Can’t go (or get into) Berkeley or Harvard? Just want to improve your subject-area knowledge but don’t need a degree? You’re in luck. Professionals who are interested in high-quality learning opportunities online can now turn to virtual learning institutions.

OnlineLearning.net, for example, offers instructor-led continuing adult education and holds the worldwide electronic rights to classes developed by the UCLA Extension School for online delivery. Accredited courses are offered in business and management, computers and information systems, education and writing.

The organization also offers its own instructor-led computer certification programs and courses, including Microsoft Certification, Certified Novell Engineer, A+ Certification, Cisco and Red Hat Linux courses. OnlineLearning.net has had more than 12,600 paid enrollments and has offered more than 1,000 courses since September 1996. Typically, classes have a maximum of 20 students and online courses are open to anyone. Individual courses sometimes have specific enrollment requirements, but those are indicated in the course descriptions.

According to OnlineLearning.net's Bea Kinser, the type of people who would benefit from online, instructor-led learning are:

• Professionals looking for a more convenient way to access continuing higher education from accredited institutions of higher learning.

• Professionals who need to keep their licenses and/or credentials current by satisfying a specific continuing education need.

• Adult learners who enjoy and would benefit from the exchange of ideas and the lively give and take of a typical classroom.

• Individuals who value direct and personal instructor feedback and support.

• Adult learners who view having classmates from all over the country and around the world as a wonderful educational opportunity in itself.

• Students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to continuing education.

At OnlineLearning.net, courses are delivered asynchronously, which means individuals take turns sending messages back and forth between students and instructors. Just like in a traditional classroom, there is an instructor who develops the curriculum, give assignments, leads discussions, answers questions and gives out grades. In addition, courses have a start and end date and must be completed within that time frame.

In addition to online instructor-led courses from UCLA Extension, the University of San Diego (USD), California CPA Educational Foundation, and Houghton Mifflin, OnlineLearning.net also has online, self-paced courses from eMind.com. Self-paced courses typically provide information that focuses on a particular part or segment of a larger subject area, Kinser explains.

Another online learning company that’s worth a look is UNext.com. With academic partners like Stanford and Columbia University and alliances with Oracle and IBM, it’s considered one of the most promising players in the online education arena. It not only has top academic connections; it also has financial backing from infamous junk bond king Michael Milken and Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation. The idea behind UNext is simple: Bring world-class education to the people via the Internet, no matter where they are.

UNext.com's first online learning community is called Cardean University (www.cardean.com). Within this community, students can access knowledge from a variety of world-renowned universities all in a single curriculum. Currently, the school focuses on MBA-level business curriculum with classes such as "Corporate Finance" and "The Principles of Marketing," but intends to expand its offerings in the near future to include such courses as "Internet Marketing" and "Internet Usability." UNext hopes to roll out 100 courses by the end of 2000 and it eventually plans to sell a range of courses in business, engineering, and writing to the public.

Elizabeth Higashi, VP of Corporate Communications at UNext explains that essentially, the curriculum is centered on "problem-based learning." Students are given a task or scenario and then they go about figuring out how to solve that problem. "Our idea about learning is that you learn by doing," she says. Each course is supported by a variety of tools including online calculators, short videos, simulations and modeling. On average, courses take about 25 to 35 hours to complete over four to six weeks. "It is a rigorous and intense concentration, which is motivating," says Don Norman, PhD, president of UNext Learning Systems. "The strongest evidence for the effectiveness of learning is that it takes place over a short time when tasks are more focused."

While the relationship between UNext and its academic partners is somewhat murky, Higashi says that the professors from partner universities work with UNext experts to develop courses. "They are cobranded," she says "Our faculty is recruited from all over the country; they are top subject-matter experts who train with UNext," she explains.

Currently, admittance into Cardean is limited to the employees of the university’s corporate clients such as Bank of America and Owens-Illinois. Typically, UNext markets package deals to businesses, which sign up groups of employees in exchange for a break in prices that otherwise can range from $300 to more than $2,000 per student.

Right now, the only way to enroll in the university is through a membership or by being one of the university’s corporate clients. That raises an interesting point: How will online universities such as Cardean be viewed if all you need to enroll is cash and a corporate sponsor? Without a more stringent admissions policy, Cardean and others of its ilk may be considered a step or two below its more choosy brick-and-mortar counterparts.

The Internet's big upside is that if you’re savvy and do your research, you can get a high-quality learning experience from anywhere in the world.