cost of studying online is not much cheaper than on campus. But as with any aspect of education, accreditation and quality of tuition weigh far more heavily than costs. Even though costs vary from school to school, and country to country, on average the price difference for an online MBA is a mere 10 per cent compared to tuition fees for on-campus study.

Sitting your exams

One area of concern for Web learning is that of integrity. Who is to know if it is you taking your online test, or your genius school chum?

Academics have different opinions on how exams should be taken. While professors say they can notice changes in the style and content of a student's work submitted, they cannot in final tests.

Ms Hu said that with a good online programme, there would be so much online interaction throughout the course that it would be easy to tell who's cheating.