Off-campus graduate programs via technology: challenges and opportunities

Graduate programs in engineering have been offered to off-campus students for many years. Most of the successful programs have been concentrated in metropolitan areas with large numbers of engineering companies or at military installations. Typically these programs have had a large number of students at each site. Current technology and demographics present new challenges and opportunities in reaching engineers that need advanced courses and degrees. Many engineers working for small companies need to continue their education while on the job. This helps them maintain their technical competence, which in turn helps keep their company competitive. This paper describes Kansas State University´s (USA) experiences providing a masters´ program in electrical engineering to an audience that is widely dispersed geographically with small numbers of students or single students at each company location