Two Business Models

There are fundamentally two business models in distance education.

A few virtual universities are exclusively offering educational programs via distance learning and rely almost totally on the tuition income from distance education as their main source of income. The case in point is the University of Phoenix, which has successfully grown from a few hundred students into over forty thousand students in just a few years. .

Most traditional universities start from on-site educational programs and enhance the programs by distance learning classes or options. They often form alliances so that regional institutions can share the learning resources. Illinois Virtual Campus is a typical example of such an alliance.