DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Chaminade student Kammie Wilson sits with her computer in Chaminade's business break room, showing how she can access her online classes anywhere that she can connect to the Internet. She said she can study when she has time between her full-time job and taking care of her two children at home.

Online classes on the rise

Gas costs drive college students to the net

The national trend is reflected locally, where universities such as Chaminade and Hawaii Pacific are seeing sizable increases in online enrollment.

"At the undergraduate level, we have a 9.6 percent increase in enrollment in online classes over the last fall," said Scott Stensrud, vice president for enrollment management at Hawaii Pacific University. "I think a lot of the interest is the economic situation and just the traffic. It's getting more expensive to commute."

Skip Lee, director for the evening and online undergraduate programs at Chaminade, agrees. He has seen a 42 percent increase in online enrollment from 2002 to 2007.

"I do believe the gas price has contributed significantly to an increase in online enrollments," he said. "People say, 'I'm not driving through this traffic,' and you make it online and it's a slam dunk. We rarely have an online class that doesn't fill up."

He added, "We keep adding more classes. We have two or three sections of the same class to be able to accommodate."

Chaminade hopes to offer degrees entirely online soon, Lee said.

Chaminade's student body includes military members and dependents, and local residents who work full time, as well as traditional students. If current trends continue, more and more students will take online classes just for the convenience, administrators say.

"It's very convenient," said Simone Torquato, a Chaminade student who takes online classes. "I'm working full time with kids. It fits my schedule. I really like it."

But critics claim the quality of online education is compromised due to less interaction between instructors and students and between fellow students.

"I think you do have to be a little more disciplined when you're doing online classes, where you have to set the time aside for it and you're doing a lot more self-study and reading," said Kammie Wilson, a Chaminade student who works full time while taking classes online.

Said Nicole Gose, a senior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa taking her final classes online before graduating: "Generally, the kinds of people who take online classes ... they're probably gonna be doing other things anyway."