They do not ask themselves: how well can this thing be done? but: how large a market can we 'tap'? And to this end they have brought into existence all the manifold powers of machinery and advertisement -a vicious circle; for the more the human race is degraded by industrialism, the larger is the market for inferior articles; in order to teach a larger and still larger number of buyers you produce a lower and still lower quality of goods." Eric Gill, 1931 At its inception three decades ago,

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... tal learning seemed to promise access to quality higher education. The physically disabled (i.e., a paraplegic vet who could commute to local colleges only with difficulty) would be able to take online courses at home. Adults with little leisure time (i.e., a single mother with two dead-end jobs and no daycare for her children) could earn a college degree at night, on weekends, or between work shifts. But while it gave instructors flexible schedules, no work commutes, and the opportunity to teach in pajamas, online education also allowed administrators to lower faculty salaries. If a mere one thousand dollars could not induce anyone within fifty miles of a college to teach a certain course, then instructors might now be lured from farther away. In addition to lowering labor costs, online education allowed universities to forego expenses for maintenance, energy, and physical plants. During the nineties, early boosters of virtual education proclaimed the dawn of a new era. As David Noble observes: Promoters of instructional technology and "distance learning" advanced with ideological bravado as well as institutional power, the momentum of human progress allegedly behind them. They had merely to proclaim "it's the future" to throw skeptics on the defensive and convince seasoned educators that they belonged in the dustbin of history. The monotonal mantras about our inevitable wired destiny, the prepackaged palaver of silicon snake-oil salesmen, echoed through the halls of academe, replete with sophomoric allusions to historical precedent (the invention of writing and the printing press) and sound bites about the imminent demise of the "sage on the stage" and "brick and mortar" institutions.