The whole world of online education is being driven by access – just to bring people into higher education,” says Burks Oakley, director of University of Illinois Online. In the ever-expanding world of online course offerings, Illinois’ distance education programs certainly succeed in providing people with access to important tools to help advance their careers.

“A lot of jobs require you to have a college degree,” Oakley notes, “but it doesn’t have to be in any particular discipline.”

Illinois offers online degrees in some of the most traditional — and traditionally popular — undergraduate areas: Bachelor of Arts degrees in Liberal Studies (their largest enrollment), English, History, Mathematics, Economics and Philosophy, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, plus a B.A. in Business Administration.

“It’s the same degree in every respect” as those earned in-class, he explains. “It’s the same entrance requirements, the same professors,” and identical graduation requirements. Still, he adds, “A lot of our programs are designed for adult returning students. We have the student bring in life experiences to discuss in class.”

Students start and stop each course together, working according to standard academic semesters. Yet there are definitely advantages to learning online.

In one online class Oakley teaches­ – the public affairs colloquium – he uses weekly assignment deadlines. But it’s up to each individual professor whether students are required to be online at set times or not. Oakley says he also works to accommodate the varying schedules of his students, who last semester were scattered among Florida, California and Vienna, Austria, to name just three locales.

“Time and place really don’t matter,” he says. “You can shift work. You can travel. That’s really the beauty of an online education – you don’t have to go to a class on a regular basis.”

Unlike the long-standing image of online education, Oakley says, “there is a lot of interaction among students. The courses are designed around interaction. It’s very different than it was even 10 years ago. It’s very enriching.”

Another advantage: cost. Online students, no matter where they live, pay e-tuition, which is equal to the in-state tuition rate.

While the University of Illinois Online program doesn’t keep track of how many military or former military students are in its ranks, Oakley – who has been on the advising board for EArmyU — says there are certainly servicemen and women taking advantage of these opportunities. In his own classes, Oakley has taught someone on active duty in Kuwait and Baghdad as well as another student on an aircraft carrier. He recalls an Air Force cryptographer at Fort Meade in one of his classes who was working on a computer science degree.

“It was a really good match for him,” Oakley says. “He was a solid ‘A’ student — a really good student for this class.”

Online programs can be a really good fit for ex-servicemen and women seeking a specific civilian career. Or online courses can be used when you’re just testing the waters, fill in some educational gaps or need to keep working on a degree in progress.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for instance, offers no online bachelor’s programs but many individual online bachelor’s-level courses that can help you explore the possibilities of a new field or advance at your own pace toward a very specific job goal – whether you’re a new student or returning to college.

Chapel Hill is strongly oriented to a liberal arts education. Thus, its courses tend to reflect some, but not all, of the most popular majors. For instance, they offer psychology and journalism classes but not as many biology or business courses.

“We are not as cutting edge high-tech as some,” says Tim Sanford, associate director of the Friday Center for Continuing Education. “But what we try to do is make our courses manageable to people using dial-up” and other widely available Internet connections. “We also try to have a common look to our courses, so people returning will feel at home.”

Some UNC online courses are semester-based while others are self-paced – to be completed within a nine-month window.

“Time and place really don’t matter. You can shift work. You can travel. That’s really the beauty of an online education – you don’t have to go to a class on a regular basis.” While the university doesn’t keep track of military or former military taking its courses, Sanford says the fact that you can’t complete your degree online here may keep some people from pursuing UNC courses online. UNC is so well known that it doesn’t have to work to attract most students, Sanford notes.

Overall, he adds, the university could be a good fit for the online student: “We feel that our online courses are comparable to the ones in the classroom,” Sanford says. “And our costs are reasonable too. North Carolina has long been known as a low-tuition state. We’ve tried to hold to that for the online and distance courses as well.”

The state of North Carolina charges only in-state tuition to all military and dependents in North Carolina, and they are allowed to keep that tuition rate with UNC even if they move away.

Army veteran Steve Duncan runs the Military Programs Office at East Carolina University. East Carolina is a pioneer in distance learning, having evolved from offering extension courses to television courses (in 1954) to desktop interactive video in 1995 and then to the first online master’s degree in the nation.

“Students,” says Duncan, “need additional education to advance in their careers and they want education that will directly affect their employability once they choose to get out or retire” from the service. “The ECU counselors who work with military students attempt to align their future educational endeavors with any and all past work experiences.”

Today, East Carolina attracts about 600 military, retired veterans or dependents as students among the total population of 23,500. That number is growing. ECU has had a campus at Fort Bragg since September, and is hoping to offer programs at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune in the coming year.

Duncan is a veteran himself, having served in the Army from 1971 through 1974, where he trained as a counterintelligence agent and left the service as a sergeant. “Six months after leaving the active service I returned as a GS-09 and served 29 more years,” he says. He retired as a GS-15, serving the last 11 years as the deputy commander of the U.S. Army Training Support Center at Fort Eustis, Va.

Among East Carolina’s 56 online degrees, certificates, or licensures are 10 undergraduate degree completion programs — meaning students will have started accumulating undergraduate credits before finishing their education at ECU online. ECU degrees emphasize economic development and technology as well as teacher education and nursing. They include bachelor’s degrees in Birth-Kindergarten Education, General Business, Communication, Health Information Management, Health Services Management, Hospitality Management, Industrial Technology, Information Technologies, and Information and Computer Technology. A business education degree is in the works.

“Professors teaching classes are the same professors who ‘own’ the curriculum,” Duncan says. “The university does not employ separate adjunct staff just to teach to military. We refer to it as providing the first team to our military.”

“ECU professors speak highly of the military students,” he adds. “They find them conscientious, hard working, and directed. They never create discipline problems.”

Perhaps most unique of all, students don’t even need to have classmates when they go online at East Carolina. “If one student wants to enroll for a class then the class will be provided for that student,” Sanford says.

“A Classroom of One” anyone?