Ivey ended up leaving the for-profit school after finding the online classes and instructors disappointing.
The corporate university, which went live in April 2010, uses online classes and simulation exercises.
Colleges and universities are rushing to offer free online classes known as "massive open online courses, " or MOOCs.
Online classes have already become part of an extended curriculum for many students.
The Board of Trade's online classes draw in people from Chicago to Afghanistan.
The Florida-based educontent startup sells online classes for grades four through six on Homeschool.com, which takes a share of the fees.
Whether homeschooling families will shell out for online classes is another unknown.
Companies including Udacity ( udacity.com), Coursera ( coursera.com) and edX ( edx.org) are partnering with schools or independent instructors to offer online classes.
Yet the institute's impressive web presence, with ever more signing up for its online classes, makes its ideas, if not its ambience, available to all.
The online classes are generally taught by instructors at the schools, though experts have said homework assignments are often different from those required in classroom counterparts.
The intellectual and developmental impact on students who live and learn together cannot be replicated by online classes, even if they solve the problems of scale.
He is working through a computer systems program at local community college and says that his online classes at P2P University compare well to his in-person courses.
Despite skepticism about the school system's ability to shift, online classes now account for 1 million enrollments in public education, up from 45, 000 just seven years ago.
Starting in 2013, the school expects to significantly expand its small graduate program, charge tuition for those students while creating online classes and adding more continuing-education courses.
As for online classes taught by the greatest minds at great cost savings, that it would be so much cheaper perhaps explains why it may never achieve mass appeal.
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More than three-quarters of Class.com's 7, 000 high school students are homeschoolers, says Blair, and total registration for the company's online classes now exceeds 15, 000, an increase of more than fivefold since July 1999.
"He's a little bit slower than he was" but is working on a ranch, attending online classes from home and planning to take his message of survival to high schools around the state, Bobby Bothe said.
Udacity has developed partnerships with companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft and Google, helping to develop online classes that sharpen specific technical skills such as parallel programming, thereby broadening the pool of potential job candidates for these employers.
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Nor was it to be solely a research facility. (Stanford has one at Peking University, in Beijing.) Faculty members across the country would share videoconference screens, and students in New York would be able to take online classes based in Palo Alto.
Called CodeHS, the company, co-founded by two recent Stanford University graduates, aims to provide online programming classes in high schools.
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Ding began looking into online education and realized that more and more U.S. universities were posting their classes online for free.
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There are a multitude of online and offline classes and groups that teach programming.
Udemy, a three-year-old company that delivers classes online, aims for a more practical mix of content.
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Five years ago, your college was on the bleeding edge if it allowed you to register for classes online.
Take a look at ChefHangout.com, a company whose entire business model is to use Google Hangouts to sell cooking classes online.
To create this workforce, Cisco pushes a variety of programs, from online courses to classes at institutions like San Jose State University and Wichita State University.
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Hallowed schools such as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are moving toward offering classes online, while startups Learn2.com and Hungry Minds are trying to outflank them.
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But in order to remain competitive in the 21st century, a college has to support wireless networking, provide ultra-high-speed connections to classrooms, and even allow students to take classes online.
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