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Three years ago, online education was something LSU needed to undertake if it wanted to be “an engine of change,” doing the right thing as a land-grant university and effectively serving an older population of potential students.

That was the judgment of Risa Palm, who was the predecessor to LSU Provost Astrid Merget. Three years later, LSU has made little progress—just the opposite of colleges all over the country that are tapping into the quickly growing market for online education.

There are signs of movement at LSU, though faculty members won’t necessarily be cheering. As a general rule, academicians are skeptical of distance education, though there are exceptions.

Michael Lambert, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Distance Education and Training Counsel, says state universities like LSU are leading the charge toward online education, a form of distance learning that allows students to take courses—and even earn degrees—without setting foot in a classroom.

“Frankly, online learning is growing like a prairie wildfire,” Lambert says. “The last five years alone, the annual average growth has been 15%.”

The recession and ensuing layoffs have poured fuel on the fire, sending a wave of adults back to college to enhance their marketability. Online courses work well for adult students, who are typically more saddled with commitments than their younger counterparts.

Nationally, online MBAs are at the top of the list in terms of popularity. Criminal justice and “anything to do with health care” round out the top three. Though Temple University, University of Kentucky and other pioneers “fell flat on their faces” with early experiments into online education, the Internet and user-friendly interface software has made it a fairly easy and inexpensive process, Lambert says.

Pennsylvania State University is a leader today, offering several graduate and undergraduate courses online. On the for-profit side, the University of Phoenix jumped into online learning years ago and has benefited significantly.

Within the LSU System, the University of New Orleans has especially jumped into online education since Hurricane Katrina. Lindsay Graveline, UNO’s coordinator of distance education, says the school has nearly 200 classes online and plans to roll out its first exclusively online degree—a master’s in engineering—by next fall.

Besides traditional “asynchronous” online classes, in which students log onto BlackBoard or a similar platform and post on discussion boards at any time of the day or night, UNO offers many synchronous online classes that meet at a specific time. Graveline says these are popular with students because they allow direct interaction with the instructor as well as with a live classroom.

UNO’s embrace of online education after Katrina was meant to expand its reach at a time when students were scarce, and its decision to expand has to do with capitalizing on the new market in adults, Graveline says.

“One reason we’ve decided to expand the distance education program is to attract those kinds of students,” she says. “They’re coming back for their education.”

LSU’s flagship, meanwhile, remains in the chute but for a smattering of online classes—with one major exception. The School of Library and Information Science has offered real-time compressed video classes since 1995.

LSU officials—namely former system president and Baton Rouge campus chancellor William Jenkins—singled out the school because it offers the only library science degree, a master’s, in the state. Today, the school beams to seven sites around the state, college campuses where students assemble to be taught by an instructor in Baton Rouge.

Library Sciences Dean Beth Paskoff says it’s much easier on students, who on average tend to be in their 30s.

“This enables a student to continue to work and stay with their families,” she says. “We have people who have lives and cannot give up everything in order to become 22 years old again and live in B.R.”

Paskoff says the work requirements are the same for virtual and actual classrooms alike. Although university faculty in general hasn’t historically been big fans of distance education, Paskoff says her faculty members don’t mind.

“Our faculty are pretty enthused about it because ours is a service program,” she says, “and we understand the importance of doing things to meet the needs of our students.”

As for the rest of the university, Chancellor Michael Martin says it’s time for LSU to get moving on the issue. The Office of Continuing Education had been working on developing distance education, though the responsibility has been handed to the Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute, which is developing a business model based on market demand and the type of online packages LSU could deliver. Continuing Education still should play an important role, Martin says.

“The Stephenson people have been charged with putting together a new kind of college aimed at people who are time- and place- and circumstance-bound and willing to participate in a new way of being a Tiger,” he says.

But how best to get skeptical faculty members to embrace distance education? Martin envisions financial incentives for those who invest “sweat equity” in helping push things forward.

“I think we’re in a budget climate that even faculty members who are typically risk averse are willing to take a little more risk,” he says.

Lambert, meanwhile, cites endless studies showing no difference in learning outcomes between online and classroom courses. But Kevin Cope, a professor of English and the president of the LSU Faculty Senate, says it’s right to be suspicious of anything that redefines what it means to be educated.

That said, it’s probably all right to use online education to reach adult students who might otherwise be neglected, and to offer online certification for professional training—provided it neither weakens the standards nor causes confusion with the value of a full university education, Cope says. If LSU does purse distance education, he argues it needs to trade on its brand and reputation and not sell itself too cheaply.

“LSU needs to sell its quality,” he says. “There are 50,000 online sources where you can get a quickie MBA. LSU might be wiser to increase its real-life population and sell its quality and give people not just a collection of credit hour but a real education for a lifetime.”