Supporting distance engineering education is greatly needed

Academia has had enough modeling efforts and enough pilot projects of distance learning. What is needed now is long-term, sustaining efforts that truly can grow and be a substantial part of the education business. Some places are doing that, and others are struggling with it, but distance learning is certainly headed in that direction. Colleges have a long way to go before they get the support at a level that will help organizations learn enough to create sustaining programs. For distance learning to succeed, it has to have institutional reward systems that reflect distance-learning activity.