by Alessandra Bianchi

Move over, B2B and C2C, and make room for the next online business dujour: the ABCs."Education over the Internet is going to be so big, it's going to make E-mail usage look like a rounding error," Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers famously announced in a New York Times op-ed piece last fall. The man whose company supplies the vast majority of the Internet's plumbing wasn't kidding: online learning is no longer a novelty. Consider, for example, that one in three U.S. colleges now offers some sort of accredited degree online, more than double the number that did so last year. And bits, bytes, and bandwidth are fast replacing the three Rs as schools' stock-in-trade. Internet entrepreneurs, Nobel laureates, Ivy League schools, textbook publishers, venture capitalists, corporate raiders, and junk-bond kings -- just about everyone, it seems, is betting that the Internet plus education equals a very big sum. Of money, that is.

Why the frenzy? The industry, with its 53 million students, 50 million parents, 3.1 million teachers, and 15,000 school districts -- not to mention the 55 million individuals that constitute the corporate training market -- is the kind of fragmented mess that makes Internet entrepreneurs salivate. What follows is a selection of start-ups that are attempting to aggregate, organize, and capitalize on that chaos.

Welcome! The article you'd like to read is available to Adjunct Advocate subscribers, or to non-subscribers for purchase with AdjunctNation Passport credits. Your AdjunctNation Passport credit purchases compensate the writers directly!

If you like, visit our secure online store to purchase AdjunctNation Passport credits or subscribe. PLEASE NOTE: If you're already registered, you don't need to register again to read the article! You need to login, go to our secure online store, and purchase AdjunctNationCredits.