Online Distance Education--"Anytime, Anywhere" But Not for Everyone‪.‬

INTRODUCTION With the tremendous growth of online distance education programs, it is easily forgotten that the concept of learning "anytime anywhere" is not a new one. Distance learning, in form of correspondence or home study, reaches back over 250 years in this country (Valore and Diehl, 1987: 2). The first formal recognition of home study occurred in 1883, when the State of New York authorized the Chautauqua Institute to award degrees earned through correspondence (Valore and Diehl: 2). That there was, next to economic and social demands arising from the advancing industrialization, a concomitant democratic-egalitarian sentiment behind the drive for distance learning found its expression perhaps most clearly in the "Wisconsin idea" and the creation of the University of Wisconsin Extension.