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Over the past several years, colleges and universities have seen a huge growth both in the number of online courses offered and the number of students enrolled in these courses. Allan Hancock College in California, for instance, reported that when they started offering online classes in 1999 two courses were offered. During the spring of 2003, 66 classes were available online and enrollments were up 38%. Approximately four years ago, Santa Barbara City College, also in California, started online classes with an enrollment of about 500 students. Now, over 3,000 students take at lease one course online each semester. This trend is continuing throughout the United States and the world. Through online offerings, students from practically anywhere in the world can take literally hundreds of courses in the curriculum of colleges and universities from virtually any state in the United States and from almost any country in the world. Many schools offer entire degree programs through online course. Examples of Web sites that have directories of online courses include: (http://www.on-line-college-degreesclasses.or/on-line-2-vear-programs.html providing information on degree and certificate programs, on-line Bachelors Degrees, Masters Degrees, PhD's, and MBA Programs. ('http://www.learningstart.com/') containing an index of a variety of online courses, including accounting and Finance, Business and Management, Computers and Technology, Health Care and Medicine, Education and Teaching, and Social Science. rhttp://www.worldwide/learn.com/) providing a worldwide directory of online courses and degree programs.
Certainly, there are a lot of benefits to online courses. Indeed, they may...