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Our college faculty and presidents are understandably worried about the future of our academic institutions. Their anxiety is justified especially with the impending online education revolution that has already started taking shape. With skyrocketing fees and student loan interest rates all set to go higher, online education seems to be the only option for thousands of our students.

There is no reason to link institutions offering online education to for-profit schools that have had to face a lot of negative criticism lately. Online education is a completely separate phenomenon that cannot be dismissed.

There are many universities offering online education at highly affordable rates. Non-profits like Udacity founded by Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist at Stanford or the Khan Academy that has developed arrange of instructional videos for professional courses, college and K-12 are making a significant impact in this field.

Courses offered by other providers like Straighter Line cost only around $100 which is obviously much lesser than what students would otherwise pay for state universities or even the community colleges. These online education sites are growing at a tremendous pace which is an evident sign of its popularity.

Even the well-established community colleges and universities are leveraging the benefits of online education and are following this trend seriously. In their own intermediate level courses and introductory courses, they are incorporating certain online features.

Massive online open courses (MOOC) are offered by the consortia formed by the more prestigious institutions. These courses are offered for free and many students are benefiting from them. More than 2000 schools are accepting credits from students who have done the introductory calculus course offered by a 62-university consortium called Coursera. This is a hugely encouraging development that points towards greater acceptance of online degrees.

Statistics show that in our country, at least 7 million students have presently done at least one online course. As online education continues to gain in popularity and to improve in quality, these numbers will definitely go up and as a natural consequence, more number of credits will be given for online courses by the accrediting bodies.

Online revolution will have a deep impact in the way our colleges and universities are delivering instruction in their brick-and-mortar campuses. What we can see is a trend developing towards a blended model that uses mentor teachers to help students requiring personal attention and great quality online courses.

There will be major changes in our education system in the way teaching is done, in the type of teachers who will teach, in the number of students actually studying in campuses and in the way there will be a lot of empty dorms and classrooms.

What we must expect as a citizen of this country is for a way our children can benefit from good quality education without having to break our pockets. This is definitely an encouraging trend that will help thousands of students get the education they deserve.  Maybe in a few years, we will not even have a choice when attending college will become a luxury only a select few can afford.