Don't misrepresent where you went to school.

[brodie]

Here's one thing that I see...

I've been taking a lot of cheap economics classes that are subsidized by conservative schools/foundations.  I appreciate the help and obviously some of the idea is to nurture conservative academic structures.  Some of the donors show up at the in person conferences.  And I live right next to Hillsdale College which is kind of like training camp for conservatives.  The conservative movement doesn't happen without this alternative structure.

Places like Harvard have not done a good job of expanding their base beyond cities and college towns.  Here in SE MI there is basically a circle of influence around Ann Arbor and then everyone else kind of rolls their eyes at the crazy liberals.  My point: It is in the best interests of Harvard and MIT and Michigan to create real distance learning pathways for non-campus students because the conservatives have been stealing their lunch.

But, Hillsdale doesn't offer online programs, right? Hillsdale is also not an elite school. There are thousands of non-elite schools across the political spectrum that offer online programs. Among the cheapest are in-state, public schools.

There are really only a few holdouts among the elite schools. Most of them now offer at least one online program. Columbia is the most progressive of the Ivy League schools. They offer about a dozen or more online programs, and their degrees are exactly the same as those earned on campus. Yale started what is only the third distance learning physician assistant program (the first one is gone because the school closed). I think UPenn has a blended doctoral program. 

There are many non-traditional students who have the grades and test scores to get into competitive programs. They just need the online offerings. Requirements don't have to be watered down. There are more than enough open entry schools to serve less competitive students.

I think it's just down to the way institutions are set up. Elite colleges, with few exceptions, are not set up for non-traditional students because they tend to have very few non-traditional students. Since Michigan was mentioned and it's the college I'm most familiar with, I'll use it as an example. Almost everyone at UMich is 18-23, lives in Ann Arbor, goes to school full time, and works part time at most. The only real exceptions to those rules are graduate students and UMich does cater to them (a nights-weekends MBA, a part time non-thesis Chemistry masters, an online engineering program). I think that's the biggest issue here, colleges base their offerings on what they see as their "base" and schools like Michigan don't see a demand among that base for fully online programs. Schools like, say, Central Michigan University have a bigger non-traditional base and thus create better offerings. 

I agree, there is a pent up demand for highly competitive online offerings among qualified students. I think it's inevitable that someone will take this plunge in a way that isn't as half assed as Harvard Extension. As you note, Columbia and NYU and Vanderbilt among others are already in this space.